Most operational pain in growing businesses comes from a handful of broken handoffs, not from a missing ERP. Before you sign anything that ends in '.com', try these five.
1. Centralise vendor onboarding
One owner, one form, one approval path. Today, a new supplier is probably set up three different ways depending on who asked. Pick one route. Force everything through it. Reject side-channel requests politely but consistently for two weeks and the behaviour changes.
2. Standardise expense claims
Hard categories, receipt rules, and a single submission template. If finance is currently chasing receipts every month, the policy is the problem — not the people. Publish the policy, give one warning, then enforce it.
3. Replace month-end checklists with a shared tracker
Most finance teams run month-end out of a personal Excel sheet. Move it to a shared doc with named owners and status flags. You'll surface bottlenecks within one cycle.
4. Get purchase requisitions out of email
Email is where approvals go to die. Even a Google Form writing to a spreadsheet beats inbox archaeology. Audit trail, single source, no 'I didn't see it' excuses.
5. Run a quarterly process retro
One hour, every quarter. What broke? What did we change? What will we measure next quarter? The compounding effect over a year is enormous — and it costs nothing.
Process improvement compounds. Five quick wins this quarter is twenty quick wins this year.
How to know it stuck
- Fewer 'where is X' emails to finance and ops.
- Month-end closes one to three days faster.
- Expense reimbursement cycle drops by half.
