The great thing about running a small business is that you can be lean, swift and make things happen. Being a small business owner provides the freedom to get stuff done. Larger companies often seem to be bogged down with processes and bureaucracy, and often the lack of speed and agility to react or change. This is why new companies can succeed in new or emerging markets where established rivals don’t.

But there is another side to the story. With the freedom and flexibility, small companies often lack any formalised systems (computerised or manual) and internal communication can be haphazard. When there are just a few people in a company,each person can keep all of their tasks and information in their head, and everyone can still have a good idea of what their colleagues are doing.

As the company grows, these informal ways of working start to get strained and fail to deliver. When one employee is out of the office, others might not be able to help a customer because no one else knows what is going on with that account. When one person used to handle a client from start to finish, the service was good and personal, but as more staff members handle different aspects of the customer or client interaction the need for internal communication grows. When communication is not good customer satisfaction drops.

We are all familiar with these growing pains. How many times have we been the dissatisfied customer told by a company that “they are a victim of their own success”? They are not a victim, they have simply failed to run their business properly as it expanded.

Big companies manage their data and processes across their organisation with big, integrated systems from providers like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. These systems are referred to as “enterprise resource planning” software or ERP software. And this sort of software can cost tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. They are not only out of reach for smaller companies, they are the proverbial elephant gun to shoot a mouse.

Small, successful and growing businesses have the following dilemma: how to structure business process and share data within the organisation without losing the agility they have enjoyed in the early stages?

Over the last twenty years computers on each desk have helped but only up to a point. There are different programs to different things and these can help with individual tasks but they don’t really make the business function as a whole. One part of the business may be using spreadsheets to track information, the accounts department may have Sage or other accounts package, sales may have a contacts database like ACT!, but none of these programs share information easily with the others.

Although each department is now doing its own task a little better internal communication is bad, and there is a lot of duplication of effort (for example re-keying of contact details and order details from sales to accounts). Mistakes still occur and then rectifying them takes more time and can be costly in terms of lost customers or lost stock.

Enter Brightpearl

Brightpearl is an online business service that can be used by a company as small as a one man band and can scale to support a medium sized company with tens or hundreds of users. It helps bring all of the key business processes together so that they work in harmony.

Being an online business service means you can access Brightpearl from any web browser, anywhere there is an internet connection. You don’t need an IT department to set it up or keep it running.

With Brightpearl, all your business processes can be integrated seamlessly together in one service, meaning that each part of the business has access to exactly the same, always up-to-date information. Companies can use whichever of Brightpearl’s modules are suitable for their business, but typically, information about prospects and customers flows into the customer relationship management (CRM) module as sales or support staff use the system or from contact forms on the integrated website or ecommerce store module. Data then flows from the CRM and stock modules into the quotes and orders module. When quotes become orders the data flows into the accounts system which updates the stock module and can trigger action in the purchasing module. The integrated help desk module ensures good support and lets other parts of the organisation know when there are problems or other interactions with the customer. At every point everyone in the company with authorisation can see all of the information they need to deliver on your company’s promise.

Finally Brightpearl allows an SME to start and stay organised, with a service that aids their agility rather than hinders it and will serve the company for many years to come as it goes from success to success.