Today we start answering the questions we asked in last week's post on the 7 questions you need to answer to evaluate the digitisation of your company.

First, we said, if you want to evaluate the success of digitising your company, you need to set clear and measurable business goals.

For example, a goal could be to increase online sales by 20 per cent by the end of the year, or to reduce operating costs by 15 per cent through automation of internal processes. Other goals could be to improve the customer experience through the use of digital technologies, increase brand awareness, or develop new digital products or services.

Once you have set your goals, you need to constantly monitor your results through the use of metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). For example, if your goal is to increase online sales, you need to monitor website visits, conversion rate, average order value and cart abandonment rate.

Only in this way can you understand whether your digitisation path is bringing the expected results, and whether you need to make changes to your digitisation plan to achieve your goals. On this aspect there are no shortcuts: no measurement, no certainty of improvement.

How an ERP (online management software) can help you

Measure sales. The ERP system helps you measure sales and track the number of orders, turnover, profitability and other key metrics in real time: the data is immediately available. In addition, the ERP system helps you identify sales trends and opportunities for cross-selling or up-selling.

Reduce costs. ERP helps you reduce costs by automating business processes such as procurement, production and inventory management. ERP can also help improve supply chain visibility, allowing you to identify trouble spots and optimise procurement processes.

Improving the customer experience. An ERP helps improve the customer experience through greater visibility into product availability, delivery times and after-sales service. In addition, ERP can help personalise the customer experience through the collection of customer information and the use of this information to create personalised offers.

Creating new services. Creating new services by identifying new business opportunities is every entrepreneur's dream. A complete set of data helps you identify new products or services to offer customers based on their needs and preferences. In addition, ERP can help you manage the implementation of these new services through resource planning and project management.

In a nutshell, to assess whether a small business's digitisation journey is progressing well, you need to set clear and measurable goals, constantly monitor results through metrics and KPIs, and to achieve these goals, ERP software is an indispensable solution for collecting and analysing the necessary information.