Your ERP system should enable growth, not constrain it. Yet for many New Zealand wholesale distributors, the system that served them well at $15 million in revenue has become a bottleneck at $50 million—and a serious liability as they push toward $100 million.
The challenge is that ERP limitations often emerge gradually. What starts as minor workarounds and occasional frustrations slowly evolves into a tangled web of spreadsheets, manual processes, and mounting operational debt that prevents your business from reaching its full potential.
If you're reading this, you probably suspect your distribution business has outgrown its ERP. Here are five clear signs—and more importantly, what to do about them.
Sign 1: Manual Workarounds Have Become "Just How We Do Things"
What It Looks Like
Your finance team exports data to Excel for any meaningful analysis. Your warehouse manager maintains a separate spreadsheet to track stock movements. Customer service has their own system for tracking orders because "the ERP doesn't show us what we need." IT has built custom scripts to bridge gaps between systems.
Everyone has their own workarounds, and new staff are trained in these unofficial processes as if they're official procedure.
Why It Matters
Manual workarounds are expensive in ways that don't appear on your P&L:
- Staff time consumed on data manipulation instead of value-adding work
- Errors introduced through manual handling and version control issues
- Delayed decision-making whilst data is prepared and reconciled
- Institutional knowledge trapped in individuals rather than embedded in your system
- Inability to scale processes as volume increases
When workarounds become standardised operating procedure, you're not running your business on your ERP—you're running it despite your ERP.
The Tipping Point
You know you've hit the tipping point when new staff ask "why do we do it this way?" and the honest answer is "because the system can't do what we need."
Sign 2: Month-End Close Is a Multi-Day Ordeal
What It Looks Like
Closing the books takes three to five days of concentrated effort. Your finance team works late, chasing down discrepancies, reconciling systems, and manually consolidating data. Everyone knows not to bother finance during "close week."
The worst part? Even after all that effort, you're not entirely confident in the numbers.
Why It Matters
In wholesale distribution, operating on thin margins and managing significant working capital, financial visibility isn't optional—it's existential. When it takes days to close the month, you're making decisions about purchasing, pricing, and resource allocation based on increasingly stale data.
Fast-growing distributors need to close in days or hours, not weeks. The ability to see accurate financial position quickly enables agile decision-making that creates competitive advantage.
Moreover, the opportunity cost is significant. Your financial controller and accountants should be providing strategic insight and analysis, not spending weeks each year on manual data reconciliation.
The Tipping Point
If your close process has gotten longer (not shorter) as you've grown, or if you've had to add staff just to manage month-end, your ERP is no longer fit for purpose.
Sign 3: You Can't Get the Reports You Need Without Custom Development
What It Looks Like
Every meaningful business question requires either:
- A custom report that takes IT weeks to build
- Exporting data to Excel and manually manipulating it
- Paying your software vendor for bespoke reporting development
- Simply going without the insight because it's too hard to obtain
Your management meetings feature more questions about data accuracy than discussion about business strategy.
Why It Matters
Modern distribution businesses need to answer complex questions quickly: Which products are most profitable by customer segment? How do our inventory turns vary by warehouse and category? What's our fill rate by customer size? Which suppliers have the best landed cost and reliability?
If your ERP can't answer these questions without significant manual effort, you're flying blind. Worse, you're making decisions based on gut feel whilst your competitors use data-driven insights to gain market share.
The cost of poor reporting isn't just the direct expense of creating workarounds—it's the strategic decisions you get wrong because you lack visibility.
The Tipping Point
When your team starts saying "we can't answer that question" or "it would take too long to pull that data," you've outgrown your ERP's reporting capabilities.
Sign 4: Adding Warehouses, Entities, or Product Lines Is Painful
What It Looks Like
You've been putting off opening that second or third warehouse because integration with your ERP is complicated. You're operating separate legal entities but can't easily consolidate financial reporting. Adding new product lines requires system changes that take months.
Growth opportunities exist, but system limitations make you hesitant to pursue them.
Why It Matters
Your ERP should enable growth, not constrain it. If system limitations are influencing strategic decisions about expansion, new markets, or product diversification, you're allowing technology to dictate business strategy—the tail wagging the dog.
This is particularly critical for ambitious distributors in New Zealand's competitive market. The ability to move quickly—opening new locations, acquiring competitors, or expanding product ranges—often determines who wins and who gets left behind.
The Tipping Point
If you've delayed a strategic initiative specifically because your ERP can't support it, or if adding new warehouses/entities requires substantial custom development, you've hit a critical constraint.
Sign 5: Your Team Talks About "After We Upgrade" Like It's a Fantasy
What It Looks Like
Every system limitation is met with "maybe in the next version" or "once we upgrade." But the upgrade never happens because it's too disruptive, too expensive, or your vendor's roadmap doesn't address your actual needs.
Your team has stopped suggesting improvements because they know the answer will be "not until we upgrade."
Why It Matters
This learned helplessness is perhaps the most corrosive sign of all. When your team stops believing the system will improve, they stop pushing for efficiency, they accept workarounds as permanent, and your best people start looking for employers with better tools.
Moreover, if you're running a version that's several years behind current, you're likely missing security updates, compliance features, and functional improvements that your competitors are leveraging.
The Tipping Point
If "after we upgrade" has become a running joke, or if you're more than two major versions behind current, you need to face reality: you're not going to upgrade your current system. You need to consider whether it's time for a different one.
What Successful NZ Distributors Are Doing About It
The good news? You're not stuck. New Zealand distributors facing these challenges are increasingly moving to modern cloud ERP systems that eliminate these constraints by design:
Cloud Architecture
No more upgrade anxiety. Updates happen automatically, you're always on the current version, and new features arrive continuously without disruptive implementation projects.
Unified Platform
Everything from inventory and warehousing to financials, purchasing, and customer management in one integrated system. No more workarounds to bridge disconnected applications.
Built-In Business Intelligence
Modern ERPs include powerful reporting and analytics as standard, with intuitive interfaces that let business users create their own reports without IT involvement.
Designed to Scale
Adding warehouses, entities, or product lines is straightforward configuration, not custom development. The system grows with you, not against you.
Real-Time Everything
No more waiting for overnight batch processing or manual updates. Everyone works from the same real-time data, enabling faster, better decisions.
The MYOB Greentree Factor
If you're running Greentree, this conversation might feel particularly relevant. Greentree served many New Zealand distributors well for years, but as businesses scale and operational complexity increases, the limitations we've discussed become increasingly apparent.
The question isn't whether Greentree is a "bad" system—it's whether it remains the right system for where your business is heading. Many successful distributors have reached a point where Greentree's architecture, designed for a different era, simply can't support their growth ambitions.
Moving from Greentree to a modern cloud ERP doesn't mean abandoning what works. It means building on your operational maturity whilst eliminating the constraints that are holding you back. The good news? Working with a partner who understands both Greentree and modern alternatives means your transition can be smooth, planned, and minimally disruptive.
Taking the Next Step
If three or more of these signs resonate with your experience, it's time for an honest conversation about whether your ERP is still fit for purpose.
Start by quantifying the cost of your current system—not just licence and support fees, but:
- Staff time spent on workarounds and manual processes
- Custom development costs to maintain and extend functionality
- Strategic opportunities delayed or abandoned due to system constraints
- The competitive disadvantage of slower decision-making
Then ask yourself: what could your business achieve if these constraints disappeared?
Project Salsa has helped numerous New Zealand wholesale distributors navigate the transition from legacy systems to modern cloud ERP. We understand the challenges because we've guided others through them successfully. Contact us for a confidential discussion about your specific situation—no sales pressure, just practical advice from people who understand distribution.
