Democratizing ERP: introducing ParagonSMB

December 15, 2020
Jon Ruby

I am so proud to announce that after many years of hard work, Jonar is launching our new ParagonSMB product. This new offering is the answer to the long-standing question: “how can I, as a small or medium-sized entrepreneur, compete with the corporate behemoths I am up against.” Big companies use massive and powerful tools that let them reduce their cost of sales, speed up their access to markets and just plain out-deliver their smaller or local competitors.

Cloud-based business applications were a good first step here. They are available and priced in a way that the SMBs can appreciate, but they are also insufficient. The small apps are, of course, limited in scope and features. They require the purchase of a large patchwork of many tools and many integrations between them. The cost of the tools and managing the complex web of integrations can be crippling. 

The real advantage of massive ERP systems is the connection points of all the data allowing powerful collaboration.

With our ParagonERP product, Jonar set out to offer a complete system that covered a similar width and depth of features as the massive ERPs of old, but was delivered through the cloud and priced like the new generation of business apps.

For some companies, this was a lifeline, especially in recent times. You could transition to a fully remotely-managed operation with the same or greater set of abilities. And, you could do it without courting bankruptcy.

But for a lot of companies, it wasn’t enough. The cost of the software is not the only barrier to entry. Entrepreneurs rarely have teams of people sitting around waiting to analyze their operations and implement a new company-wide system. We could make the software cheap and powerful. But being powerful meant setting it up wasn’t easy. A user had to make a lot of configuration decisions, import a ton of data and then manage all the change in their organization.

ParagonSMB represents a whole new approach. 

If you don’t have time for a long and painful implementation, we have designed it out of existence. With ParagonSMB, you connect to another platform you are already using, like Intuit’s QuickBooks Online, right at the beginning. With your authorization, we will take all of the information you have already entered into QuickBooks Online and use it to do your ParagonSMB setup. Then we’ll take all your customers, products, vendors, GL chart mappings and more into ParagonSMB with no effort on your part. Finally, we’ll link all the orders, inventory, invoices, payments, credits, bills, etc. together so you can keep using QuickBooks Online for accounting but now it will be thoroughly and automatically linked to your operations system, ParagonSMB. This is so much more than just an integration that sends sales orders from one system to another.

For the first time anywhere, ParagonSMB offers a combination of powerful ERP features, SaaS pricing and the ease of setup of a simple business app. On top of that, you don’t have to learn a new way of doing things that you already do in your existing systems like QuickBooks Online. On top of that, you can try out the full feature set in a free trial. On top of that, if you decide you want the flexibility you would get if you controlled your configuration, you can switch to ParagonERP without any downtime or effort beyond what you want to change.

We’re launching today with QuickBooks Online in their app store. We’ll be the first company in the app store offering a complete ERP system with no set-up required. We’ll be adding connections for Amazon sellers and Shopify users in the coming weeks. Not only will ParagonSMB customers be able to use any of them, they can use ALL of them at the same time to further enhance their setup and connectivity.

I am so proud of our team and the huge amount of work that has been done. For more than 50 years, large companies have used their size to become more and more dominant in virtually every market on earth. ParagonSMB levels the playing field for small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs. Game on. 

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