Many enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors promote their "next-generation ERP," but what does that really mean? How do we know if an enterprise solution well and truly is next-generation? Download this white paper to learn about 10 of the most significant features to look for in next-generation ERP software.
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Midsize companies in most global markets are currently in a major cycle of enterprise resource planning (ERP) replacement driven by economic conditions and operating requirements. Despite the buzz about the cloud, companies are cautious in adopting cloud ERP. This briefing focuses on the current ERP cloud computing landscape from the perspective of midsize customers who have deployed cloud-based ERP when replacing legacy solutions.
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In some ways, midsize companies in the early stages of life need top-tier enterprise resource planning (ERP)—integrated and collaborative solutions with broad and deep capabilities—more than their larger competitors. This briefing provides insight into why and how emerging companies are deploying top-tier ERP. Included are examples from customers that chose to implement top-tier ERP while they were in early phases of growth.
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Ability 585 is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for manufacturing (SMB) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Most manufacturing enterprises use enterprise resource planning (ERP) as their main business system. It has always been assumed is that companies strive to have one single ERP system to unify all their parts and processes, but a survey shows that the average manufacturing company has 1.9 separate and distinct systems. This paper looks at how overall ERP strategy relates to companies’ performance.
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Lean is not an overnight quick-fix; it is an unending commitment. As lean thinking has evolved and the concepts broadened, lean advocates have come to recognize that enterprise resource planning (ERP) and lean work together very well. In this paper, read about how five lean principles are supported and enhanced by comprehensive information control and the management tools that one end-to-end enterprise software suite delivers.
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Newly available software platforms known as governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) technologies can help your business stay on top of the myriad procedures, tasks, and behaviors that bear upon compliance. This paper discusses the drivers behind the growing awareness of GRC information technology, introduces the elements of an effective automated GRC system, and suggests a low-risk, high-impact approach to launching GRC automation.
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Businesses have a variety of strategies to select from when implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems across their global organizations. The choice of configuration can have a profound impact on visibility across the organization, as well the cost and complexity of implementing and supporting the solution. This white paper describes the three principal choices.
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New business analytics solutions are bringing large-enterprise solutions and benefits down to the medium-size business’s level. They are exceptionally comprehensive but exceptionally customizable to the needs of the individual business, easy to upgrade to target new strategic initiatives, and in tune with customer trends such as social media use. This paper discusses one such effective business analytics solution.
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Titan Flow Control, Inc. manufactures check and butterfly valves, pipeline strainers, pump products, fabricated designs, and accessories for industrial and commercial use. In 2008, Titan launched an enterprise resource planning (ERP) selection process to find a system that would meet its requirements for growth. Download this case study to learn about the benefits Titan experienced after selecting TGI's Enterprise 21 ERP software.
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To facilitate business expansion, DCI Cheese Company engaged in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) evaluation process to select a system capable of supporting its multiple companies, divisions, and business units—and to provide a single data source for real-time business information and transaction processing. Download this case study to find out why DCI selected TGI's Enterprise 21 ERP.
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Prior to selecting TGI's Enterprise 21 ERP system, Brad Sacks, More Than Gourmet’s founder and chief executive officer, had a vision—to become a culinary leader in providing premium French demi-glace, stocks, and sauces, with a rapid expansion plan to reach European and Asian markets. Today, Sacks attributes much of his company’s growth and success to Enterprise 21. Download this case study to find out why.
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In 2008, Cane Creek Cycling Components, a manufacturer of high-end bicycle components, engaged in a comprehensive software evaluation project to select an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would serve as its information and transactional backbone, and to accommodate future business growth plans and software needs. Download this case study to learn about the process that led the company to select TGI's Enterprise 21 ERP.
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Food, beverage, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies are being forced to leverage new technology to meet evolving product safety and lot traceability requirements related to stringent FDA and USDA regulations. For you to take advantage of these sophisticated new tools, there are five critical software requirements your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software should meet. Download this white paper to find out what they are.
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If you're a manufacturer or distributor considering an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) application, you need to find out how far the "CRM concept" really extends to other elements of the ERP system, such as order frequency, buyer habits, specific customer invoicing requirements, etc. How vendors answer the eight crucial questions in this report will tell you what you need to know.
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Download this white paper to learn the 50 must-ask questions for potential software suppliers that are critical to a successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) project. These questions will give your selection team a better understanding of ERP vendors' general business philosophies, organizational longevity, approach to ERP implementation and customer support, annual maintenance fees, software upgrades, and more.
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Many ERP systems are deeply entrenched in organizations, and their core technologies are mature. And yet ERP is in a state of flux. The ERP system of the future promises to be simpler, more accessible, and easier to use, shaped by trends that only recently began taking hold. Download this concise executive brief to get an expert's take on what’s next for ERP, in clear, easy-to-read language.
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Today’s manufacturers work hard to meet customer delivery schedules with quality parts while reducing costs. Those companies that can meet these demands can reduce work-in-process inventories and minimize production costs. But many fail at this due to inefficient material handling and inventory control. See how advanced ERP systems reflect the physical reality of the material handling process and can help you reduce inventory costs.
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While inventory reduction is a worthy goal for manufacturers, with less “cushion” mistakes and surprises can be costly. When looking at inventory levels and how to reduce them, it is important to understand the role that inventory plays in the dynamics of plant operations. This paper focuses on inventory inside the plant—from receipt of parts and materials to shipment of finished products—to help you safely reduce your inventory.
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As private equity investors acquire manufacturing enterprises, it becomes increasingly important to centralize the growing mass of performance data. A new breed of ERP provides the oversight and control necessary for private equity managers to ensure resources are working toward the same goals. Download this paper for key considerations private equity-backed manufacturers need to look for when evaluating technology enablers.
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To meet their recordkeeping and lot-tracking requirements, food and beverage processors must be able to rapidly identify and track every single ingredient in their products, from receipt through processing, packaging, and shipping, to the exact customer location. For this, such companies are turning to innovative software solutions. Read about the eight features a food or beverage processor must have in its ERP software.
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While companies seemed willing enough to let the applications that surround and extend their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system reside in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment, they were less willing to place their systems of record in a cloud they did not specifically own or control. But that is changing. This white paper discusses the advantages of a SaaS environment for ERP and argues that the cost savings can be substantial.
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Manufacturers have legitimate questions and concerns when contemplating a transition from a legacy, on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to a cloud ERP system. Download this white paper to find out just how cloud ERP solutions have proven their viability and superiority when compared to on-premise competitors when it comes to security, business continuity, cost and other factors.
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This IDC white paper looks at the growing applicability of software as a service (SaaS) for enterprise-level business applications, and analyzes the adoption rate and total cost of ownership (TCO) of this technological approach. Download this white paper to find out how a hosted option can drive significant cost savings, reduce initial implementation times, and bring new functionality with relative ease and convenience.
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The passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act in January 2011 will have a significant impact on how registered facilities document their hazard assessment, verification, and monitoring activities. But by beginning to think about and plan for the new requirements now, the industry will be able to maintain continuous compliance and ensure minimal disruption as new regulations come into effect.
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High-tech and electronics manufacturers are challenged to handle compressed product lifecycles, supply-chain agility, global visibility, and constantly changing regulatory compliance. But a new breed of ERP helps companies meet these specific challenges. Download this white paper to find out about must-have ERP features such as automated flow of documents, traceability, supply chain management, integrated lean tools, and more.
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For food processing companies, a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution offers a clear view of what is happening on the plant floor so they can track complete genealogies. Real-time data and flexible barcode functions enable efficiencies and productivity improvements. Download this white paper to learn more about the value of using a cloud/software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP system on the food processing plant floor.
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In many business areas, including sales, marketing, and finance, traditional business intelligence tools are providing executives with real-time visibility and analytics. Not so for manufacturing. Download this report to find out how best-in-class manufacturers can unlock the value of real-time manufacturing data by bringing together corporate and plant IT environments with new technology enablers and system architectures.
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Despite the benefits that enterprise resource planning (ERP) brings to manufacturers, Aberdeen findings from 2010 suggest that 26% of manufacturers have yet to implement ERP. This report looks at the performance of companies that have implemented ERP software versus the companies that have not. It also examines the capabilities that companies with ERP have compared to those that don't.
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Selecting the right software provider for your business can be a daunting. The last thing any person or company wants is to invest in the wrong technology and choose the wrong partnership. This white paper identifies five common mistakes distributors make when embarking on the software selection process and provides tips for keeping your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system replacement on track.
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This Aberdeen report demonstrates the ways in which leading high-tech manufacturers are using ERP to improve their business, along with the results those organizations have obtained. Download the this report for data on top business drivers impacting ERP strategies, top strategic actions, the impact of ERP on capabilities, and more.
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As processors develop and enhance their food safety management systems (FSMSs), four key components enable them to meet demands with minimal business disruption, for a manageable cost. Processors can use the information in this paper to identify, develop, or jump-start an FSMS that includes these four components plus the critical dimension of complete integration.
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Recent trends in the distribution industry are forcing companies to continually re-evaluate their processes and value propositions and strategically chart new courses. This report contains support from a number of thought leaders for three resolutions that wholesale distributors can't afford to ignore.
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Sage 100 Standard ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90), v. 4.5, is TEC Certified for online evaluation of mixed-mode manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The IQMS product EnterpriseIQ 7.8 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for mixed-mode manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The IQMS product EnterpriseIQ 7.8 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for process manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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As the economy picks up steam, organizations are increasing their investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology as a way to help grow their business. Yet because the recovery remains uncertain, organizations remain concerned with squeezing the most from their IT investment dollars. Download this white paper to learn about two strategies organizations can employ to maximize the returns from their ERP investments.
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Westminster Saving Credit Union (WSCU) is one of Canada’s largest credit unions, with 12 branches, 50,000 members and more than $2.1 billion in assets. To meet its rigorous accounting and financial reporting needs, WSCU migrated from Sage PFW ERP to Sage ERP MAS 500 based on the advice of business partner The Answer Company. Download this case study to learn about the benefits WSCU realized after the transition.
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NetSuite v11.2 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for small to medium business (SMB) in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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NetSuite Wholesale Distribution Edition v11.2 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distribution in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage 100 Standard ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90), v. 4.5, is TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage 100 Standard ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90), v. 4.5, is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for services in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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With the complexity of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software selection increasing in proportion to the rising number of options in an ever-changing ERP solutions market, how do you select an ERP solution that is the right fit for your business? Reduce your risk and alleviate the complexity with these 10 crucial ERP software selection tips.
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Why do you need a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? What do you want to accomplish? What do you need from your software? Download this white paper to learn how to answer these and other crucial questions for ERP software selection success.
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The new face of competitiveness, much like today’s automotive products, requires the highest degree of efficiency and innovation. And the leaders are moving in the right direction at a high speed. Yet most companies cannot and will not want to undertake the journey overnight. Regardless of your company’s current state, every automotive company can take practical steps now. Download this white paper to find out what they are.
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As the market recovers, automotive companies have new issues to solve. How do you meet demand variability and increased vehicle complexity and differentiation, manage ongoing struggles with capacity, and maintain a fragile supply chain? New approaches are available to help auto companies meet these challenges, respond to customers, adapt to flexible production, and direct supply better and faster than ever before. Read about them now.
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First to market. Fastest to respond to customer demand. Fastest to innovate. Just consider how business is consumed with the demand for speed. We even create new terms and acronyms—such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) or quick-service restaurants (QSRs)—to reflect this dynamic. So how do you ensure your own enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is enabling you to meet the need for speed? Download this white paper to find out.
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Let’s face it: There’s nothing sexy about enterprise resource planning (ERP). It’s been around forever. It’s big. It’s tough to use and maintain. It’s not flexible enough to do exactly what you want it to do. Or is it? Download this white paper for Infor’s perspective on the evils of “traditional ERP,” and how it may be hurting your business.
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In less than 15 years, Howdens Joinery has grown to become the UK’s leading supplier of kitchens. In 2010, it provided around 4 million kitchen cabinets, 2 million cabinet doors, and 400,000 complete kitchens to 234,000 building trade professionals. Download this case study for details on how Howdens rolled out Kerridge Commercial Systems K8 trading software in record-breaking time—including an amazing 40 depots a week at its peak.
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UK-based Haldane Fisher is a leading independent supplier to the construction industry. The company had grown through acquisition and had three separate character-based computer systems. Consolidating these IT systems into a single solution was a natural, if challenging path. Download this case study to find out why Kerridge Commercial Systems’ K8 system was the best fit for this expanding, forward-looking company.
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In 2002, Bathstore conducted an assessment to determine if its IT infrastructure could support its growing business. At the time, Bathstore consisted of 10 branches, with a new 80,000-square-foot warehouse due to open soon after. Bathstore quickly determined that implementing a new IT system was essential. Download this case study to find out why Kerridge Commercial Systems’ K8 system turned out to be the ideal solution.
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Download this white paper to learn about the challenges faced by multi-site and multi-national organizations--and what to look for in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to address these issues.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report will assist organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their implementation needs. Based on information provided to TEC by The Answer Company and its clients, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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An ERP system is a major investment for any business, particularly a smaller one. A well-planned and implemented ERP system can change the way you do business and significantly improve profitability. But there are pitfalls if you have not prepared properly. In this white paper, Pronto Software outlines critical questions you need to consider in the search, evaluation, and implementation of an ERP solution for your business.
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Though product recalls are never desired, they do happen. Your company’s response can make the difference between being the role model and losing market share or even being displaced from the market. In this white paper, PM War Stories, in collaboration with Pronto Software, examines how to effectively manage a product recall to mitigate liabilities, protect your brand and turn the crisis into an opportunity. Read more.
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To increase profits, many companies are turning to imported goods and materials due to lower manufacturing costs. However, purchasing products from other countries contains many hidden costs. In this paper, PM War Stories, together with Pronto Software, examines how to effectively track the total cost of goods shipped to aid managers and executives in making faster, better sourcing decisions and improving profitability.
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Glovia G2 is TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Many companies don’t have adequate metrics or information technology systems to see how well growth strategies and activities perform in real time. This white paper addresses the lack of supply chain synchronization: the ability for a manufacturer to cost effectively respond to changes in demand and then signal everyone in the supply chain. Synchronization closes the gaps in a supply chain that lead to costly wastes.
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A strategic planning process is critical for distribution companies. Not unlike personal financial planning, distribution executives have to select the best investments needed now to create profitable growth in the future. If you fail to make the right commitments at the right time, you will miss opportunities and increase your risk. This paper outlines a set of core analytics customized for wholesaler distributors.
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Finance departments are uniquely qualified to lead the effort to optimize profitability because of their neutrality, numbers orientation, and analytical abilities. However, as finance departments move to implement profitability management they need to recognize the challenges they may face. This white paper discusses how to manage profitability more effectively.
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All midsize and larger companies think they have systems in place to manage costs, so they give this issue little ongoing thought. They may be blind to the limitations of the systems they’re using and the improvements to cost management they can achieve. This paper identifies the information technology (IT) components used in cost management to enable finance executives to identify areas of improvement.
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Forecasting is changing from a top-down process to a bottom-up one. High-level targets may be useful starting points, but they must be combined with input from line management and department heads before being rolled up into enterprise-wide financial goals. Some companies find it effective to “embed” members of the finance function within other business units. Read this white paper to find out more.
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Methods such as ad-hoc reporting and decision-making by gut feeling may be effective in the early phases of a business, but once past that crucial startup phase, neglecting to invest in appropriate business systems can significantly hinder continued growth and profitability. A well-executed enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can enable change and provide on-going savings that can help you sustain and grow your business.
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These are challenging times for discrete manufacturing, especially for small to midsize companies. To stay competitive and meet rising expectations, manufacturers must seize every opportunity to grow—but wisely and profitably. This white paper presents clear strategies that can help these manufacturers achieve competitive advantage while giving clients the innovative, competitively priced products they demand.
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Most high-tech firms need to do a better job of capturing and sharing corporate and supply-chain data. Lean manufacturing practitioners often use a process metric called “right first time on time” (RFTOT). It not only applies to delivery of components and products moving through a value stream, but to delivery of information as well—product development, forecasting, sales and operations planning, etc. Find out more.
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This white paper gives insight into the challenges faced by small to medium enterprises (SMEs), and how proven, predictable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can help organizations build a solid information technology (IT) foundation for the future. This paper discusses a low-risk, easy-to-implement solution tailored to the prospect’s industry through preconfiguration of the solution according to best practices.
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As manufactures adopt lean principles, the process inevitably involves developing metrics for measuring their progress. But measurements are linked throughout the organization, not just on the manufacturing floor but in accounts payable and other back office processes. This white paper emphasizes the need to focus on strategy deployment.
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To boost efficiency, run leaner, and drive down the cost of supply, many organizations are exploring inventory optimization—a technique for improving operational inventory targets to address the realities of today’s highly complex, ever-evolving global supply chains. This paper examines how the stochastic multistage, multi-inventory model supports inventory optimization.
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is the key integrated process that the supply chain organization can leverage to achieve visibility and transformation across the entire organization and throughout the value chain. This white paper explores the current business challenges face by companies, the priority allocated to S&OP, the maturity levels associated with S&OP, and the role of technology enablers.
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Today, more and more manufacturing companies are exploring business processes that enable alignment between financial and operational goals. Results from a 2011 S&OP survey suggest that S&OP process investments are yielding tangible fruit. Understanding current challenges these companies are attempting to overcome should enable more effective functional alignment that delivers profitable growth and customer satisfaction.
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Solarsoft iVP (version 5.3) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Dynacom Enterprise is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for small to medium business (SMB) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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IFS Applications (version 7.5) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for the mining industry in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report will assist organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their implementation needs. Based on service provider details provided to TEC by Systems Advisers Group Africa and its clients, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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Sage 100 Standard ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 90), v. 4.5, is TEC Certified for online evaluation of distribution solutions in TEC's enterprise resource planning (ERP) Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report will assist organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their implementation needs. Based on service provider details provided to TEC by BT Business Solutions and its clients, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of mixed-mode manufacturing solutions in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report will assist organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their implementation needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Ability, LLC, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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In 2011, 1,923 participants from 17 countries responded to a survey on enterprise resource planning (ERP) user satsifaction. Download this summary report to learn their motivations for implementing a new ERP system, the objectives they were pursuing, the main problems they experienced during implementation, and an overall ERP satisfaction barometer.
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Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of process manufacturing solutions in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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This white paper addresses the question “Why do you need a specialised sales forecasting software solution?” It makes the case for implementing a purpose-built sales forecasting software tool, and provides a number of considerations and parameters that can be used to evaluate suitable solutions.
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Sunrise Technologies' Apparel & Footwear Template for Microsoft Dynamics AX is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for fashion packages in TEC's ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Find out why activity-based costing (ABC) is the best solution to define your costs, accounts, and activities. In this paper, you will learn how a payroll-oriented ABC will help you make more accurate managerial decisions for your agribusiness.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are complicated beasts, and buying one without a plan is like giving your 16-year-old the keys to a Porsche without teaching him to drive. He's headed for a deadly accident, and if you purchase an ERP system without first learning the basics, you are too! Download this white paper for expert advice on what you should know.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report will assist organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their implementation needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Business Technical Consulting (BizTech) and its clients, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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When food manufacturer Unigate (now Uniq plc) embarked on a multi-million–pound plan to update the manufacturing and financial systems at its factories in the United Kingdom, it needed a system that would provide flexibility in production without loss of efficiency. The company chose Solarsoft’s Tropos ERP, which was particularly strong on recipe management—the core of Uniq’s business. Read about Uniq’s benefits with Tropos.
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When Turtle Wax Ltd (TWL), a leading supplier of car-care products from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, decided to start selling its products directly, not only did the company need to develop its own direct sales channels, but also the back-office infrastructure to support the change. See how Tropos ERP helped TWL achieve this goal and realize key benefits, including reduced packaging stocks and easier to add extra production.
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When whisky distiller Morrison Bowmore saw that its old information technology (IT) system could no longer cope with its rapidly expanding business, it knew it had to future-proof its business and replace the system with a mix of packaged and bespoke software. See how Tropos ERP, Tropos Whisky Workbench, and Tropos Active helped the company improve the management of its blending and bottling processes, among other benefits.
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Gala Coffee & Tea, a growing business in the coffee and tea processing, packing, and distribution field, needed systems that would help them operate more efficiently and improve customer service levels. Read the case study and see how Tropos ERP helped bring Gala Coffee & Tea both direct and indirect benefits to the business, including faster information processing, improved production yields, and better customer service.
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When Fox’s Confectionery was bought out from Northern Foods, it needed to rescale its information technology (IT) system. It selected Solarsoft to provide equivalent functionality, but without massive support infrastructure. See how Solarsoft’s Tropos ERP solution helped the company to rationalize its business processes, improve information access, reduce cost of ownership, and support an independent growing business.
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To meet rigorous traceability requirements, pharmaceutical manufacturers must arm themselves with the right tools, processes, and insight to uncover and report every element along the supply chain—from origin, all the way to the shelf. And, the cost of all this insight can’t be a barrier to enterprise financial success. If you’re ready to take traceability to the next level, there are a few things you’ll need to know.
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As a manufacturer your fate is tied to your ERP system. Whether you use a homegrown system, a generic, stand-alone ERP package, or a highly modified best-of-breed solution with a patchwork of third-party applications, there is a risk that your solution will become outdated and will not be able to meet the needs of your business. If this is the case, here are three major reasons to help you justify an ERP system replacement.
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If you’re looking for your first enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or looking to upgrade from an existing system, the evaluation, selection, and implementation process is a long-term strategic decision for your organization that requires careful consideration and analysis. To help you through this process, read this white paper from Solarsoft and know eight simple steps for a successful ERP system selection.
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Production has stopped at your establishment due to an issue with one of your ingredients. It would be so much easier if everyone had access to the required information with a simple push of a button. As a food and beverage manufacturer, you have unique industry requirements. This white paper from Solarsoft explores why an integrated ERP system specific to your industry may be better suited than a generic ERP system.
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For many manufacturers, traceability is a valiant goal. But, for food and beverage producers, it’s a critical requirement. No one wants to put a single person at risk, let alone tens or hundreds. Yet, incidents of food-borne illnesses show up in the news every day. If your company is ready to tackle traceability as a legitimate problem, and stop viewing it as a trendy buzzword, there are four things you’ll need to know.
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PTC Windchill 10 is TEC Certified for online evaluation of core product lifecycle management (PLM) for discrete industries solutions in the Core PLM for Discrete Industries Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The IQMS product EnterpriseIQ is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturing in the Enterprise Resource Planning Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions allow for businesses to increase their agility by providing the ability to close gaps at all levels of business, and ultimately getting the right information into the right person’s hand at exactly the right time. In this report, you’ll hear four experts have to say about the ways modern ERP solutions increase business agility.
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Download this report for in-depth analysis of the software priorities for regional and local governments, based on TEC software selection project data. Key issues include factors related to change, cloud computing, transparency and accountability, and collaboration and shared services. Also in this report: analysis of interviews with governmental clients of UNIT4, located in various areas of Western Europe and the US.
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Sage 500 ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 500) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for distribution solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage 500 ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 500) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage 500 ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 500) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the Process Manufacturing ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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If you’re a process manufacturer taking a close look at the option of acquiring an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, you may be finding that you’re faced with a bewildering array of options, technologies, and applications. What should you look for, and which business issues do you need to address to position your acquisition—and implementation—for maximum success? Download this report to find out.
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Download this white paper to find out why economic, market, and technology changes have made it necessary for modern business systems to adapt more quickly, how outdated systems drain your IT budget, what a modern business must do to ensure their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems keep pace with the demands of a global mobile business, and the four reasons companies are turning to the cloud to keep up.
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Midsized businesses often face a dilemma: make do with systems more appropriate for smaller businesses, or invest in expensive big-enterprise solutions. Both options lead to risks: either the collapse of vital systems under the pressures of business expansion, or else a massive drain on time and money. Are Oracle’s Business Accelerators a viable third option? Research firm AMI believes so. Download this report to find out why.
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Oracle Business Accelerators are pre-built configurators and guidelines designed to reduce the time, cost, and risk of implementing Oracle applications. When Nucleus analyzed the experiences of customers using Accelerators, analysts found all customers reduced the time to deploy Oracle E-Business Suite, many by more than 50 percent of the time an implementation without Accelerators would have taken. Download the analysis now.
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Maintenance Connection Onsite/Online (v. 5.0) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of computerized maintenance management system (CMMS)–enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions in the Asset Management Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The IBS product Enterprise7 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distribution in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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CDC Ross ERP is TEC Certified for online evaluation of process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage 500 ERP (formerly Sage ERP MAS 500) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the Discrete Manufacturing ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Technology and new business intelligence solutions have made it possible for the average enterprise to leverage complex predictive analysis using simple, intuitive tools. Predictive analysis is key to the competitive success of an organization, and the enterprise that is privy to clear and concise product, customer, sales, and market predictions will always have the competitive advantage in its market of choice. Find out how.
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Aquilon is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for small to medium business (SMB) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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IFS Applications (v. 7.5) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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IFS Applications (v. 7.5) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The AIM Computer Solutions product AIM Vision for Microsoft Dynamics GP is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage ERP X3 (v. 6) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of mixed-mode manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage ERP X3 (v. 6) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage ERP X3 (v. 6) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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There are many reasons beyond purchase price that influence an enterprise application investment decision. In an exploration of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne customers that also considered Microsoft Dynamics, Nucleus found that functionality, reporting capabilities, staff skill availability, and partner and vendor support capabilities were key factors driving a decision to invest in EnterpriseOne. Download the complete results of this analysis now.
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IFS Applications (v. 7.5) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of mixed-mode manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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ECi Software Solutions M1 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Grain Hill Corporation is Central America's leading rice producer and trader. It needed to replace the five platforms it had running across three countries of operations with a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Find out how Technology Evaluation Centers' (TEC's) impartial approach and best-practice software evaluation and selection methodology helped Grain Hill find the best ERP system for its needs.
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Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for process manufacturing solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for mixed-mode manufacturing solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report assists organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Cimatic de México, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report assists organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Illumiti, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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As SAP and Oracle step up their efforts to attract midmarket customers, more and more of those customers are including top-tier vendors in their enterprise application evaluation process. Nucleus Research's analysts conducted in-depth interviews with a number of companies that recently went through the ERP decision process and selected EnterpriseOne instead of SAP. This research note focuses on the decision process and factors of those companies. Download the results of this analysis now.
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Ramco Enterprise Process Manufacturing is TEC Certified for online evaluation enterprise resource planning (ERP) for process manufacturing solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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IFS Applications (v. 7.5) is TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite 8.3 is TEC Certified for online evaluation of business process management (BPM) solutions in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Bank chief financial officers (CFOs) are being forced to reexamine their roles and responsibilities. Simply closing the books no longer works. Finance departments are being asked to perform strategic budgeting and planning, monitor risk and compliance, and improve overall performance. To meet these demands while competing in a turbulent marketplace, bank CFOs need sound planning and forecasting support. Find out more.
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Even in a strong economy, retail is an extremely competitive industry. This paper lays out the external pressures and challenges retailers face when attempting to understand sales drivers and promotional performance. It also identifies best practices needed to create the deep insights required to optimize inventory levels, avoid stock outs, maximize margins, and keep customers loyal—even in volatile market conditions.
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Davidson Companies is a leading regional financial services holding company in northwestern United States composed of five subsidiaries and 1,200 employees. The company’s back-office infrastructure could no longer support the timely and efficient administrative and financial reporting across all business units. Find out how TEC’s approach to software selection helped Davidson choose a fully integrated system in just 6 months.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that address the needs of service industries such as advertising agencies represent a growing market. Although there are exceptions, business software vendors still approach the industry with a generalized set of functionality. This report aims to establish the areas of product functionality that this industry requires and identify a strategy vendors might take to improve the fit of their solutions to this market.
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UNIT4 ekon is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturing in the Discrete Manufacturing ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are large, and complex by nature, making them very difficult to evaluate and compare. So how do you select the ERP solution that’s best-suited to your firm? In this guide, Focus Experts Dana Craig, Jonathan Gross, Tim Hourigan, Michael Krigsman, Tom Rogers, Bob Swedroe, and Chintan Tyagi share their top 6 best practices for selecting ERP software.
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Enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) systems have become more accessible to midsize and smaller companies. Standard features have matured, and systems have become easier to deploy and use. But some companies are struggling to support legacy ERP solutions that haven’t kept pace with new technologies. If you’re looking to make the case for an upgrade, use this checklist to sell your management on a new ERP system.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a mature segment of the software market. Most features are standard across solutions, and you can expect vendors to offer software for managing financials, supply chain and inventory, human resources (HR), and business intelligence (BI). Some vendors also offer specialized modules for vertical industries. Use this checklist to find the ERP modules that are right for your organization.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are intended to provide data to help employees make better decisions, to make your core business processes more efficient, and to help reduce costs across your organization. But implementing an ERP system for the first time is expensive, time-consuming, and requires a lot of planning. Following these 10 golden rules can help you choose the right ERP system for your organization.
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The enterprise resource planning (ERP) market has grown to include new solutions and delivery models, adding software-a-a-service (SaaS) offerings to on-premise ERP solutions. This has prompted some companies to switch to more suitable solutions. But jumping into a “rip and replace” scenario can be trickier than installing ERP for the first time. These five steps for switching ERP vendors help ease the transition.
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Depending on the size and type of your business, your enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution may touch every department from accounting to warehouse management (WM). That can make it difficult to select the right solution for your company. But there are three critical modules an ERP system must have in order to deliver basic ERP benefits to any company, regardless of size or industry. Find out what they are.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is notoriously complex. Horror stories abound about failed installations, unresponsive vendors, and wasted investments. But as daunting as ERP can be, many organizations can’t operate without it. Working closely with your vendor to configure a solution, choosing the right delivery model, and following this list of 10 tips can help you optimize your ERP initiative. Find out more.
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Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is pleased to announce that IntegrateIT product ERP 123 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distribution in TEC’s ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is pleased to announce that IntegrateIT product ERP 123 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturing in TEC’s ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Sage ERP X3 v.6 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distribution in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Outdated applications and countless integration challenges leave you little time to provide the kind of IT support your business needs. You need world-class ERP software within your budget and time horizon. In other words: an affordable and flexible ERP solution that can be implemented quickly, adopted rapidly, and maintained easily. Working with a tight IT budget? No need to despair. Get in on these five secrets and get the most for your IT spend.
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Growing businesses run into some classic difficulties that can be avoided with some foresight and the right technology. Learn about the three major problems you're likely to run into if your company is expanding--and how you can head them off before they cause serious damage.
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In this white paper, we’ll examine the different enterprise agility barriers reported by study respondents and discuss how energy industry executives can select software for enhanced enterprise agility and change readiness.
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This paper debunks 5 myths surrounding cost estimating for manufacturing, based on years of input—talking with thousands of estimating managers, customer surveys, trainings, and on-going feedback. We expose these myths and offer improvement opportunities that can save your business. Overpriced quotations may be forcing your customers to seek out your competition.
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Kraft’s brand portfolio contains many of the world’s favorite snack foods, including Oreo, Ritz, DiGiorno and Kool-Aid. Kraft’s challenge: to ensure consistent flavor and appearance by regulating production processes and measuring the flavor, color, aroma, and other attributes of each product. The solution: two new SAS-powered applications featuring SAS/IntrNet. Learn more about how Kraft get more out of its sensory data than ever before.
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Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (v. 9.0) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of discrete enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in TEC's ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Epicor ERP Software System (v. 9.05) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for small to medium businesses (SMBs) in TEC's ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing is "not procrastination, but making a commitment once the scales are tipped in favor of certainty,” explains Focus Expert Jerry Durant. How do you keep your company from falling prey to the “deer-in-the-headlights” syndrome and suffering from decision failures? Download this JIT checklist for the top seven best practices for managing JIT manufacturing.
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Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturers in TEC’s ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are more complicated than other information technology (IT) initiatives because they involve connecting departments across an organization. The value of ERP lies in bringing together data from the entire company, which means ERP implementation involves multiple departments and functional areas. This paper addresses five dimensions of ERP implementation for business success.
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Epicor ERP Software System (v. 9.05) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The perception of most small to midsized business (SMB) executives is that most of the data they need to make decisions is available “in the computer system,” or at least locked away until the moment is right for it to be accessed and used. But what if your enterprise system has not been structured to track and report this information? What if this information or metric is not even defined? Download this TEC report to find out about the three keys to better data-driven decisions—and discover how an integrated enterprise system can help you jump-start a plan for accessing the right information at the right time.
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An ERP diagnostics assessment is an enterprise system and process review that—if conducted properly—will expose ERP project risks before they jeopardize your company’s future. Download this white paper to learn more about the benefits of an ERP diagnostics assessment, what you should expect from a well-conducted diagnostic, and how you can use it to take control of your ERP selection project.
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Epicor ERP Software System (v. 9.05) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for distributors in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Epicor ERP Software System (v. 9.05) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for discrete manufacturers in the ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)/Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) usability is a challenge for the electric energy industry according to a study conducted for IFS North America. This paper outlines study results of 100 electric energy industry executives and offers advice for selecting ERP and EAM for maximum usability. ERP and EAM with enhanced usability increases productivity and system usage, maximizing value realized.
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Engineer-to-order (ETO) companies can use enterprise software to implement eCommerce strategies in order to improve customer service, reduce waste, and increase profits. This white paper outlines the ways that enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can facilitate ETO eCommerce by opening portals to suppliers, project collaborators, and customers. Realize the benefits of eCommerce in the ETO setting with ERP software.
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‘GreenSky’ is an end-to-end Carbon Emissions Reporting and Compliance solution for Aviation that covers all aspects of the European Union’s mandate on the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). With an integrated approach of automated monitoring, reporting, and pre-verification, the solution is a comprehensive framework that offers a rapid deployment methodology for airlines to achieve the most effective means of compliance.
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Illumiti helps its clients achieve optimized operations in key areas at the core of their business, by implementing custom-fit SAP® systems and other solutions faster, at a lower cost, and at a lower risk than other alternatives. Illumiti leverages proven and highly-effective methodologies to maximize business results. This data sheet shows how Illumiti’s products and services can support your critical functionality needs.
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GlassCell Isofab Inc. offers diverse products, from glass fiber to mineral fiber and sound-deadening metal, and operates eight distribution and manufacturing facilities in Canada. After a merger, the company decided to standardize and unify its business processes. See how this SAP® Business All-in-One solution helped GlassCell get an integrated view of the business and more easily scale and adapt to meet changing needs.
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Complex manufacturers face many challenges made even more difficult by the complexity of their products and manufacturing process. See how best-in-class manufacturers are creating a collaborative environment to integrate functionality to produce quality, speed, and agility, providing visibility from product design, to quality control and customer service, leading to more profitable business and greater customer satisfaction.
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Manufacturers focus on compliance and traceability initiatives for a variety of reasons, including compliance to regulatory mandates and mitigating risk of product recalls. Companies are increasingly focused on reducing manufacturing costs and particularly the cost of poor quality with end-to-end traceability of product and processes. Read here to know the key capabilities that help compliance and traceability initiatives.
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Tracing the flow of lots and components used in manufacturing operations is vital to industries that must comply with strict quality mandates and governmental regulations. Comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions offer value when they are specifically geared to high-precision manufacturers. Know the ERP traceability features needed to continuously improve quality and maintain compliance with mandates.
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Due to the complexity of engineer-to-order (ETO manufacturing, companies must move beyond the features typically offered by a traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. Learn about the specific ERP features and functions that help ETO manufacturers reduce costs, shorten cycle times, and improve ordering while maintaining high quality, and discover the key steps to enhance an ETO ERP implementation.
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To sustain the environment, manufacturing companies initially focused on the greening of the facilities and the materials used, but now are reviewing core processes. Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions help manufacturers get greener by reducing energy consumption, paper and supply usage, and carbon emissions. See how an industry-leading SaaS-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help you get greener.
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Manufacturers face many challenges with scarce credit, pricing pressures, and increasing costs. Critical to success is a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that aligns operations and production with finance to understand risk, allowing manufacturers to deliver quality products at competitive prices. Discover how to create value and profitability through real-time monitoring of financial conditions.
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Are you looking to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but are afraid of time and IT resources needed—not mention the loss of employees during the training and implementation? Plex Online can help. Discover how Plex Online’s four-phase training process—piloting, testing, systems enhancements, and go-live—drives 98% customer satisfaction in Plex Online implementations—32% higher than the industry average.
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Software as a service (SaaS) is becoming an increasingly attractive choice for manufacturers that would rather not continue to divert resources into purchases of sophisticated software systems that do not represent their core business, while adding costly IT resources. SaaS provider’s IT experts handle it, while your company gets back to doing what it does best. See the infrastructure needed to sustain SaaS in manufacturing.
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Today’s manufacturer demands a sophisticated network to track inventory, production, and scheduling across multiple locations in different time zones and on different continents. Plex Online extends beyond what status quo enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions provide by defining which solution structure best meets the unique needs of the manufacturer. See how to manage multiple facilities, divisions, and operations.
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Manufacturers previously tracked suppliers and their deliveries of goods in a predictable method that often resulted in errors. For small to midsized suppliers eager to adopt more efficient communications with customers but lacking access to an EDI-compliant system, supplier portals are an alternative cost-saving solution. See how supplier portals add increased efficiency, quality, and transparency to the supply chain.
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In this tough economic climate, manufacturers worldwide are reevaluating their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and looking to implement ERP systems that cut costs, streamline operations, and improve performance. This paper highlights the five advantages of on-demand ERP systems, commonly referred to as software as a service (SaaS). Find out how manufacturers can benefit from the leading SaaS-based ERP system.
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Today’s manufacturer is challenged by static enterprise resource planning (ERP) with annual complex upgrades. See how powerful change-on-demand capabilities allow companies to instantly align their ERP and business processes without a time-consuming IT effort. With a community-driven development approach, enhancements are driven by a community of users, and the system constantly improves in the exact way a user requires.
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Fast becoming the preferred delivery model for companies in other manufacturing industries, software as a service (SaaS) is being adopted by food and beverage processing companies using inadequate management systems. See how a SaaS-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helps processors operate more efficiently and profitably, and enables world-class security, disaster recovery, and an expandable storage capacity.
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Today’s ever-increasing frequency and cost of food and beverage recalls harm not only the companies directly affected, but all processors in the industry. See how leading food processors are turning to innovative software solutions, like Plex Online, to develop a complete food safety management system that enables them to achieve best practices in food and beverage processing quality and a high level of traceability.
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Today’s manufacturing supply chain is challenged with quality mandates, cost reductions, and delivery improvements. Technology plays a key role in a company’s ability to build and manage an effective supply chain. Read this paper to learn about the next wave of supply chain solutions and how effective supply chain management of an enterprise reduces costs, lead times, and inventories throughout the entire supply chain.
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Most software systems have limited capability to customize screens, integrate local business terms, build specific data fields, or create unique reports. Not so with VisionPlex. Plex Online uses innovative VisionPlex technology to bring users the ability to customize screens and functions, design new ones, link screens together and create their own toolbars—all with no programming. See how this technology empowers users.
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Today’s manufacturing enterprises gain a key competitive advantage by implementing an extremely strong shop floor control system. See how a comprehensive ERP solution offers manufacturers a clear view of what is happening on their shop floor, and how truly integrated information lets manufacturers increase productivity, reduce scrap and total work-in-process inventory, and gain dramatic increases in production throughput.
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Food manufacturers are launching sophisticated tracking systems that can identify and isolate quality issues across their supply chains before problems escalate. Implementing barcoding as part of an integrated SaaS ERP solution enables food processors to optimize solution benefits. Find out what food and beverage processors need to know to take advantage of barcoding to improve business performance and meet regulatory requirements.
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Traceability and visibility in the global food supply chain is crucial to farmers and food processors, in light of recent major food recalls. Manufacturers need to tightly manage their production quality, even into the suppliers’ operations, to comply with FDA requirements. ERP solutions, like Plex Online, enable food manufacturers to track every ingredient in every product at least one-up and one-back in their supply chains.
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For manufacturers that lack a well-structured product lifecycle management (PLM) program, the instantaneous flow of information only speeds up confusion, duplication of effort, and poor decision making. Find out how a SaaS-based ERP solution is essential for creating an effective, comprehensive integrated PLM program that improves productivity, accuracy, and decision making—and ultimately increases company profitability.
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Organizations tend to focus on the "what"—that is, the vendor or the product—when determining total cost of ownership (TCO). However, it's often the "how"—that is, deployment aspects—of enterprise resource planning (ERP) that has a greater impact on determining TCO for a given organization. This research raises 10 factors to help decision-makers better determine the TCO of their ERP investments.
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Across the industrial machinery and components industry, successful lean initiatives are increasing as manufacturers recognize the key enabler of continuous improvement and eliminating waste—technology. This white paper presents six brief case studies of manufacturing companies that have built an underlying technology infrastructure to support a foundation for increasing their value to their customers.
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Many competitive businesses are implementing “lean” initiatives to expose and attack waste and setting goals for continuous improvement through Six Sigma principles. Consensus is growing that technology is key for successful lean initiatives. This white paper defines addresses the impact lean initiatives have on profitability and considers the role of information technology (IT) in enabling lean initiatives.
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Whether a company is trying to move its performance in enterprise resource planning from laggard to industry average, or industry average to best-in-class, this white paper reviews the benchmarks of success and the necessary steps to help spur performance improvements.
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Among the first major decisions of the organization was to replace the ageing information technology (IT) infrastructure with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system capable of supporting and sustaining future growth. The objectives included to replace multiple, unsupported legacy IT systems and interfaces and improve project planning and analysis by establishing a single point of worldwide information access.
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The right implementation partner can get your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system up and running quickly and smoothly, whereas the wrong partner can result in higher costs and considerable disruption to your business, with lasting and cumulative effects. This white paper addresses five key steps in the ERP selection and implementation process that contribute to ERP success.
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Many organizations in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry are experiencing a trade-off between the benefit of high product volume sales coming at the expense of extreme data complexity. Many CPG organizations are seeking business intelligence (BI) tools to help create supply chain linkages and deliver their products more efficiently. See how BI tools can help business managers better manage fluctuating product demand.
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In most organizations today, corporate information is managed by many tools and teams, but there’s a trend toward enterprise information management (EIM), a practice that coordinates teams and integrates tools. EIM is a best practice for creating, managing, sharing, and leveraging information in an enterprise, holistic manner that’s aligned with strategic, data-driven business objectives. See how you can achieve this.
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This report reviews how one company made the strategic decision to replace the legacy systems built to support the old organizational structure with a new system that revolves around customers, not vehicles. The new system consists of fully integrated components, with a customer relationship management (CRM)-based frontend. The technology infrastructure was crucial to the overall success of the restructuring effort.
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The Epicor product Epicor Enterprise Resource Planning Software System (v. 9.05) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for mixed-mode manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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This paper explores the following best practices for leverage price management and optimization: Fine-tune prices for all products and services. Analyze historical and live transaction-level data. Develop and implement effective cost-to-serve strategies. Establish well-defined customer segments. Empower your sales force with rich customer information and enforce negotiation policies.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) and other senior managers are under tremendous pressure to maximize profitability, reduce operational costs, minimize risk, and improve stakeholder confidence. Read about an application that can help you streamline operations, instill confidence, and reduce risk. The solution provides planning, budgeting, and forecasting and supports financial consolidation and reporting operations.
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Business intelligence (BI) functionality can help your company gains visibility, insight, operational alignment, and accountability to increase revenue, margins, and liquidity; streamline processes; improve agility; and become a best-run business. Find out more in this report about a preconfigured solution.
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This Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) paper explores the benefits of transitioning from an on-premise financials system to the cloud. The paper reviews research conducted among 800 IMA members regarding their perceived benefits and risks related to moving financials to the cloud, including drivers around total cost of ownership (TCO); anytime, anywhere access; easy upgrades; and business process improvement.
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This paper from independent analyst SMB Group considers the financial and operational challenges that global medium-sized businesses face, examines the value of achieving real-time financial consolidation, discusses the criteria they can use to evaluate solutions, and provides real-world case studies and research showing how cloud-based systems can provide global visibility and streamline consolidation and reporting needs.
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If you have acquired businesses, added subsidiaries, and entered international markets, you probably have error-prone and time-consuming consolidation processes and poor visibility into performance at the corporate or divisional level. This kit offers strategies for multi-subsidiary and global businesses to run their organizations more efficiently, including case studies, analyst research, and best-practice insights.
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Due to the wide range of size, scope, and complexity within the extended enterprise, different units often have different functional requirements for the business management software they use. The different demands can become a barrier to future growth, profitability, and agility. So how do you coordinate resources and activities to get everybody on the same page within an extended enterprise?
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Project-based solutions (PBS) is a new type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for complex, engineer-to-order companies and companies facing rapid change. And these days, most companies do face change, and their legacy ERP systems strain to keep up. Is PBS a better choice for you than traditional ERP?
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If you are a multi-company enterprise, then this Two-tier ERP Strategy Kit will show you how to grow your satellite divisions while cutting costs. Including analyst research, whitepapers, and real-world case studies, this Kit shows how you can equip your subsidiaries with a more agile, flexible cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system while maintaining your headquarters on-premise ERP instance of SAP or Oracle.
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Promoting band image, improving overall business performance, and keeping customers happy is a main concern of many businesses. This paper demonstrates how the Extended Enterprise platform can help specific verticals to promote and sell their products to external audiences. Know the value of the Extended Enterprise solution in financial services, insurance, government, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and associations.
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RICC/McDonald, McDonald’s leading franchise in Saudi Arabia, was facing major operational issues, such as departments using different applications that offered negligible integration, reporting tools were limited, etc. The company chose Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, a solution that covered more than 80% of its current future needs, and partnered with Alfanar IT for a successful implementation. See how alfanar IT did it.
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To effectively transform succession planning from a manual, paper-based process to one that is systematic and technology-enabled, CEOs must focus on laying a solid foundation supported by strong executive leadership. Read this CEO guide to get five key tips to jump-start your succession planning efforts to better manage risk and ensure business continuity and to know how a strong succession strategy can impact your company.
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Lamprell Energy Limited, a provider of specialized products and services to the international onshore and offshore oil and gas, and renewable energy sectors, needed to establish a new, fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to replace its aging, and loosely connected set of business applications. See how TEC enabled Lamprell to make a rational, justifiable, and above all impartial software selection.
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Successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployment demands a focused examination of the professional services provided by your organization, and the most efficient infrastructure required to support them. You must provide your most important asset—your people—with effective tools that can be accessed remotely, securely, and immediately. Professional service organizations that understand this will be in a strong position to determine the best cloud-based solution for their needs.
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Manufacturers have been slow to embrace the cloud. But the proven success of cloud-based solutions, along with the promise of a less expensive and more responsive business solution infrastructure, is prompting many manufacturers to take a closer look. This report explores how manufacturers can use cloud-based solutions to transform how they manage their supply chain and internally improve operations, leveraging the cloud to gain real-time visibility into all information across their company.
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With acceptance of cloud-based strategies growing among manufacturers of all types and sizes, it’s easier than ever to make the business case for transitioning to the cloud. But beyond the cost savings and responsiveness of cloud solutions, this transition also provides new opportunities for the IT department to grow into a key role as strategic business advisor. This report includes advice on how IT can help manufacturers realize the full benefits of cloud-based solutions.
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As your company grows and faces new challenges, you must continually evaluate whether your work processes and information technology (IT) solutions can address these issues and help grow your business. Read here on how to perform a preliminary gap analysis to determine whether you need to upgrade your IT solutions and business processes to meet your current business requirements as well as adapt to future requirements.
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As your company grows and faces new challenges, you must continually evaluate whether your work processes and information technology (IT) solutions can address these issues and help grow your business. Read here on how to perform a preliminary gap analysis to determine whether you need to upgrade your IT solutions and business processes to meet your current business requirements as well as adapt to future requirements.
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Total cost of ownership (TCO) remains a significant factor influencing enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategies and decisions. But focusing exclusively on TCO runs the risk of delaying necessary ERP projects. Companies should also consider return on investment (ROI) of such projects. Find out what the average company should expect to pay for ERP and how the business can benefit from a successful implementation.
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Improving business efficiency is a perennial concern for any company. While many companies employ siloed applications and manual business processes to improve efficiency, “best-in-class” companies are more likely to exploit enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology to improve their operational efficiency to reduce costs and enhance profitability, and make more resources available for strategic planning. Find out how.
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Businesses are looking to make technology investments to prepare for growth, but remain cautious in the current economic climate. One thing is clear: any technology investments must deliver value to the business. Know the 7-step process that enables organizations to precisely measure the value of any enterprise resource planning (ERP) investment to their operation and estimate the potential return on investment (ROI).
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This paper demonstrates how IFS Business Modeler and IFS Applications support the principles of developing a lean enterprise, normally associated with repetitive manufacturing, for engineer-to-order (ETO) organizations. It demonstrates how process improvements apply equally to office-based functions as they do to manufacturing, installation, and service activities.
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The managed print services (MPS) market continues to evolve as vendors expand their service offerings beyond the office print environment. Today the business agenda is broader, and MPS must provide a route to business transformation as well as cost efficiency. Businesses thus must place their transformational goals on the agenda at the start of an MPS engagement. See what major MPS providers have to offer to your business.
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The Deacom product Deacom Integrated Accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning Software System (v.10.4) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for process manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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The Deacom product Deacom Integrated Accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning Software System (v.10.4) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for mixed-mode manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Our global study of small and medium-sized discrete manufacturers worldwide revealed the industry is struggling with increasing complexity, global competition, rapidly changing business environments, and volatile raw materials prices. While manufacturers worldwide face similar challenges, this study clarifies how strategic initiatives and priorities vary by sector, geography, and job description.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) provides the necessary infrastructure that forms the operations and transactional system of record for manufacturers of all types and sizes. Now decades old, as it has become more pervasive, there is risk in perceiving it as a given and neglecting to measure its business benefits. This research explores best-in-class approaches to realizing the greatest business benefit possible from ERP.
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Throughout the 2000s, manufacturers were giving up on Lean. A “build it and we can sell it” attitude was adopted. Manufacturers responded to the 2008 economic collapse with aggressive cuts to inventory and head count. The worst is over. This research examines what’s changed and how to intelligently ramp up production and inventory, with an eye towards recapturing core Lean principles while also adopting a new technology.
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It’s the software industry’s dirty little secret. Over 65 percent of software implementations fail—wasting untold amounts of time, money, and resources. Learn from a panel of experts how to make sure your company doesn’t suffer these kinds of losses. Of course, making the right ERP selection goes a long way in avoiding major implementation pitfalls. That’s why Lessons from ERP Implementation Failures gives you the right approach to finding an ERP system that meets your company’s special needs. Learn the lessons of ERP implementation failures—and get a plan for successful ERP selection—all from the experts who have been there.
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A growing number of businesses are adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to give their departments accurate and accessible shared data. Human resource Management (HRM) isn’t being left out of the loop. In fact, most major ERP vendors now offer their customers HRM modules that help automate an array of tasks while generating crucial data for enterprise planning and optimization. Know the top five modules.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be integrated with nearly every function in your business. It’s helpful to segment ERP components into five building blocks. Understanding how these blocks are linked together should help you determine which components add the most value and how your existing systems may be integrated with new tools and systems to increase efficiency, produce better products, and reduce cost.
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For all but the smallest organizations, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system promises big gains, helping to grow revenue, increase productivity company-wide, improve efficiency throughout the enterprise, and manage costs. In this guide, you’ll find details on what to look for in a midmarket ERP package, the benefits it should bring to your midsize company, and what you need to know before you commit to a solution.
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The seas of enterprise resource planning (ERP) are vast, and navigating the rocky waters of the current market is no simple task. Midmarket ERP offerings may be scaled down to meet the requirements particular to midmarket companies, but that doesn’t change the inherently complex nature of enterprise-wide technology. To ensure you choose wisely, ask at least these 10 questions when researching vendors and their products.
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Before you commit to any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, you should first answer several questions about what your organization needs and wants to accomplish with its ERP strategy. The answers will help you determine which applications and what kind of functionality your organization requires from its ERP solution, as well as go a long way toward easing the implementation process. Read how to prepare yourself.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) automates many aspects of an organization’s operations, cascading across traditional boundaries of operations, finance, manufacturing, and more. As such, changes in the ERP market can cause a ripple effect in an organization’s business. In this report, five Focus experts share eight of their 2011 predictions for ERP, so you can plan your business around these changing tides and trends.
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Until recently, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software was rarely considered for use in smaller firms, as core benefits—better business management via coordinated, standardized information and analysis—were often outweighed by costs and complexities of ERP systems. A variety of options have emerged to overcome concerns of the past. Read on the key considerations in an ERP decision and critical implementation factors.
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Operations executives are closest to the processes along the value chain, and as a result are best positioned to drive operational excellence initiatives. Collaboration with other functions is essential, but ultimately, it is the operations function that needs to be responsible for implementation. Find out what senior executives from around the world think about how to achieve operational excellence.
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IT is feeling the pressure to allow users to access sensitive corporate data via their personal mobile phones. Employees want the flexibility to use applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), e-mail and instant messaging not only from within the workplace, but at any time from any device. Yet, with network security and customer privacy at stake, IT has been slow to bow.
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While many believe ERP to be out of reach of SMBs, a well-managed ERP implementation can be a continuing source of cost savings and operational improvements which help companies grow and thrive. Even small companies can document the business benefits of ERP, not only in terms of quantifiable cost savings and schedule improvements, but also in terms of standardizing, streamlining, and accelerating business processes.
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It can be very challenging for manufacturers to both drive efficiency gains and then translate these gains to bottom line results. This paper examines what is driving manufacturers to focus on creating more efficient manufacturing operations; identifies the mix of strategies, business capabilities, and technology enablers that are most likely to ensure long-term success; and ends with specific recommendations for success.
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The financial meltdown of 2008 sent devastating waves through the business world. As market instability wreaked havoc on the public sector, organizations looked to make more careful use of financial and human resources than ever before, with many looking to optimize resource utilization of information management. See the business intelligence (BI) and information management strategies of top public sector organizations.
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Chief financial officers (CFOs) at large hospitals must process large amounts of information to make strategic decisions. Solutions that intelligently aggregate and summarize clinical, operational, and financial data give hospital CFOs the ability to quickly identify key indicators and root causes of issues. This paper explores the decision-making challenges faced by CFOs and examines the many benefits of such solutions.
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Plex Online is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for discrete manufacturing in TEC's ERP Evaluation Center. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Midsize companies today more than ever face the challenge of improving operational efficiency to meet objectives. This paper examines integrated, proven business solutions with deep, industry-specific functionalities that adapt to the unique needs of midsize companies in an affordable, predictable way. Read how these solutions enhance business agility, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen customer relationships.
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Portfolio management provides insight into what is the best way to distribute resources among the various innovative options/projects to ensure that a maximum yield is realized against acceptable risks; there is a good fit between the projects and the various strategic themes; and there is a good mix between the various types of projects. Read this paper to learn about the different approaches used n portfolio management.
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The Deacom product Deacom Integrated Accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning Software System (v.10.4) is now TEC Certified for online evaluation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for engineer-to-order manufacturing in the ERP Evaluation Center. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Mining and quarrying organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report assists organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Microsoft reseller Eclipse Computing, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by Eclipse Computing to three of its existing clients.
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This white paper examines the impact on manufacturing operations of using disparate systems versus an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It documents the effect of each on core business areas and management teams: sales and supply chain executives, plant managers, vice presidents (VPs) of operations, and finance. It also explains how to eliminate inefficiencies associated with change management.
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The past year has taught executives everywhere that business will never again be “business as usual.” Manufacturers, in particular, must focus more than ever on satisfying customers while removing waste and unnecessary costs from their organizations. And they need to do so faster and better than their competitors. This white paper highlights how companies are doing just that by relying on strategic lean concepts.
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To end up with the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, it’s important to ask the right questions. Because an ERP purchase will make one of the greatest impacts on your business (either good or bad), it’s worth taking the time to learn everything you can. Answering the questions in this paper will help you sort through the vast array of manufacturing ERP solutions.
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Organizations seeking the services of a value-added reseller (VAR), channel partner, implementer, vendor, or consultant require an evaluation of what this service provider has to offer. This report assists organizations looking to determine the best-fit service provider for their needs. Based on information provided to TEC by Hitachi Consulting, this report focuses on real-life implementation projects delivered by the service provider to three of its existing clients.
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This white paper discusses the compelling business reasons for industrial companies to pay close attention to ISO 26000 and the UN Global Compact. It also explores the different ways that enterprise software like enterprise resources planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management (EAM) can be leveraged to help document compliance with the various requirements of the ISO standard.
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Distribution ERP software product VAI S2K Enterprise Management, Version 5.0.1, is now TEC Certified for online comparison of ERP systems in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Service-oriented organizations often find it difficult to balance infrastructure costs with software systems that enable frequent modifications. TEC examines UNIT4’s Vita Cloud Angel approach to this challenge—and lets you know whether it’s a viable option for you. Get the TEC analyst perspective in this special report on Vita Cloud Angel.
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Companies are finding it difficult and costly to update and modify enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after they have been installed. The question isn’t whether an ERP solution supports change, but rather at what cost? How quickly can adjustments be made, and what stresses do such changes place on the organization. To answer these questions, this paper provides results from a survey of senior finance executives.
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A leader in the design and manufacture of advanced lighting systems and rugged protective cases, Pelican Products Inc. is also recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Learn how, by consolidating its worldwide operations on a single instance of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, Pelican gained greater operational transparency and established a platform for continued growth.
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This Aberdeen Axis Analyst Insight presents vendor-specific highlights from the ERP in Manufacturing Aberdeen Axis published in June 2009 and focuses specifically on SAP small to medium size enterprise (SME) offerings. With its dominant market share, it was not surprising to find SAP to be “market-ready,” but it is a bit surprising to see where SME products are landing. Find out why in this Aberdeen AXIS Analyst Insight.
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Though most companies know about the benefits of enterprise resource planning (ERP), many lack awareness about how to evaluate products or when the time is right to upgrade change solutions. Moreover, they may not be up to date with the latest ERP features, market trends, and other essential information. Focus’s ERP System Market Primer offers necessary background knowledge on ERP to potential buyers and sales executives.
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Prompted by volatile markets and a troubled economy, the need to reduce costs is a top business driver impacting enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategies. Combine this need with the need for transparency, and the marriage of ERP with business intelligence (BI) becomes the perfect storm, igniting improved performance and visibility. This report from the Aberdeen Group is a benchmark to companies seeking these results.
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Mature sales and operations planning (S&OP) is more than a sales forecasting or tactical planning tool. S&OP is a decision-making mechanism for aligning strategic plans with sales, operational, and financial plans. Download this TEC executive brief for pointers on selecting an S&OP system, information about how mature S&OP processes can help tackle critical business issues, and key S&OP system capabilities to look for.
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With more repetitive manufacturing moving offshore, North American manufacturers have had to develop their roles as complex manufacturers supporting both local and global markets with sophisticated products and manufacturing processes to meet the unique needs of their clients. Learn how this kind of engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing requires specialized enterprise resource planning (ERP) functionality.
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Manufacturers are under pressure to document their impact on the environment. This white paper addresses the various drivers for the green supply chain trend. It also shares considerations for satisfying a customer’s green supply chain initiative or initiating your own. Finally, it discusses the role of enterprise software like enterprise resource planning (ERP) in keeping pace with this industry trend.
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The implications of knowing or not knowing the answers have a huge impact on your business. The ability to answer both questions—and act on the responses—can come down to how well your company leverages the right combination of people, processes, and information. Analytics can help you leverage these resources. With analytics, you analyze your sales and marketing processes to gain insights quickly and improve performance.
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Maximizing profit by providing top-quality service at minimum cost is no longer optional – it’s imperative. Reducing the cost of service while keeping customers happy is the primary objective of customer service organizations. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications help you streamline customer service processes and reduce cost, enabling you to keep your customers happy and grow your business. Find out how.
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FMC Technologies Inc. of Houston is a leader in oil and gas equipment service. By replacing its legacy system with a new customer relationship management (CRM) application, the company integrated and centralized its forecasting data, enabling managers to make better decisions about supply chain capacity. Learn how this upgrade improved forecasting, increased user adoption, and lowered the total cost of ownership (TCO).
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In response to the harsh economic climate, communications service providers (CSPs) are concentrating on improving offers of voice, content, and data services. But these offers work best when they are attractive to the customer, and made in real time and through the right channel. Discover solutions that enable functionality for real-time offer management optimized within the context of enterprise processes.
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Solutions are now available to integrate the lead-to-cash process with the supply chain, back-office accounting, and more. The companies that succeed in the new order will make use of these new tools to creatively accelerate their lead-to-cash process. They will achieve the agility necessary to enhance the customer experience, trump the competition, and revitalize profitable growth. Find out how.
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Every year, companies face the challenge of selecting new business software solutions. Whatever the reasons for the selection, there are basic criteria and cost considerations that companies must take into account. The goal is to compare several enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors against each other in terms of long-term cost and software quality. Learn more in this selection guide from Abas software.
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Hamburg (Germany)-based Weinmann, a manufacturer of medical care devices, was named in the 2007 “Germany - Land of Ideas” initiative, and awarded the Industrial Excellence Award for “Top Factory” in 2008. Still, the company has ambitious plans for growth. Learn how Weinmann’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system supports those plans and enables the midsize company to plan, coordinate, and control its activities.
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Weinig Group is a technology provider for the solid wood processing and distribution industry. After several acquisitions left the company with a mixed bag of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Weinig went looking for a new ERP system for its locations in China, Switzerland, Spain, France, and the United States. Find out which system met all of Weinig‘s requirements and how it was successfully implemented.
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A prime example of excellence in manufacturing, STOPA, a company located in southern Germany, used innovation, modern technology, and an IT-based reorganization of internal and external company processes to make a once unprofitable business area highly profitable again. Learn how STOPA turned its business around, and how it was able to bring outsourced jobs back to Germany—creating new jobs in the process.
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Established in 1910, J. Schmalz GmbH is a leading provider of vacuum technology. Over 25 years, the company has been through two reorganizations and entered the international market—all with the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Find out how the system has grown with Schmalz over the years, and how the company employs the system at its headquarters, as well as all of its international offices.
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After realizing that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution it had used until 2005 could no longer keep up with its rapid growth, HOFA GmbH started looking for a new ERP and e-business solution. Learn how the company’s new system has increased transparency across the company, reduced data capture and support times by up to 50 percent, improved productivity in order entry, and reduced the error rate to zero.
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German iron foundry Düker GmbH & Co. KGaA has a broad product range. Focused on casting and surface refinement, the company manufactures products for a variety of industries. This would be challenging for any business software system. But Düker has had great success with the same enterprise resource planning (ERP) system since 1997. Find out how the company has kept its software current without losing control over its activities.
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After remarkable growth, ADA Cosmetics’ business software had reached its limits, and the company needed a replacement. Due to ADA’s broad product range, the new system had to manage batch and process manufacturing, as well as custom and small-scale production. And because ADA distributes products nationally and internationally, the system had to have multi-user features. Find out how ADA went about choosing the right replacement.
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Navigator One for SAP Business One (v88) is now TEC Certified for online comparison of discrete enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Business intelligence (BI) is no longer just for back-office analysts. More people are using BI in their daily tasks than ever before. This white paper explains how job scheduling makes data warehousing—the key component in modern BI—more efficient, relevant, and accurate. It also outlines how one company used job scheduling to unify its data warehousing chores, free up IT resources, and increase its BI effectiveness.
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Arias Motors is the Dominican Republic’s leading distributor of spare parts for auto wholesalers, retailers, and repair shops. It needed a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system covering all functional areas, from back-end processes to supply chain management. Learn how Arias Motors applied a best-practice approach to software selection, reduced licensing costs by 50 percent, and set a record implementation time.
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A decade ago, about 70 percent of major software initiatives failed, and nearly a quarter were cancelled. Today, with better data management, more flexible applications, and easier launches, there are fewer failed enterprise resource planning (ERP) programs. But some companies still manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Discover seven ERP selection rules to follow before you even start looking for a vendor.
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As your company grows, you must continually evaluate whether your work processes and IT solutions can solve your problems and help grow your business. By performing a gap analysis, you can look at where your business is headed and whether you have the right tools to get there. This white paper can help you perform a preliminary gap analysis to determine whether you need to upgrade your IT solutions and business processes.
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Conventional business intelligence (BI) tools are often not available to decision makers and are typically designed for use by trained business analysts. Learn about software-as-a-service (SaaS) BI tools designed to help non-IT people who struggle with the task of mining Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and other unstructured data sources to make sales forecasts, plan for resource utilization, or service customer accounts.
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Prospects for the global economy remain precarious. But effective financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting can enable successful decision making even in periods of unprecedented change. Dynamic financial planning enabled through five key elements—process, organization, knowledge management, technology, and performance management—give business leaders the tools to take action and emerge even stronger. Find out how.
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Prompted by volatile markets and a troubled economy, the need to contain or reduce costs is key for small to medium enterprises (SMEs). More and more SMEs are turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) solutions to provide control and visibility. Each provides value, but the marriage of the two becomes the perfect storm, igniting improved performance and visibility.
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For the majority of fast-growing businesses, spreadsheets represent the fiscal and operational system of record, even though they don't contain enterprise-level data. However, the tide is turning on spreadsheets. Watch the video and discover why more and more, fast-growing businesses are turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) solutions to provide the control and visibility they need.
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This white paper features insight from the UNIT4 group about issues facing companies that need an adaptable financial system but not necessarily a full-blown enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Also included are TEC’s suggestions for identifying financial system functionality that supports your organization’s changing processes, and a checklist for soliciting such information about enterprise software solutions.
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The fragrance division of luxury goods maker TAKASAGO wanted to benefit from the advantages of a modern dashboarding system. The goal was to better manage strategic and operational sales performance, and enable each user—from board members to regional account managers—to see sales performance indicators in real time. Learn how the company’s new solution allowed it to develop role-based dashboards in just a few weeks.
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The French Ministry of Employment needed a software solution to help drive the budget for its social cohesion plan budget at the national, regional, departmental, and local levels. The project would affect approximately 10,000 users managing hundreds of thousands of files. Learn how the Ministry chose a dashboard solution that made it possible to track budgets, and forecast gaps and bottlenecks to improve processes.
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Today’s finance executives must meet a growing number of complex demands and economic challenges to enable their company’s growth, profit, and risk objectives. Performance management (PM) capabilities such as financial modeling, profitability reporting, planning, budgeting and forecasting, and delivery of key performance information across the enterprise to a broader audience is more important than ever. Find out why.
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Organizations may find it easy to accumulate data from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but that information often remains unusable to decision makers. A popular solution is to deploy automated tools for reporting, planning, and budgeting, as well as applications like business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM). Find out how IBM Cognos BI and PM solutions work with SAP ERP systems.
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The software industry has witnessed a consolidation in the business intelligence (BI) market. In BI, enterprise technology conglomerates identified a growth market and an opportunity to upsell to their existing install base, primarily that of applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP). This consolidation has rendered sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors an alluring option for many organizations. Find out why.
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In late 2004, the senior management team of the Huntsman Corporation, a global manufacturer of chemical products, identified an opportunity to both prepare the company for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and achieve cost reductions. Learn how the company selected a new financials solution that helped it reduce audit fees, avoid headcount additions, improve productivity, and create an enterprise-wide analytics platform.
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Business intelligence (BI) is a priority for many organizations, promising enhanced visibility and improved efficiencies. But for those with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, implementing or updating a BI program raises especially interesting challenges. This set of vendor-neutral articles outlines best practices for creating or optimizing BI programs that effectively leverage existing ERP investments.
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Performance management (PM) solutions can increase agility, improve corporate performance, and increase competitive advantage. But they can also limit you. If they don’t address your real business needs, and aren’t flexible enough to help you find reliable and innovative answers to key business questions, they can hinder rather than help. Discover how business users can manage their performance on an SAP infrastructure.
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This paper details the challenges chief information officers (CIOs) face when seeking performance management (PM) capabilities from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. It details the advantages of implementing a PM system separate from the existing ERP solution in order to achieve greater results and improve efficiency and usability. The paper provides real-world examples and offers recommendations.
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Navigator One for SAP Business One (v88) is now TEC Certified for online comparison of accounting software in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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For most distribution companies, managing operating expenses has a far bigger impact on the business than simply pouring more revenue into the top of the funnel. In today’s tough times, operating expenses have moved to the center of the boardroom table and the top of the agenda. Learn what the five main value drivers in distribution are, and find out how to avoid seven common distribution and wholesale “sins.”
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A sales and operations planning (S&OP) meeting is a critical decision-making activity that sets the overall direction for the company. Executives discuss trade-offs between customer service, inventory investments, production capabilities, supply availability, and distribution concerns, in order to balance generating profit with satisfying operational goals. Learn the five essential steps for successful S&OP planning.
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In the consumer goods (CG) industry, there has been a notable focus on sales and operations planning (S&OP). This renewed interest is noteworthy because of the impressive benefits that have been attributed to S&OP. Research indicates that S&OP process improvements are a primary starting point for companies seeking to be more demand-driven. This white paper looks at the results of a survey of S&OP in the CG industry.
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is the key integrated process that the supply chain organization (specifically the vice president of supply chain) can use to achieve visibility across the entire organization and the value chain. This white paper highlights the results of over 220 companies participating in a survey on S&OP initiatives, and compares the views of the supply chain and finance organizations.
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Continental Mills, a producer of dry bakery mix products, needed to gain supply chain visibility, improve resource efficiency, and evolve the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. Learn how the company deployed a solution that helped accelerate inventory turns, increase resource efficiency in the forecasting process, boost forecast accuracy, and improve data accuracy, and visibility throughout the business.
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Inventory optimization is a proven vehicle to gain competitive value through reduced inventory, freed-up working capital, and improved service levels. But leading the inventory innovation initiative in your organization requires more than an understanding of its enormous cost savings and customer service improvements. Discover the six most common factors that can make or break your inventory optimization projects.
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FiberMark, a producer of specialty fiber products, had a data problem. Even though the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was managing data well, management still had to run thousands of pages of reports to glean any insight from that data. Learn how FiberMark’s new business intelligence (BI) solution allowed management to see and interact with data in ways that would not have been possible before.
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After expanding its product lines and accelerating product roll-outs, the Campbell Soup Company needed to align demand forecasting and supply chain planning with its new, more dynamic business model. Learn how the company’s new solution helped it improve inventory forecasting, adapt to day-to-day changes in demand, enhance long-range production planning and risk management, and spend more time on strategic activities.
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White papers offer no shortage of advice about what best practices can lead to enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation success. But equally important is a thorough understanding of what practices are to be avoided during an implementation. This white paper reviews four “worst practices” that should be avoided at all costs—unless you want to go out of your way to cause your ERP implementation to fail.
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Availability and performance of mission-critical applications is no longer a luxury. If applications fail, or suffer from low performance levels, revenues and customers are lost. IT operations managers and administrators need to adopt both server monitoring and capacity planning solutions that can be quickly deployed, automate processes, and adapt to changing enterprise situations—without breaking IT budgets.
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Learn more about SAP BusinessObjects in this special report, featuring three SAP Insider articles about business intelligence (BI). Part one explains how better interaction with your business data yields better answers to your questions; part two examines whether BI is ready for a broader audience; and part three sheds some light on how decision makers in four different industries are using BusinessObjects.
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For job shop manufacturers, managing several different software systems to perform the various necessary tasks important to a business is no longer a viable option. Learn why a business system that integrates business process workflow, inventory, customer service, quoting, invoicing, accounting, and analytics, and that can expand onto the Internet, all using one software system, is crucial in today’s competitive market.
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Oracle E-Business Suite (12.1) is now TEC Certified for online comparison of process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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A growing number of smart suppliers have recognized the competitive high ground to be seized as they deepen their connections to retail customers. By adding value in the replenishment process through vendor-managed inventory (VMI), small- and midsize manufacturers can differentiate themselves from larger brands. Most importantly, they can develop more profitable relationships with their retail clients. Find out how.
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Supply chain planning involves functions such as demand forecasting and planning, distribution inventory planning, and plant capacity planning and scheduling. The right mix of strategy, education, and systems can have a very high impact on a manufacturer’s overall operations—and ultimately its bottom line. Understand how supply chain functions such as demand and inventory planning can positively impact your company.
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Many process manufacturers are realizing that their production, inventory control, planning, scheduling, and costing systems are no longer adequate to support their business objectives. But replacing those systems with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can be difficult when so many ERP systems were designed for discrete, not process manufacturing. Learn how you can avoid the seven fatal flaws of ERP selection.
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Whether you’re in the process of re-evaluating your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) application or planning to install your first packaged system, your success depends on identifying ERP applications that have a strong process manufacturing foundation and can support your unique requirements with minimum customization. This guide links the unique operations of process manufacturing with ERP capabilities.
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For industries in regulated environments, validation of processes and systems is a required part of business. The goal of the validation process is to provide confidence in a process or system by demonstrating consistent and repeatable results through documented evidence. This article provides an overview of a validation for a computer software system, for compliance with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.
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Oracle E-Business Suite (12.1) is now TEC Certified for online comparison of enterprise resource planing for engineer-to-order (ERP for ETO solutions in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product analysis, competitive analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Oracle E-Business Suite (12.1) is now TEC Certified for online comparison of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for services solutions in TEC's Evaluation Centers. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations relying on the integrity of TEC research for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Your company needs an approach to server-side application distribution and provisioning that is architected for the cloud and designed for IT, if it’s going to deliver on the business promise of virtualization. Learn about one solution for solution for provisioning and deploying server-side applications in the cloud—or anywhere else.
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This document analyzes the cost of ownership for a typical on-premise small and medium enterprise (SME) business management system, and compares it to the cost of an equivalent SAP Business ByDesign implementation. It uses a mixture of different on-premise systems rather than any single vendor's product. Although there are many similarly equipped business management products available, they all compete closely on price.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) are focusing on growth strategies and customer service—sometimes balancing between the two, but often focusing on one or the other. As companies grow, and improve performance, they are more likely to have invested in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This Aberdeen report is a roadmap for SMBs seeking to grow and improved customer service through their ERP implementations.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is more than a necessary infrastructure that forms the transactional system of record upon which a business is based. ERP is also the potential source of cost savings and operational improvements. It is also a serious undertaking. This Aberdeen report serves as a roadmap for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to realize the maximum return on investment (ROI) from ERP implementations.
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After a year of silence surrounding SAP’s newest enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, SAP Business ByDesign is back. During that year, many of its competitors pounced on SAP’s silence, even going so far as to spread rumors that the new product was dead. Find out what one Aberdeen analyst thought of Business ByDesign after taking it for a test drive at Sapphire 2009.
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Each day brings a new set of challenges for process manufacturers. Some of these challenges need to be addressed with personalized company policies and well-designed standard operating procedures (SOPs). Other challenges can be addressed through implementation of an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The six most common challenges addressed by an ERP system are described in this paper.
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Over the past several year, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) have developed into critical success factors for manufacturers—with each bringing unique value to the enterprise. Learn how ERP and PLM, when combined, provide a wholly collaborative environment that has a major impact on successful product development performance and the ability to maintain a competitive advantage.
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Every company needs a clear set of goals and objectives to achieve maximum benefits from its business intelligence (BI) and planning projects. But a company must do more than state its goals to achieve its BI and planning objectives. It needs a working framework that provides a blueprint for success. Learn how a software solution can provide essential BI and planning functions while setting the stage for future growth.
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Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions can be a strategic advantage to businesses, letting companies avoid costly hardware, software licenses, and complex version upgrades. But because most major software vendors are touting some version of SaaS, there is confusion about the solution model and its advantages. Learn what SaaS really means, and discover the short-term and long-term benefits of the model and its variants.
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This paper summarizes the benefits an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution provides to the entire manufacturing process, "from shop floor to top floor." Included are key features in a software as a service (SaaS) solution to help an auto manufacturer optimize performance throughout the enterprise.
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Food manufacturers are facing tougher challenges than ever before. To meet record-keeping and lot-tracking requirements, they must be able to track every single ingredient in their products—from receipt through processing, packaging, and shipping—to the exact customer location. Discover how enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions help, and learn the seven features a food manufacturer must have in its ERP solution.
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In the medical device manufacturing industry, errors can cost more than money—they can cost lives. In order to meet safety regulations, manufacturers are turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. Discover the five features any medical device manufacturer should look for in an ERP system in order to meet compliance requirements, produce high-quality products, operate efficiently, and maximize profitability.
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Planning at the business unit level is most commonly done in spreadsheets, with cost center inputs gathered using workbook templates that are difficult to format and consolidate. While business units can’t escape from “spreadsheet hell” using a corporate business performance management (BPM) system, they can streamline planning and analysis processes with the right software solution. Find out how.
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For many companies, spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel are the principal interface for budgets and forecasting. Often, these companies find themselves in “Excel hell,” a state of inefficiency and disruption related to using spreadsheets for collaborative planning. The result: frustration, and decisions based on bad information. Learn about solutions that can help your company stay out of “Excel hell.”
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Oracle's ERP system for discrete manufacturing, E-Business Suite (12.1), is now TEC Certified. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations who rely on the integrity of TEC’s research services for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this 26-page TEC report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Demand for food and beverages continues to rise. The market will pay a premium for partially prepared healthier choices that are convenient and easy to eat anywhere, or more cost-effective for large-scale food preparation. Discover how software solutions can help companies with innovative solutions for these niche markets gain brand dominance and market loyalty, and achieve higher revenues, profits, and market share.
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Oracle's ERP for mixed-mode manufacturing system, E-Business Suite (12.1), is now TEC Certified. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations who rely on the integrity of TEC’s research services for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this 28-page TEC report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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When the term “enterprise resource planning” (ERP) was introduced, it applied primarily to the planning and management of resources needed to manufacture goods. Today, however, most business decision makers realize that their enterprises rely upon resources, and that planning is essential to optimize how those resources are acquired, allocated, and used. Learn how the definition of ERP has evolved, and what it means today.
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Because optimized resource planning helps to maximize business agility and revenues, the functions and applications referred to collectively as enterprise resource planning (ERP) are some of the most business-critical. Once you’ve surveyed the ERP market and prioritized your business needs, this comparison guide from Focus Research can help you craft your best possible shortlist of candidate offerings and vendors.
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Executive teams are under great pressure to maximize profitability, reduce costs, minimize risk, and improve stakeholder confidence. To be effective, they need reliable, up-to-date financial and operational data for planning purposes as well as budgeting, forecasting, analysis, and statutory and management reporting. Learn about software solutions that can help your organization plan, forecast, and budget more effectively.
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Increased globalization, volatility in demand and commodity costs, regulatory requirements, and greater dependency on suppliers and other partners have significantly increased the risk of doing business. To manage performance efficiently, midsize companies need a unified planning, budgeting, and consolidation solution. Learn how such a solution can streamline the planning process and help reduce business risk.
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Although the industrial equipment market has been growing, based on strong customer demand, companies cannot rest on their laurels. Manufacturers and distributors must keep adding value to maintain existing contracts and win new business. They must be efficient enough to meet new demands while maintaining margins. Discover solutions that can help total industrial solution suppliers stay profitable during this expansion.
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To expedite planning production, many companies have gone the way of integration with a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Although these systems have paved the way in planning production, they can leave a lot to be desired. Learn how manufacturing production scheduling (MPS) can be enhanced by finite scheduling and advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems.
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Managed print services (MPSs) offer organizations the opportunity to control costs, reduce the complexity of managing a heterogeneous infrastructure, and improve business processes. With many organizations striving to do more with less, MPS can cut expenses by passing control of complex printing infrastructure to the experts, and leaving the organization to focus on its core business competencies. Find out more.
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Digital Britain is the UK government’s strategic plan for the UK’s digital economy. While social inclusion and rights protection are major themes, the plan will also have a significant impact on businesses—encouraging the distribution and virtualization of business functions, and interconnectivity between companies, customers, suppliers, and employees. Learn how to minimize any harmful impact on your business.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) on the shop floor is critical. High-performing manufacturers have found that full integration of real-time operational data collected from the shop floor to the top floor is key to reducing costs, streamlining operations, and improving customer satisfaction. Learn how integrated ERP brings manufacturers improved quality, increased production throughput, less scrap, and other benefits.
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Today’s manufacturers face rising costs, increased competition, and changing customer requirements. If their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are not up to par, these companies face dizzying levels of complexity, duplicated effort, and poor product quality and customer service. Learn how to tell whether your ERP system is killing your business, and how a new approach to business systems can help you thrive.
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For many manufacturers, implementing on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems involves delays, unexpected costs, and unsatisfying results. But over the last decade, the innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model has evolved to let manufacturers move beyond traditional enterprise software. Learn how SaaS solutions can deliver ERP integration, ease of use, and up-to-date functionality.
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While many ERP software companies claim to support manufacturing companies, their solutions do little more than accounting, order entry, and other office tasks. They are not suitable for use on the shop floor. Fortunately, today’s integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can provide the shop floor control and manufacturing execution systems (MES) functionality that manufacturers need. Find out more.
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Automotive supplier Ralco Industries was having inventory trouble. The lack of accurate data from its systems was causing a number of expensive issues—quality problems, scrap, overtime, expedited shipments, etc. Learn how implementing a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helped Ralco dramatically reduce inventory costs and achieve return on investment (ROI) in just over one year.
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In previous years, Arizona (US)-based aerospace manufacturer Phoenix Logistics, Inc. managed its low-volume, batch-manufacturing process with non-integrated manual and paper-based systems. Find out how implementing a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helped the company overcome significant problems with ordering, regulatory compliance, and document management.
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KAMCO Industries, Inc. is an injection molder that serves tier-one and -two suppliers to Honda. After years of using stand-alone solutions and spreadsheets to manage business and production operations, the company was finding it challenging to maintain and support its IT infrastructure. Learn how KAMCO chose a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that helped it increase efficiency and standardize operations.
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When Inteva Products, LLC was launched as an independent company, one of its first challenges was a complete overhaul of its IT environment, which was made up of many different systems—including a legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Learn how the company chose a software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP solution that trimmed monthly operating costs by one-third and enabled IT staff to focus on more strategic work.
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A supplier to the automotive industry, Grand Rapids Spring & Stamping (GRS&S) implemented an innovative continuous improvement program. The goal: to make incremental improvements in quality, cost, delivery, safety, and morale. With over 8,000 employee-generated ideas now implemented, the company has saved over $1.2 million. Learn how improvements in GRS&S’s manufacturing processes reduce waste and improve the bottom line.
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Manufacturers face a challenging environment with scarce credit, pricing pressures, and increasing costs. Critical to success is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that aligns operations and production with finance—allowing manufacturers to deliver quality products at competitive prices. Discover the key areas necessary for creating value and profitability through real-time monitoring of financial conditions.
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EaglePicher’s Wolverine Gasket Division was overwhelmed when sales grew 10 to 13 percent per year from 2002 to 2004. Its manual systems for raw material orders, inventories, shipping, and scheduling couldn’t keep up with the demand, and lead times grew to 10 weeks. Learn how a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helped EaglePicher achieve accurate inventory, cut lead times, and double its aftermarket business.
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CAMACO, a leading seating systems solutions provider, needed to replace its outdated, unmanageable batch-process manufacturing resource planning (MRP) system with a completely integrated MRP/enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Learn how the company’s new solution addressed its network issues while reducing its existing burden of high maintenance costs and expensive hardware and software upgrades.
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Bytec, Inc., a supplier of electronic and mechanical assemblies for the automotive sector, needed a system to allow original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers to trace a particularly complex part. Learn how ByTec chose a solution that provided each part with a unique identity, complete with full traceability through the entire manufacturing process, enabling OEMs to identify faults, and avoid warranty costs.
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Frustrated with the empty promises of many enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors, today’s manufacturers are looking for solutions that improve operations, cut costs, and improve product quality. Learn how capabilities such as the ability to trace the flow of lots and components used in manufacturing operations are becoming vital to industries that must comply with strict quality mandates and governmental regulations.
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Manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors range from global giants offering legacy systems to smaller companies offering only point solutions. With so many solution providers to choose from, how can an organization make an intelligent decision on who to trust with this mission-critical system? Learn 10 critical questions to ask when choosing a manufacturing ERP solution for your company.
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Supply chain management is a long-term strategy. The centerpiece for supply chain execution—the warehouse management system (WMS)—is an excellent place to start preparing your business for the return of the bull market. Discover how a well-tuned WMS can help your business reduce labor costs, improve inventory management, attain more accurate shipments, improve space allocation, and increase customer satisfaction.
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Looking for the right ERP package for your small to medium business (SMB) can be a daunting task. Although a fair amount of information is available on the Internet about the actual software packages themselves, there is little advice on how to develop a good, simple strategy to evaluate and choose the right package for your company. This white paper is intended to provide some of that much-needed guidance.
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Many manufacturers and distributors have embraced the lean philosophy. But the tight controls necessary for success with Lean can leave companies vulnerable to supply disruptions, production problems, quality issues, and abrupt changes in demand. Learn how making your manufacturing operations and supply chain flexible can help reduce operational costs, increase cash flow, increase company value, and grow your business.
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A common issue for small to medium business (SMB) manufacturers is how to increase revenue and grow their businesses without significantly adding staff. Unfortunately, these companies often emerge from the startup phase saddled with inefficient, manual processes that require extra people to maintain them. Learn how to position your company for more predictable business growth, without a reliance on adding more people.
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A flexible enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can be the foundation for a complete overhaul of your business processes—providing numerous benefits over a set of disparate software systems. Find out how an ERP solution can help your company automate the movement of information, improve decision making, create disciplined workflows, and provide the agility needed to accommodate virtually any type of business change.
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Staples Brand Group (SBG), the group responsible for products carrying the Staples brand name, offers a wide range of products, from items as simple as pencil leads to complex products such as ergonomic office chairs. Learn about the solutions SBG uses to drive global sourcing, track costs and shipments, and achieve the lowest possible product costs with 99 percent on-time deliveries across global suppliers and customers.
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Although companies typically find it easy to accumulate data from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, it often remains unusable or unavailable to the decision makers who need it. Learn how deploying automated tools for report building, planning, and budgeting, as well as other applications such as business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) can help your company make the most of its ERP data.
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The true indicator of a store’s potential is accurate incoming traffic data. But opportunities to act on that data and improve performance occur before shoppers ever reach the cash register. To achieve their true sales potential, retailers must schedule to shopper traffic. Find out how combining accurate traffic data with workforce scheduling tools can help retailers increase revenue and sharpen their competitive edge.
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Because they are seeing fewer cost savings from other lean initiatives, many manufacturers are now seeking to optimize their workforces the way they’ve optimized other assets. In order to begin putting the workforce first, these companies are using workforce management (WFM) systems to handle human resources (HR) tasks and obligations, reduce labor costs, increase output, and make better use of in-house capabilities.
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As businesses adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to give their departments accurate and accessible shared data, human resources (HR) isn’t being left out of the loop. In fact, most major ERP vendors now offer their customers HR modules that help automate an array of tasks while generating crucial data for enterprise planning and optimization. Get Focus Research’s take on the top 5 HR modules for ERP systems.
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To succeed, wholesale distributors must respond quickly to customers’ expectations of high-quality, differentiated services. Good supplier relationships are crucial, too. Operational excellence and information transparency are key to keeping these important relationships running smoothly. Find out about solutions that can help you improve transparency and coordination, and also streamline inventory management.
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Companies already use business intelligence (BI) to help them make decisions. But now they’re discovering that they can make better decisions by coupling BI with a predictive analytics solution. Predictive analytics can help companies solve problems, achieve business goals, uncover patterns not easily identifiable through reports or dashboards, and share all that information with decision-makers. Find out how.
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To stay competitive, organizations are looking for ways to facilitate a smoother and more optimized global supply chain. But while companies are turning to business intelligence (BI) tools, many lack the ability to escape the gravity well of becoming data-rich while remaining information-poor. Learn how leading companies have eliminated the obstacles that hinder their ability to make better business decisions.
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Companies are fighting a constant battle to integrate business data and content while managing data quality. Data quality serves as the foundation for business intelligence (BI), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) projects. Learn more about software that unifies leading data quality and integration solutions—helping your organization to move, transform, and improve its data.
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Sorting out the differences between the two main types of manufacturing software can be mind-boggling for companies when searching for an ERP system. Companies can mistakenly purchase the wrong ERP system, causing headache and a significant loss of revenue. Avoid the pitfalls of making the wrong decision by using this checklist to help you determine the software that best fits your manufacturing process.
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Line managers and finance staffs are frustrated by the inadequacies of spread-sheet based planning systems for delivering useful budgets and rolling forecasts. A major problem is the disconnect between the operational elements of a business and financial plans. What's missing is driver-based planning, a best practice methodology where financial plans incorporate assumptions about business activities which are modeled to drive financial data such as revenue projections, headcount, spend-ing and capital requirements. Learn how driver-based planning, empowers managers to do better budgeting and, in particular, improve the accuracy and decision making usefulness of rolling forecasts.
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The old way of thinking—you run a company through the once a year budget process—is on the way out in favor of new concepts and system approaches generally described as "continuous planning." The practical implementation of continuous planning is through rolling forecasts—frequent updates of financial plans that include integrating actuals data and rolling the forecast time period beyond the current fiscal year. Discover the concepts and practices of continuous planning, and find out how to define application requirements for integrating actuals, financial
modeling and scenario analysis—the three foundations of a continuous planning system.
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In the face of global economic volatility, increasing competition, and changing customer needs, business leaders are challenged to protect their business now, while ensuring it is able to thrive in the future. Despite the dire need to act, the positive repercussions from making the right changes now will lead to building a business that is more capable, stable and powerful in creating, deepening and retaining customer relationships. Find out more.
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With the success of software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based vendors, more applications are being accessed over the Web. Applications once considered too proprietary or mission-critical for SaaS, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), are now being delivered as services. After seeing the increasing rates of SaaS adoption, Nucleus Research decided to examine the user base of SaaS vendor NetSuite. Find out what they learned.
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For multi-organizational enterprises, generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have made everything from closing the books to daily management more complex. Learn how to manage the sales and financial components of your enterprise, including requirements for addressing differing currencies, taxation rules, and reporting.
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For all but the smallest companies, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system promises big gains, by helping to grow revenue, increase productivity, improve efficiency, and manage costs. Right now, ERP for the midmarket is a hot topic. More and more midsized companies are replacing outdated ERP software or are jumping into ERP technology for the first time. Find out about what midmarket ERP buyers need to know.
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Business process management (BPM) and process improvement support the management and continuous improvement of business processes, both cross-departmental and enterprise-wide. How can you empower the transformation to lean and manage business operations in the various stages of its transformation, and manage the transition to lean? Learn about a BPM solution that employs lean Six Sigma for faster process improvements.
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Supplier of bearings, seals, and lubrication systems, SKF works closely with its customers to develop products. As such, accurate product data and efficient collaboration—especially in SKF’s automotive division—are crucial. Currently, SKF uses PTC’s Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) solution suite to manage document sharing, support of internal product development processes, and more. Learn about the benefits.
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ABB, a specialist in energy and automation technology, needed a business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) solution in order to support varied business needs and processes such as sales control, management reporting, and planning. But the BI software ABB chose couldn’t cope with all the requirements for integrating analysis, planning, and reporting. Learn about the new BI solution ABB deployed.
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Charlotte Russe, a women’s clothing retailer, had complicated processes for sales, markdown, and performance analysis. These processes often resulted in missed deadlines, and so the company searched for a way to automate and improve them. By implementing a business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM) solution, the company reduced sales analysis and markdown planning from days to minutes.
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Mitsubishi Electric Europe thought its enterprise resource planning (ERP) would address all of its reporting requirements. But long-term, this proved difficult to sustain, due to the company’s ever-changing procedures. So Mitsubishi decided to invest in a tool that would integrate data from disparate systems, speed up the delivery of information, and provide dashboard, analysis, and reporting capabilities. Find out more.
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Most companies want to use customer relationship management (CRM) applications to “supercharge” their sales forces. They want to gain some advantage with customer retention and acquisition, to manage the sales pipeline, and to have better market insight. But few companies realize these goals, often because of the way CRM is implemented. Find out where a CRM implementation can get off track—and how to ensure CRM success.
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With 2008 sales of over $10 billion, a global process manufacturer realized that strategic focus on pricing was critical to enhancing its competitiveness and overall profitability. A key element of the company’s pricing and profitability initiative was to invest in an enterprise-wide pricing solution, to take advantage of ongoing pricing opportunities. Find out about the price management solution the company chose.
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Whether you’re about to embark on a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) initiative or you’re just looking for more value from your existing ERP solution, you must start with your business strategy and competitive advantage. When key business requirements are identified and validated, you can spot the process adjustments that make sense and support your business—and get better at whatever you’re good at. Find out more.
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Electro-mechanical design continues to gain importance, as the majority of today’s products have both electrical and mechanical components and systems. Designing and stimulating these products collaboratively across both domains is essential to producing high quality products. Learn how implementing an electro-computer-aided design (ECAD) and mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) strategy—now—can help you later.
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Product development is a mission-critical process. And it can also be very expensive. But thanks to modern computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided engineering (CAE), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, many manufacturing companies now have the tools that allow better alignment of cost and value-add. This is what’s referred to as “global product development.” Learn more.
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Rich’s legacy IT systems could not interoperate with platforms and applications among departments, preventing a single, centralized view of the product development process and limiting collaboration. The company decided it needed a new product lifecycle management (PLM) system to integrate and accelerate PLM processes. Rich’s new system supports research and development (R&D), formula management, and more.
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As a result of publicized food contamination and product recalls, food safety regulations are under increasing scrutiny. Process manufacturers in the food and beverage industry may soon be facing stricter rules. But food manufacturers can prevent contamination by using existing technology to automate and ensure the effectiveness of the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) food safety program. Learn more.
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Yes—process manufacturers do face extraordinary business challenges. You need to effectively respond to market imbalances, supplier failure, and increased regulation and quality requirements. You also need an IT backbone specifically designed for process manufacturing—integrating supply chain planning, product lifecycle management (PLM), and enterprise asset management (EAM). Find out how to adapt to the “new normal.”
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With rapid expansion underway, Saudi Arabia-based logistics provider Al Majdouie Group’s custom-built enterprise resource planning (ERP) and point of sale (POS) systems just couldn’t keep up. When the company began looking for a replacement solution to satisfy all of its requirements, Al Majdouie turned to TEC. Learn how TEC’s methodology helped Al Majdouie evaluate three tier-one ERP solutions, quickly and impartially.
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For many consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, the environment is too complex to implement a new business process without upgrading the IT systems that support that process. Taking a consumer approach to upgrading can help. You need to seek out solutions that fit your CPG environment, can keep up with continual innovation, and more. But you always need to be thinking ahead. Learn more about developing an IT roadmap.
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LPEC, a large Polish energy distributor, found its financial and bookkeeping system was obsolete. New systems didn’t offer the data integration the company needed, and so it implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to address bookkeeping, fixed assets, and materials management, as well as logistics, purchase contracts, and fleet management. Find out how the ERP system allowed full integration of all data.
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A rapid growth in production encouraged ready-made food product manufacturer Virtu to invest in a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The ERP solution helps the company manage hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) standards, recipe-based production planning, warehouse management, bookkeeping, and product shipping. Learn more about the ERP solution and the company’s plans for further automation.
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Needing to meet demand from the Internet and other sources, Polish furniture maker Deftrans implemented an enterprise solution with functionality for personnel and payroll, warehouse management, financials, invoice management, and more. With the new system, the company has reduced the time needed to prepare goods specifications and other warehouse operations, as well as ensured greater accuracy of invoices. Learn more.
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Sales at F.J. Westcott began to grow, placing a greater demand on its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system’s inventory capabilities. Unrelieved inventory and other challenges led Westcott to seek a new ERP system—and a software evaluation and comparison methodology within the company’s budget. See how Technology Evaluation Centers’ Software Selection Services provided the resources for a confident decision.
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The era of manual warehouse operations is drawing to a close—with good reason. No matter how efficient your employees are, managing space and maintaining inventory with ad hoc spreadsheets or legacy systems doesn’t provide the accuracy or visibility into the supply chain that you need to succeed. A best-of-breed warehouse management system (WMS) can support your efforts to reduce costs and boost productivity. Learn how.
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Efforts to improve the efficiency and maturity of a quality assurance (QA) or test organization have largely been academic exercises, and difficult to apply to real-world software development environments. Today, with newer methods such as the Testing Maturity Model (TMM), it’s easier to assess, implement, and improve test processes. Learn about fresh techniques for assessing the effectiveness of QA organizations.
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International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are the reporting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). IFRS is now required or permitted in nearly 100 countries, while others plan to adopt or align with IFRS soon. In the US, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) will soon be aligned with IFRS. Find out how this will affect your company, and what you can do about it.
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The current market is asking retailers some difficult questions—ones their existing processes and tools can’t answer. It takes a mix of science, retail intelligence, and merchandising art to ensure that every store in a supply chain carries the right inventory, while maintaining a high service level and market share. Learn how to better respond to the demands of consumers and rationalize your assortment at a local level.
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Management at Concert GmbH, a company specializing in the production of non-woven air-laid fabrics, realized that the company had a lot of different custom applications running in its plants. Much of the production management was being handled manually—not in keeping with the nature of the company. After selecting a production management solution, Concert realized a return on investment in less than one year. Learn why.
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For a midsized company, finding the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a tall order—but that’s not always a bad thing. Now, big-name vendors are aiming their solutions at small and midsized companies. With a little savvy, you can make this new market dynamic work to your advantage. Leverage the new realities of mid-market ERP by bearing in mind 10 strategies when shopping for an ERP solution. Learn more.
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The implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to automate business processes is a strategic investment. Buying the right system and choosing the best vendor for you are critical to a successful ERP implementation. As a decision maker, you need to quickly identify your ERP requirements, effectively communicate these needs to vendors, and successfully compare various product alternatives. Learn how.
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When times get tough, some decision makers reduce costs, and cut corners. In some situations, that doesn’t work. An economic downturn may actually be the perfect time to invest in a significant IT expansion—especially in areas where a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve competitiveness. Just make sure you choose the right ERP vendor and consultant. Learn more.
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Users implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for the first time are often intimidated by the time and cost, and want to accelerate the go-live date. Acceleration, when done with the right implementation strategy and tools, can be of tremendous benefit, including reduced costs and increased return on investment (ROI). But for some, the question is: to accelerate or not to accelerate? Learn more.
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For midsize firms seeking more value in a shorter period of time, a rapid enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation may be the way to go. If you’re unsure this is the right choice, you need to consider some important factors. The best candidates tend to be ERP solution first-timers. Learn more about how to work closely with ERP partner vendors for a rapid—and successful—ERP implementation.
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The idea that tier-one systems are difficult to maintain and upgrade is based on outdated notions about their complexity and flexibility. Although tier-one systems are more complex internally than tier-two or tier-three systems, tier-one systems are often easier to maintain: for one thing, one enterprise system is easier to maintain than several. Learn more about this and other reasons for upgrading to a tier-one system.
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Sole-sourcing business intelligence (BI) software from enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors is an alluring option for many companies. But in addition to the benefits, there are drawbacks. A study of 100 enterprises from the United States and the European Union that have deployed BI and ERP from the same vendor investigates whether customers are experiencing what sole-sourcing promised to deliver. Learn more.
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The small to midsize market for enterprise applications is already growing. Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) are looking for practical solutions that offer full capabilities at a quick return on investment (ROI). Vendors responding to SMB requirements now offer solutions with rapid implementation, Microsoft Office integration, and mobile support. Find out more about what enterprise application vendors are offering—and what you should be looking for.
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Many successful midsized companies reach a point when transitioning to a tier-one enterprise application system is necessary. Transitioning to a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a challenge—but it may not be as complex as you think. Learn common myths about tier-one ERP systems, as well as how ERP solutions can help you manage regulatory compliance and track performance with key performance indicators.
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Oracle’s Accelerate is a program in which Certified and Certified Advantage partners build industry-specific solutions combining Oracle enterprise applications and rapid-implementation tools with the partners’ own expertise or software. The program aims to reduce the time, complexity, and cost of deploying Oracle solutions, to make them suitable for mid-market companies and governmental organizations. Learn more.
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Everything manufacturing executives thought they knew about project management and operations management is changing. Now, project managers may be connecting elements of an ongoing enterprise with a project in order to achieve certain defined goals, or use projects in a recurring way. Discover the many benefits manufacturers can realize by adopting a management-by-project approach with project-centric ERP software.
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is a practical way to streamline manufacturing operations. With a disjointed view of your company’s departments, it’s impossible to make decisions about where to allocate resources or which parts of the company have excess capacity. S&OP helps fix this by delivering one set of numbers from one planning period to the next, and allows you to track your effort over time. Learn more.
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Many oil and gas industry suppliers chose enterprise software prior to 1999, when software designed to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry didn’t exist. This affects the efficiency of these companies—and will prevent them from pursuing new revenue streams in the future. However, project-enabled solutions can now cater to the oil and gas industry’s needs, helping you adjust to current market demands. Learn more.
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Far from being a philanthropic “nice to have,” top-performing companies view sustainability as a “must-have” strategy for long-term success. Sustainability encompasses strategies to ensure optimal performance related to the business, the environment, and society. This road map can get you started: learn how to match environmental and social stewardship to actionable, and measurable improvements to your bottom line.
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Two-thirds of the 400 survey participants in a 2007 Aberdeen report about inventory management place a high priority on working capital optimization. Many companies are reconsidering their business strategies, including implementing appropriate technology platforms that help automate supply chain processes. Learn about cost-effective and practical ways to reduce inventory so that working capital can be released.
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) was identified as companies’ number two area of focus, in a survey of 805 companies for Aberdeen’s Supply Chain Executive’s Strategic Agenda study. Further research on the supply chain identifies how the S&OP process is helping corporate executives accomplish their overall business strategies. Find out what the four broad strategies are, and how best-in-class companies are using them.
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In times of economic uncertainty, you need to actively seek out best practices in how to adopt practical working capital optimization to improve financial performance while maintaining customer satisfaction. Learn about the three key performance criteria that define best-in-class organizations, and how they’re making their focus within the supply chain on working capital—primarily by optimizing inventory management.
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Process manufacturers can no longer rely on purely reactive strategies to product safety. Now, reactive strategies such as lot tracking need to be incorporated into holistic strategies that include proactive measures to assess risk and prevent costly quality assurance (QA) events like product recalls. Learn how you can develop a product safety master plan that reduces risk, protects products, and improves profitability.
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To achieve operational excellence, process manufacturers must be able to control costs while meeting customer expectations. Best-in-class process companies provide visibility into manufacturing operations while using real-time interoperability between manufacturing systems and business systems. Discover how best-in-class process manufacturers accomplish this, as well as other characteristics that help them succeed.
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PepsiCo Italia needed an information management system to manage and track assets it loans at no cost to clients, such as coolers and fountains. It also sought to increase operational efficiency and trace every event involving every piece of equipment during the entire asset life cycle. Learn about the integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) system PepsiCo chose to supports all equipment asset management processes.
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Heinz Frozen Food Company was set on improving its manufacturing and maintenance process efficiency, and knew that implementing a new enterprise asset management (EAM) system would involve monumental change for employees. Heinz choose a Web-based system to help it gain better visibility into processes and work towards more progressive lean manufacturing and lean maintenance practices for greater efficiency. Learn more.
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Pressures to reduce costs still outweigh all other business drivers that have an impact on enterprise resource planning (ERP) in 2009. ERP is more than a necessary infrastructure; it’s also a strategic weapon in streamlining and accelerating business processes—while providing visibility to those processes. Discover more about the overall value ERP brings to manufacturing, with Aberdeen’s annual assessment of ERP usage.
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Get insight into manufacturing production metrics and best practices in the US, and benchmark your operations to better understand how to improve in today’s difficult economic climate. The Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) presents its findings, comparing and contrasting the responses of plants that rate themselves closest to—and furthest from—world-class status. See how your manufacturing facility stacks up.
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Why would a company choose to migrate its development tools? And if the migration is decided upon, how can this be done easily and effectively? Get answers to these questions, and explore the concerns and issues surrounding migration of your development environment, using IBM’s Rational Application Developer (RAD) as an example of a current tool and MyEclipse Blue Edition from Genuitec as an example of a new tool.
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New economic conditions are driving companies to become increasingly cautious about the near future. But focusing on improving flexibility to dynamically account for change shifts focus away from budget accuracy—putting you at risk of falling short of shareholder expectations. To achieve best-in-class status, you must plan, budget, and forecast more efficiently for improved agility, accuracy, and corporate performance.
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By geocoding your address data, you have the location intelligence that helps you see patterns and create new opportunities to grow your business. There are three levels of positional accuracy, based on budget and business needs, as well as more enhanced levels of geographic accuracy. Learn more about geocoding, and how you can use it to perform market-specific data analysis—to strengthen customer relationships and more.
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Communication between companies is critical for smooth and effective commerce. Delays in information delivery may seriously affect a company’s profitability. But many companies don’t see that automating business communications can improve document delivery, and still rely on slow methods. Find out how you can improve the efficiency of your document delivery process by using common applications to simplify forms and more.
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Today’s fiscal awareness is putting pressure on companies to cut costs to maximize profitability by shortening order-to-cash cycles, while increasing business process efficiency. One area commonly overlooked is the manual delivery (via e-mail or fax) of created documents. Find out about common document delivery challenges in the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system—and solutions you can use to solve them.
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BEGA-US, designer and manufacturer of a broad range of lighting products, was looking to replace its disparate accounting systems with a modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that could seamlessly integrate all departments and reduce processing and development times. Find out how VAI’s S2K helped BEGA improve operating efficiency, streamline data management, and reduce order-to-shipment times.
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R.G. Barry, a leading developer and marketer of accessory footwear, lacked real-time visibility into production schedules at its factories. As a result, the company built more safety stock, required long lead times, and could not quickly update customers on the status of their orders. Find out how a new Web-based global sourcing solution helped R.G. Barry free up cash and minimize the risk of carrying excess inventory.
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As a successful, rapidly growing apparel company with seven separate divisions, Maggy London needed to streamline its product development lifecycle, improve communications, and eliminate duplication of work. Find out how the company was able to select product lifecycle management (PLM), global sourcing, and inventory control solutions that helped it streamline daily operations and become a more efficient organization.
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To ensure the safety of domestic and global food supplies, demands for brand protection assurance are on the rise from customers in the food industry marketplace itself. To address these requirements, food processors and distribution warehouses now find automated traceability systems a necessity. Discover an automated approach to traceability that’s both cost-effective and a good fit for your current business operations.
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As a process manufacturer, if you’re actively searching for the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, you should focus on those ERP solutions that have a strong process manufacturing foundation. These ERP applications support many industry best practices to which you can align your business processes. Discover how a process-oriented ERP system can help you successfully manage your process manufacturing needs.
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Part one of the “Lean Simplified” series looked at manufacturing wastes, lean principles, and the benefits of lean manufacturing. Here, in Part two, you’ll be taken through the action stage of lean practices: implementing lean. Understand the “5S” program toward implementing lean and begin laying the foundation of a discipline that is necessary for effective implementation of more complicated lean tools such as kanban.
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Due to their limitations, using spreadsheets to manage mission-critical business functions is an unacceptable risk. The requirements for finding the right inventory in the right place at the right time are being hampered by spreadsheet forecasts based on inappropriate source data. Packaged software with inventory management and collaborative capabilities will give your supply chain a competitive advantage. Learn how.
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The requirements of operating in a global, just-in-time (JIT) market have made supply chains much more complex than they were 10 years ago. Much of the software meant to assist in managing this complexity has itself become too complex to use—and too expensive to cost-justify. Discover the benefits of using a less complex supply chain solution that better supports a collaborative effort along your supply chain.
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Too often, manufacturers implement technology for financial reporting, but overlook efficiencies that can generate cash flow and reduce costs on the shop floor. While credit won’t cure the credit crunch manufacturers are facing, automated processes that improve cash flow and keep lenders in the loop can go a long way in convincing lenders that their risk is low. Find out more about how automated systems can help you.
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Companies performing a software evaluation and comparison want assurance that the products they’re evaluating do what the vendors say they do. Solutions certified by Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) and bearing the TEC Certified logo were analyst-verified for accuracy. Learn about a TEC Certified ERP system for distribution and discrete manufacturing that might offer the modules and functionality you need.
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Kempe, a provider of innovative engineering solutions and services for a variety of industries, was using separate systems to manage the financial and operation aspects of the business. These systems were out of date and made accurate financial reporting almost impossible. With the help of a value-added reseller (VAR), Kepme implemented a centralized, integrated solution that stores information in real time. Learn more.
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Fetco Home Decor, designer and wholesaler of fashion frames and other décor products, was relying on Excel spreadsheets to perform its forecasting process. The lack of accuracy and accessibility resulted in ineffective forecasting—and higher-than-necessary inventory levels. After a quick implementation of a planning and forecasting solution, Fetco reduced inventory by 25 percent without affecting customer service levels.
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Peerless Pump has been designing, engineering, and manufacturing pumps for more than 80 years. The company was basing component stock levels on historical data, as it did not have the ability to accurately forecast customer demand. But with forecasting and demand planning software that increased forecast accuracy, the company has nearly doubled its sales over the past four years, while keeping inventory levels constant.
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Aside from geographic challenges, Kyocera—distributor of document management devices—also grapples with three-month lead times, purchase-order constraints, and stocking commitments. Forecasting accuracy is critical to a company that has to manage frequent model changes and short life-cycle products. Find out about the demand and forecast management solution the company uses to ensure consistent and accurate reporting.
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To stay competitive, companies need to change—and they need to embrace change. Companies in the supply chain need to look for new and better ways of retaining their competitive edge. A key factor in successfully overcoming this challenge is your IT infrastructure. Managing out the complexity in IT systems means your IT spend will be directed towards increased productivity, not system upkeep and maintenance. Find out how.
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The first role of the corporate controller has been to ensure corporate financial controls and—as a distant second—make strategic business contributions. But the installation of on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting software meant that controllers’ roles now involve financial software know-how. To achieve financial transformation, controllers need guidance and practical strategies. Learn more.
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An effective traceability system involves determining which product and manufacturing process attributes to collect and maintain—and deciding when during the manufacturing process to begin collecting those attributes. Do you begin with raw material attributes from the supplier, at inspection, at assembly, at shipping? Explore the many facets of meeting product traceability challenges using automated data collection.
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Like all fast-growing companies, Ruckus Wireless needed to continue to innovate quickly, speed products to market, manage costs, and meet quality and regulatory compliance requirements—while ramping up its infrastructure to manage the orders, requests, and relationships resulting from its growth. Ruckus looked for—and found—a solution to help it avoid costly errors related to manual processes. The new solution allows the extended enterprise to view and update product information, and more.
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As a contract manufacturer, Western Electronics makes assemblies for its customers. This translates into a huge volume of data being exchanged—and an exponentially greater number of engineering changes to manage. The company was challenged to take control over its processes—especially bill of materials (BOM) management—and lead its customers into following best practices. With its new change management solution, the company is confident it has an accurate history and the latest revisions.
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Since 1996, Air International US (AIUS) has used an outsourced manufacturing strategy instead of maintaining its own facilities. For the first few years, communication between AIUS and its outsourced partners was manual, which formed a barrier preventing the company from maximizing its contract manufacturing strategy. To improve outsourcing processes, AIUS chose a change management solution with bill of materials (BOM) management and a software-as-a-service architecture. Learn more.
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Planning to expand, Align—a medical device manufacturer—identified electronic document management as a vital component of growth. One goal was to reduce the time needed to process change orders, as its current processes were all manual. After the vendor selection process, Align chose a change management solution that offers fully compliant and redundant protection for the company’s data. Learn more about the benefits that helped Align save $250,000 (USD) in administration costs.
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Pixel Velocity, provider of video automation systems to governments and other organizations, grew from having one supplier to having dozens with which they needed to collaborate and source hundreds of components. Knowing operations were becoming too complex to be supported on spreadsheets, the company decided that using a dedicated collaborative bill of materials (BOM) and change management solution would be the smartest choice. Learn about the on-demand solution Pixel now uses.
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To survive in today’s global economy, meet customer demands, and solve its growing inventory control problems, family-run business Miller Welding and Machine decided to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. After implementing the new ERP solution and using all of its modules, the company has built efficiencies into its manufacturing operations, resulting in saved work-in-progress time. Learn more.
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As a supplier to the automotive industry, Best Foam Fabricators often needed to expedite parts to customers to fill orders. This meant the company was spending up to $50,000 (USD) on expedited freight. To reduce costs—of both shipping and labor—Best Foam decided to implement a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Find out how Best Foam has not only reduced costs but also improved delivery time by 99 percent.
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With all the discussion, books, Web sites, and other materials on the topic of lean manufacturing, it’s hard to know which resources are credible—much less understand the mounds of information. The first part of this series breaks down the definition of lean manufacturing into easy-to-digest concepts and shares the real-life example of a supplier of remanufactured solvents that is working toward the goal of lean. Get tips on how to determine what you need in your production operation and why.
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Running four manufacturing operations simultaneously was a challenge for California (US)-based Calnetix. The company needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to help it manage its information, as well as control inventory and track sampling time. The ERP solution Calnetix chose has brought greater efficiencies in purchasing, and tracking work orders and inventory—and helps Calnetix meet due dates. Learn more.
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Martin’s Wood Products, producers of solid wood furniture for over 20 years, is a family-run business that has aimed to keep pace with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) advances of the 21st century. To bring costing under control, and to automatically place accurate and consistent work orders on the shop floor, the company uses an ERP and product configurator solution. Learn more about how the solutions help the company.
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SuperPharm, a Trinidad-based pharmacy chain, was having a problem with replenishment and risked losing customers. The problem lay in the point of sale (POS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) for distribution systems—and that users couldn’t easily access the systems’ functionalities. After TEC helped SuperPharm with a software evaluation, SuperPharm realized it already had the best systems for its needs. Find out why.
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Discover a framework for crafting a software-as-a-service (SaaS) strategy in your company. Examine key concerns such as data integrity, maintaining compliance, and ensuring proper process management, as well as approaches to help maximize your return on investment (ROI). A SaaS solution for your enterprise resource planning (ERP) or accounting system might be your ticket to improved business and application performance.
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Engraving materials supplier Johnson Plastics needed a way to stay ahead of the competition. To leave a lasting impression on customers, Johnson knew that fulfilling its promise of next-day shipping was priority number one. But an outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was preventing Johnson from realizing that goal. Learn about the solution the company chose to integrate its entire multiwarehouse operations.
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Business intelligence (BI) exists in many corners of a company, and even outside its walls. BI is hidden in industry publications, staff knowledge, market research, sales data, project schedules, spreadsheets, and packaged and legacy software applications. Without a true and complete picture of all available data and information, you cannot effectively plan for success or appropriately leverage a BI system. Learn more.
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Pronto Software—Australian vendor of software meeting the needs of a range of vertical industries such as retail and food and beverage—wants to ensure it sustains profitable growth. To find partnerships with value-added resellers (VARs) in North America and in other markets, Pronto relies on Technology Evaluation Centers’ (TEC’s) software industry programs. Learn about the other ways Pronto benefits from using TEC.
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Companies are under huge pressure to cut all SAP-related costs and are seeking every opportunity to exploit their huge investments in SAP to reduce total business expenses. A survey of 18 respondents reveals how companies are seeing the potential to squeeze further costs savings by exploiting SAP software investments, especially in enterprise resource management (ERP) and supply chain business process areas. Learn more.
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Pronto Software's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, PRONTO-Xi v.670, is now TEC Certified. The certification seal is a valuable indicator for organizations who rely on the integrity of TEC's research services for assistance with their software selection projects. Download this 39-page TEC report for product highlights, competitive analysis, product analysis, and in-depth analyst commentary.
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Showing value has always been key to greater sales and higher prices. However, the bar has been raised. It’s often no longer enough to claim value—now the customer has to see, believe, and care about the value. Sales organizations must get their eyes back on the value ball, with five value-selling maturity levels that tie in to sales effectiveness. Learn how to improve your revenues while reducing sales effort and costs.
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To succeed in ever-changing market conditions, you must manage and navigate an information network of business partners. Though you may have long focused your IT efforts on automating internal processes to save money, now you need to rethink how technology can support and transform the way decisions are made and business is conducted—both within and across your boundaries, focusing on key business processes. Learn more.
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Today, businesses must work smarter, not just harder—and to do it, they must use information to compete. With growing demands on data resources, companies need to derive greater value from their existing information. But this information is often scattered throughout the organization. To survive in the current tough economic environment means building successful enterprise information management strategies. Find out how.
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Brydens, an importer and distributor based in San Juan (Trinidad), needed a way to integrate the operational and functional aspects of the business, as well as turn raw data into useful information for better decision making. With a new warehouse management system (WMS), Brydens benefits from tracking and order fulfillment capabilities, for better inventory management. Discover the other benefits of the WMS solution.
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Specialty Products needed to address several warehouse and manufacturing management issues, including real-time inventory tracking. As it looked for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, the company also wanted one-step order processing. Learn how the new ERP system, featuring a virtual shop front and electronic data interchange (EDI) capabilities, meets the company’s business and warehouse operating needs.
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Berjé, a US-based global distributor of essential oils, holds thousands of items of inventory and is a key part of the supply chain for several multinational corporations. Berjé recently implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and a warehouse management system (WMS) to track inventory levels and locations accurately. Learn how the solutions provide the benefits of real-time inventory tracking and more.
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SuperPharm, the first retail pharmacy chain in Trinidad (West Indies), opened its first store in 2005 with the focus on establishing a healthy business. It was critical that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system have integrated point of sale (POS), inventory management, and purchasing functionality in place. Learn about the ERP system it chose, and the functionality that helped the company open four more stores.
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Wist, an office supply company offering over 40,000 products, was running an outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The primary concern was the system’s lack of flexibility, which incurred unnecessary labor costs. As well, errors were common and prevented Wist from getting the information needed for data analysis. With a new ERP for distribution, Wist has streamlined operations and reduced costs. Learn how.
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Dorcy, a global distributor of flashlights and batteries, manufactures its product line in Taiwan, China, and Korea, and repackages products in two US warehouses to ship to major retailers. With 2,500 items in its inventory—approaching $12 million (USD) at any given time—Dorcy needs a warehouse management system (WMS) that automates reports and provides real-time inventory data. Learn about the solution it uses.
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Every distributor and manufacturer can find ways to optimize processes. But there are key challenges to infusing efficiency and profitability into your established inventory management practices. Learn about common challenges and roadblocks to converting inventory from cost to competitive advantage—and learn from the nine “worst practices” that can help you benchmark your current inventory management strategy.
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Looking for a way to maximize the productivity and profitability of your inventory investment? Although good inventory management software is one key to an effective inventory management program, it must be implemented by a team that thoroughly understands the distributor’s needs and challenges. Learn about two solutions that, when combined, can lead you toward the goal of achieving effective inventory management.
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Large enterprises have different warehouse management and inventory management needs than do small and mid-market companies. Find out about the key factors to success for mid-market companies, identify big-picture trends and needs that can help you overcome barriers to enjoy inventory management as a true strategic advantage—and learn about an inventory management solution specially designed for the mid-market.
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You can take two approaches to inventory management: assume it’s a necessary evil and implement an inventory reduction program when cash gets tight, or put an active inventory management process in place, and continually improve the business results. Learn how to view inventory as cash that can be invested in other ways: move from reactive inventory management to lean and active inventory management in six easy steps.
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You rely on a warehouse management system (WMS) to maintain ongoing operations, support changing customer requirements, keep up with industry regulations, and simply get product out the door on a daily basis. But a faltering system may also be constraining your global potential. Find out how to determine if your current WMS system is hindering your ability to execute business strategies that help you grow your business.
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The concepts of return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) have been used for decades in enterprise evaluations of IT investments, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, with the emergence of important new technological advances, executives are now expanding these traditional formulas to account for new opportunities. Learn more about their new methods for measuring ERP value.
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With goals to decrease operating costs and increase sales, Hayward—a leader in the building materials industry—knew it needed to replace its 25-year-old software with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would enable business process re-engineering and more. The solution Hayward chose enabled it to more effectively manage its supply chain and generate bottom-line value to customers. Find out why.
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With rapid growth and revenues exceeding $100 million (USD), Quality Bicycle Products is under increasing pressure to meet demand. To keep driving growth, QBP realized its forecasting capabilities and performance would need to be optimized. To help meet the needs of these efforts, QBP began looking at an inventory and demand planning solution. Discover more about the supply chain management (SCM) solution it chose.
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Maintaining profitability was a major challenge for Tampa Tile because of the complexities of providing the construction industry with long-lead products, many of which are imported from Europe and South America. Its old enterprise resource planning (ERP) system no longer met its needs, so Tampa Tile looked for a new system that offered event management capabilities, in addition to inventory management. Learn more.
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The main business challenge faced by Wausau Supply—an American distributor of building materials—was its ability to provide next-day delivery to small lumber yards and to a greater number of conglomerates. But Wausau didn’t have an up-to-date system for back-office or logistics operations, and needed a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with visibility into its inventory at all locations. Find out more.
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Following several acquisitions, Colombia-based ceramics manufacturer Corona found itself with multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to manage. To find a single ERP solution that was suitable for all of its facilities, and would integrate with its existing business software, Corona turned to Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC). Learn how TEC’s selection methodology helped Corona choose the right ERP software.
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Like many distribution companies, Hydro-Scape needed to streamline and automate its business processes to increase speed and accuracy when serving customers, as well as boost productivity and profitability. The company chose an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with distribution-specific functionality, including the ability to integrate data across the entire operation. Learn more about the distribution ERP.
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American Refrigeration Supplies (ARS) is a wholesaler of refrigeration and heating equipment, parts, and supplies. In a difficult economy, there is little margin for error with respect to how ARS manages its clients and vendors. Because a growing number of product vendors are using electronic data interchange (EDI), ARS was pushed to upgrade its distribution processes. Learn about the EDI solution the company chose.
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Endries International, distributor of products for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), aims to develop partnerships by helping customers meet their cost reduction, vendor consolidation, and productivity improvement goals. But Endries knew its old software wouldn’t enable long-term growth or manage business changes. With the new solution, processes such as demand planning are more accurate and efficient. Find out why.
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Falcon Technologies, Inc. (FTI) is a leading distributor of data and telecommunications products. After several years, FTI realized its legacy accounting system could no longer manage the growing business, and that it needed an industry-specific solution. The new system, with a few customizations, has allowed FTI to improve its efficiencies and productivity, resulting in a growth rate of over 50 percent. Find out more.
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Global sourcing, an erratic economy, and extended supply operations are just a few threats to the profitability and growth of your distribution environment. But if you extend the capabilities of your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, you can better meet demands, maximize inventory, and increase operational efficiency. Learn how supply chain optimization is easier with an ERP for distribution solution.
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The US and world markets are facing dramatic economic challenges. You may be questioning whether the business practices that worked for you before will continue to provide the same levels of profitability. To improve your operations or profitability, you need to take advantage of new technologies. But to get started, you need to know where you stand, and in which direction to move. Find out more about leadership strategy.
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Stiff competition, declining profit margins, and changing consumer requirements have made mass customization necessary. But time-strapped customers don’t tolerate long sales cycles or unnecessary complexity. A self-service product configurator is one way to give customers what they want, and in a short period of time. Discover the three signs your product configurator may not be meeting your—or your customers’—needs.
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Are you preparing to oversee an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation project? Are you worried about the statistics that report less-than-successful ERP implementations? While there are many reasons a given implementation project may be less than perfect, there are a few steps you and your ERP implementation team can take to increase your chances of success. Learn about the five steps to a positive outcome.
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As time passes, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems drift further and further into misalignment with enterprise goals, strategies, and tactics. Eventually your legacy ERP system begins to interfere with your company’s ability to operate efficiently. Examine ERP evaluation criteria and techniques, and equip yourself with the tools and knowledge you need to measure your current ERP system’s effectiveness.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems offer great value to companies, but choosing the right ERP system can be overwhelming. To choose the system and vendor that can best meet your needs, you need the tools that can help you address the business goals of your enterprise and mitigate the risks involved in a selection project. You can apply these concepts to a variety of ERP selection processes. Learn more.
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Choosing the right sales and product configurator is daunting. Complex products, services, and processes can contain hundreds of thousands of possibilities. To be effective, your sales and product configurator solution needs to have at least four key characteristics, including the flexibility to model your products and processes. Discover how to get the best configurator vendor and how to make the most of implementation.
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Better. Faster. Cheaper. Every company is grappling with these concepts today as economic uncertainty spreads. Though many are focusing on what to eliminate in their operations, leading firms are redoubling their efforts to find new ways to execute with greater efficiency—to achieve operational excellence without sacrificing the value their customers expect. Learn more about improving your strategic competitive advantage.
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Many companies have used lean principles to move from a decentralized corporate management mode to a hybrid model—recognizing that different functions require different levels of centralized management to be efficient and effective. An effective lean transformation eliminates more than the most obvious areas of wasted time and resource. Find out how lean must address the unique requirements of various business processes.
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Workers spend on average close to 80 percent of their workday with some combination of enterprise applications and desktop tools. Best-in-class companies have already found ways to improve productivity. Learn more about the convergence of enterprise applications with desktop tools, and the role it plays in providing visibility to enterprise data, improving communication, and facilitating real-time decision making.
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Many aerospace and defense (A&D) manufacturers are enjoying a competitive advantage because of early adoption of lean manufacturing tools. However, considerable differences still exist in performance among A&D companies. The best way for A&D manufacturers to achieve best-in-class performance is to use external domain expertise and enterprise resource planning (ERP) with lean-specific functionalities. Learn more.
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New Avenue Solutions is a consultant for small to medium businesses (SMBs) in network setup and installation, security, data backup, and more. As part of New Avenue’s service offering, it rents rack space in a data warehouse to manage customers’ network and backup solutions. As storage demands grew, transfer rates slowed, and maintenance became increasingly time consuming. Learn how New Avenue overcame the problems.
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Data quality has always been an important issue for companies, and today it’s even more so. But are you up-to-date on current industry problems concerning data quality? Do you know how to address quality problems with customer, product, and other types of corporate data? Discover how data cleansing tools help improve data constancy and accuracy, and find out why you need an enterprise-wide approach to data management.
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If your company is “fighting fires” daily to meet customer demand, then you’re already losing customers and missing new sales. Today, business is conducted in real time, which requires flexibility and responsiveness. It’s these two attributes—along with reduced costs—that are the most beneficial in managing for optimal inventory levels. Find out how you can better plan and manage your inventory for long-term survival.
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Information management software from Business Objects, an SAP company, can be used for SAP data migration projects—either for upgrades from one version of SAP to a newer one, or from other environments to SAP. In practice, many considerations that apply to SAP migrations are the same as those pertaining to non-SAP environments. But a few requirements are particular to an SAP implementation. Find out what they are.
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Electronic product code information services (EPCIS) is a standard mechanism for inter-company collaboration and data sharing, which can enable health care partners to deploy solutions that meet short-term mandates driven by patient safety, as well as lay the foundation for long-term business value. Learn more about the impact of EPCIS in a study concerning data management and data sharing in the health care supply chain.
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Accurate forecasting requires many different views of the business. Increasingly, the finance department must make the links between forward-looking data from core operations and explain to stakeholders how this will impact the balance sheet and cash flow statement. How can chief financial officers lead the effort to make their operational and financial planning more agile, detailed, reliable, and efficient? Learn more.
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Sustaining profitability in a landscape of volatile prices and exchange rates is difficult for even the best-run companies. One key challenge is to understand the real economic costs in your business and of your products so you can make accurate decisions about sourcing, substitutions, pricing, and logistics. Find out how to use the right costing methodology and have the right information—and the right analytical tools.
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MISTRAL Engines, founded in 2001, has a line of engines to meet the needs of 21st-century aviation. MISTRAL looked for a data management system that was flexible enough to adjust smoothly and on an ad hoc basis to a company in constant growth and with continuously evolving processes. Find out how its new product lifecycle management (PLM) solution helps the company throughout the full product development process.
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Hydrocontrol, manufacturer of hydraulic components for mobile applications, grew from its founding offices in Italy to being a leading player in the global market. Needing to gather the knowledge of its specialist staff and make it available throughout the company, Hydrocontrol decided to look for a solution that would automate its processes and reduce costs. Discover the product configurator solution it implemented.
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Untamed costs can deplete the precious working capital that’s critical to your ongoing operations. But, you can get a handle on costs by taking steps to improve operational efficiency. By instituting efficient automated processes, you can reduce waste, unnecessary overtime, and many other cost factors. Find out how an integrated business system can help you improve gross margins while offering more competitive prices.
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Growth—whether organic or acquisitive—is challenging executives today from a strategic as well as an operational perspective. Studies estimate that 50 to 80 percent of deals fail to reach their projected results. Discover the challenges inherent in three common growth models, and find out how to implement a solid, flexible, and adaptive foundation that can support your company’s corporate growth strategies.
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Businesses of all sizes and in all industries are finding it difficult and costly to update and modify enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after installation. The question isn’t whether a typical ERP solution supports change, but rather at what cost? Learn what midsize companies are doing about maintaining, modifying, and updating their ERP systems post-implementation, and what you could be doing better.
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To successfully meet compliance demands, pharmaceutical manufacturers must develop, implement, and track the effectiveness of a company-wide compliance strategy. Key to that strategy is to adopt industry-specific enterprise software with functionality that supports Federal Drug Administration (FDA) requirements. Learn more about the criteria and recommendations you need to achieve compliance in the pharmaceutical industry.
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Accurate product data is key to retail success. Merchandise planning, purchasing, inventory management, and logistics all depend on accurate initial item setup, as well as ongoing updates. But globalization has brought a variety of standards, making it more complex to ensure data accuracy. Learn about a product data synchronization solution that can help synchronize your product data with your global trading community.
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Achieving perfection in all of its transactions is important for shipping companies like Yantian—perfection that can only come with automation. While Yantian uses industry-standard electronic data interchange (EDI) to exchange transaction documents, it must accommodate the wide variety of media, formats, and protocols shippers use. Find out how Yantian used a server solution to simplify its trading partner management.
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For many suppliers, keeping up with their retail customers’ compliance guides is a challenge, driven by the fast pace of the retail supply chain and complex trading partner systems. But even when retailers and vendors work together, data errors can slow down the supply chain and trigger deductions for compliance errors. Discover a solution that can help you eliminate preventable chargebacks in your supply chain.
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As EXEX Jewelry began to grow, the company’s founder realized her existing system of tracking transactions couldn’t keep pace. And increasingly, large retailers demanded that all transactions be completed via electronic data interchange (EDI) and that product information be uploaded to a centralized, third-party repository. Find out how EXEX has improved efficiency and increased product data accuracy with an EDI solution.
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Office supply companies face stiff competition and know that on-time, next-day delivery is imperative to survival. Distributors of any size need accurate inventory data, but when the firm is a large office supplier offering 50,000 items, this need becomes non-negotiable. Find out how one company overcame such challenges as maintaining inventory, tracking sales and commissions, and guaranteeing next-day delivery.
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Sales force automation (SFA) solutions hold plenty of promise for companies looking to empower their sales representatives. In addition to providing timely data, SFA solutions can help managers better forecast future sales, and provide senior-level managers with accurate performance assessments. Find out what to look for in a SFA solution, what you can expect to pay for it, and how you can get the most value from it.
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For years, SEM Products Inc.—manufacturer of interior and exterior auto body repair and refinishing products—was managing its business with two software systems and various manual processes. As the business grew, it became clear that these systems were lacking in data accessibility and overall functionality. Learn about the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution SEM now uses for improved order entry functionality.
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For over 40 years, Textron Fastening Systems Australia has provided automotive and aerospace customers with specialized fastening and assembly solutions. Using PRONTO-Xi, Textron has optimized its warehouse operations by automating put-away, picking, transfer orders, and stock takes. Find out how the solution also helped Textron reengineer processes to enhance productivity and improve order accuracy to 99.8 percent.
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Funtastic, the largest toy distributor in Australia, attributes its success to strong retail relationships and understanding the infrastructure needed to service these customers. High customer expectations, a large product range, and the fast-moving nature of the business mean that Funtastic must have complete real-time stock visibility. Find out about the warehouse and order management solution Funtastic uses.
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Bollé, a midsized distributor of sunglasses and other products to the Australian and New Zealand markets, sources both locally and from overseas. Inefficiencies resulting from a lack of integration between finance and inventory—and non-existent system security—forced Bollé to review its systems. After implementing PRONTO-Xi, the company achieves better than 99.5 percent order dispatch accuracy. Discover more benefits.
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Hitachi’s Australian division has nearly 1,000 retail stores and 6 warehouses across Australia. As such, the company needs supply chain visibility and accurate information to maintain customer satisfaction. For over 10 years, Hitachi Australia has worked with Pronto Software to ensure that the PRONTO-Xi enterprise resource management (ERP) system meets its business requirements and maximizes productivity. Find out how.
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Global demand for food and beverages continues to rise, and the market will pay a premium for partially prepared healthier choices. Food and beverage manufacturers with innovative solutions for these niche markets are in a position to gain brand dominance, resulting in higher revenues, profits, and market share. Discover tactical and strategic innovative practices that can help support changes in your business processes.
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At Nagoya Guidance and Propulsion Systems (NGPS), more than half of production time goes into to products such as aircraft guidance systems. In 2003, NGPS installed Asprova’s advanced planning and scheduling system for greater efficiency from the planning it had been doing manually until that time. In 2007, NGPS added the sales module for more uniform production planning. Learn more about the efficiencies NGPS gained.
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As global economies become more uncertain, companies face increasing pressure to remain competitive. While an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help, it’s only as effective as the effort placed in the implementation. By being aware of the reasons implementations fail and knowing what best practices to use to help ensure success, you can save valuable time and money—and have a higher return on investment (ROI).
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Since opening its first location in 1987, Australia’s TradeTools Direct has become a multilocation retailer to customers in the building trade. When it came time to transition from its cumbersome paper-based record-keeping system, the company chose Pronto Software. Find out how Pronto’s fully integrated point-of-sale (POS) system and accounting functions helped TradeTools increase efficiency and improve customer service.
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By adopting traditional business intelligence (BI) tools, companies have gained valuable insights into past activities and results. However, with operational BI that is different from standard and tactical BI, promptness of information and data in real-time or near real-time is established. Learn how operational BI can boost the timeliness and accuracy of business decisions, and improve operational efficiency and results.
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If you can’t find the number of parts, finished goods, or products your inventory system says you have, you are wasting your time. There are two ways to track inventory: either by doing a physical inventory count, or by implementing a cycle count program. Manage inventory rather than just store it—learn about the benefits of cycle counting, and how it can help you increase the accuracy of your real-time inventory data.
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For a company that has grown to the point where an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is the logical next step, there are enormous benefits to be realized, such as centralizing key business data. ERP helps to alleviate pressures on the company by integrating all data and processes. Find out about the critical components of selecting and implementing an ERP system, so you can get the data management tools you need.
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Founded in 1951, Photo Continental is the southern hemisphere’s largest destination camera store. With over 81,000 products available to customers, the company recently decided to upgrade its business management system to meet the challenges of the digital era. Learn how the Pronto enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, customized for the photography industry, gave the company complete visibility over its business.
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Established in 2002, Fibrelogic is now Australia’s leading fiberglass pipe company. Recognizing that its spreadsheet-based systems—for everything from inventory management to financials—were delaying month-end reporting, the company implemented the PRONTO-Xi enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Learn how the new system helped Fibrelogic access information for strategic decision making and improve customer service.
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For over 11 years, Australia’s Capt’n Snooze—the largest bedding retailer in the southern hemisphere—used Pronto Software’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Learn how integrated point of sale (POS), inventory, and financial management systems have helped reduce costs, increase customer retention, and maintain stock availability and consistent pricing across the company’s 73 franchised operations.
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After a number of acquisitions, it was vital that testing, inspection, and asset care provider PearlStreet have a solution to integrate each business and consolidate key company and financial information in one system. PearlStreet deployed a range of PRONTO-Xi modules, including project costing. Now, the company has greater operations visibility, more effective reporting, and the ability to analyze business performance.
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Hirotec has been supplying and caring for the assets of some of Australia’s biggest industries for more than 30 years. In 2003, Hirotec was on a strong growth trajectory and realized its IT system couldn’t support its expansion—but that deploying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system across the company would require staff buy-in. Now, with PRONTO-Xi, Hirotec has reduced invoice cycle time by 20 percent. Learn more.
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Hyne Timber, with over 1,000 employees and 12 wholesale outlets in eastern Australia, finds advantage in taking a long view in developing its strategy. Part of that strategy is its IT operations. PRONTO-Xi, the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, offers functionality for effective manufacturing, sales, and inventory management. Discover how Pronto’s ERP offers Hyne an integrated view of timber operations.
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New Zealand-based stationery manufacturer Croxley was on a strong growth path, but a fragmented IT environment was struggling to keep pace with the company’s growth plans. While finding an integrated system was mandatory, it was equally important to find a solution tailored to the manufacturing industry. After an on-time, on-budget implementation, Croxley benefits in many ways from the new solution, PRONTO-Xi. Learn more.
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Outdoor equipment and clothing retailer Kathmandu sought a new enterprise management system to support expansion throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The new system, with capabilities for point of sale (POS) and inventory management, had to be scalable. Based on a strong customer reference, Kathmandu chose PRONTO-Xi. Find out how PRONTO-Xi has helped improved efficiencies and promotion management.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) should provide all employees with information that helps them perform their jobs. But process manufacturing is very complicated, so your ERP software must be robust enough to support your information needs. While no packaged ERP can meet everyone’s needs perfectly, finding the best fit for your needs is key. Learn seven things not to do during your ERP software selection project.
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Embarking on an operational excellence strategy should not be undertaken lightly. As with most company-wide initiatives, success requires planning, commitment, measurement, and continuous follow-up. Find out what senior executives from around the world think about how to achieve operational excellence, and the questions you need to ask to develop a winning operations strategy and achieve sustained growth.
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In 2005, Nu-West Construction Products was executing a rapid expansion plan that included three new distribution facilities in Western Canada. Believing it had outgrown its existing solutions, Nu-West conducted a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) software evaluation project to find a replacement. Learn how the chosen solution, TGI’s Enterprise 21 ERP, helped Nu-West meet its unique distribution needs.
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Server-based computing has been seen at best as a way to provide those within highly task-based environments with a controlled desktop environment. However, changes in software, hardware, security, and management systems are driving the shift toward server-based computing being suitable for a larger proportion of a company’s user base. Learn how client-side computing can be more tightly controlled yet provide flexibility.
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Network-centric operations (NCO) provide the ability to leverage information networks to generate a more dynamic and agile decision-making space. A fundamental enabler is service-orientated architecture (SOA). The use of industry-standard IT architectures helps ensure that systems can be provisioned rapidly, shared as appropriate, and give the flexibility and response times needed within such challenging environments.
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The question constantly being asked by Microsoft® customers is, “How can Microsoft® help our company save money?” Customers want an integrated, adaptable business management solution that works well with, and is similar to, familiar Microsoft® software. Find out about the solutions Microsoft® believes are the best for helping its customers save money, to gain a competitive advantage and fuel business productivity.
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As a business leader, you’re likely thinking about ways to save money and improve performance. A little fiscal probity coupled with an increase in productivity will ensure you ride out tough times and emerge as a stronger, more robust, successful business. Find out how Microsoft® business solutions can help not only save money, but drive productivity change with customer relationship management (CRM) and other solutions.
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Food and beverage producers need to effectively address the impact of industry-specific requirements and legal mandates on their businesses. Since 2002, the greatest legal impact is in the critical process of handling product recalls. Explore your options for minimizing and eliminating threats to your business—be “emergency ready” by better managing quality control processes and food traceability data. Find out how.
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Increased global competition and rising costs place continued pressure on all midsize companies to optimize resources, meet tighter delivery schedules, and improve overall responsiveness. When looking at the pressures driving the top performers of midsize companies, however, the story is different. Find out why—and how these drivers affect the enterprise resource planning (ERP) strategies of these best-in-class companies.
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These days, there is increasing pressure on companies to become more efficient and reduce the bottom line. Improving communication with suppliers, partners, and customers can dramatically optimize business processes and increase responsiveness. But how can you easily improve these channels of communication? Web-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that support Web 2.0 collaboration tools can help. Learn more.
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Most companies are facing a number of pressures, thanks to a stormy economic climate. To help control costs and resources, many small to medium businesses (SMBs) are looking at implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. But you also need to control the costs and the time frame of your ERP implementation. Discover how partnering with a value-added reseller (VAR) can help you with your ERP selection process.
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Electronics enterprises must respond to business drivers such as reduced time to market, technological innovation, and distributed operations and cost control to remain competitive. Effective collaboration among internal engineering and manufacturing, as well as external suppliers and distributors, requires great effort. But an engineering collaboration solution can help teams work together in real time. Learn how.
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Today, food manufacturers face significant challenges. Increasing costs, government regulation, safety concerns, and constantly changing consumer tastes are a way of life. Senior management must know about these food industry issues; why an integrated business software system is essential for controlling costs, managing inventory, and meeting regulations; and the key functionality to look for in new business software.
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ODG’s industrial division has a reputation for the design and manufacture of quality gears and transmissions. But back in 1991, ODG was using four separate systems for inventory, accounting, sales, and materials resource planning (MRP). The challenge was to combine all four into an integrated management system, with an emphasis on data integrity and scalability. Discover the solution ODG chose to help improve processes.
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Natural Factors produces millions of capsules every month and, on a daily basis, fills hundreds of sales orders. With new formulations continually added to its thousands of active stock items, the company needs a solution that ensures quality control. Learn how the Lot Traceability module in SYSPRO’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software helps Natural Factors trace products to their source and ensure compliance.
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For many manufacturers, the demands of meeting customer expectations and reducing production costs in an environment of more products and more choice places stress on the effectiveness of planning and scheduling processes. Yet, systems are becoming outdated, lacking the flexibility and responsiveness to manage complex production environments. Find out about planning and scheduling options and how to boost productivity.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers (IEMs) have been hit especially hard by today’s economy. But the industry has come back better than ever before by adopting new efficient manufacturing methods and new software and business processes that let them compete head-on, satisfying customer demands while reducing costs and raising margins. Learn about the methods industrial equipment manufacturers are using to stay competitive.
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North American process manufacturers face increasing challenges related to heightened security, pricing pressures, global competition, and rising costs. Thus, continuous improvement of processes is imperative to remaining competitive. How close is your company to world-class? And how focused are you on process improvement? Find out how get started on a process improvement strategy that will have long-term benefits.
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The environmental protection agency (EPA) is limiting the amount of R-22 hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerant to 20 percent less than industry demand. This means R-22 will likely increase in cost. It could also mean that reclaimed, recycled, and used R-22 could become more valuable. Learn how to continue education related to R-22 phaseout requirements and begin managing your refrigerant inventory more accurately.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems now support many organizations’ most important business processes, and house their most sensitive corporate data. As a result, senior management needs to fully understand both the timing and project plan before proceeding with any ERP upgrade. Learn how to plan and manage your next ERP upgrade project, and develop an overall corporate strategy for maintaining your ERP system.
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For almost a decade, Unitech America managed with its inventory and supply chain management system. But as the company grew, the software couldn’t meet the company’s business needs, such as tracking product serial numbers, which made it difficult to measure inventory and track returns and customer purchasing behavior. Learn about the system Unitech chose to help improve customer service processes and more.
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Widex Canada, a manufacturer and distributor of high-end hearing aids, wanted to automate its work flow—from sales order entry through shipping and delivery. It also wanted more flexible reporting accounting and sales. Learn how combining Microsoft® Dynamics NAV with Tectura’s Configure to Order and Workflow helped Widex make its day-to-day processes more efficient and report results quickly and accurately.
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To replace its 15-year-old, custom-developed enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, The International Group chose the Microsoft® Dynamics-NAV-based Tectura Process Manufacturing solution as a replacement system. Find out how this solution helped The International Group increase margins and profitability, boost employee productivity, make more timely decisions, and gain real-time visibility into critical business data.
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Office supplies manufacturer Esselte Corporation was the first company to implement Microsoft® Dynamics AX across four continents. About a third of the way through the implementation, the company had already begun seeing a high return on investment (ROI). Find out how Esselte and its global implementation partner, Tectura, managed this large-scale and complex, global enterprise resource planning (ERP) project.
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Many discrete manufacturers have adopted lean manufacturing approaches, but haven’t pursued lean improvement methods. Even those that have report only small, local benefits. A holistic approach is needed to see the long-term benefits of lean. To find out if your company is ready to make lean improvements, you need to ask key questions. Discover what they are, and how to start down the path to leaner manufacturing.
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Coordinating all shipping processes—from inbound to outbound freight—can be a logistics headache in a global economy—especially if you don’t make the most of all a transportation management system (TMS) has to offer. One director of logistics found that a web-based TMS solution resulted in a 10 percent decrease in the number of carriers, with a 15 percent increase in carrier load factors. Learn more about the benefits.
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As a result of exponential growth via acquisition, an international metals manufacturer realized it was trying to function with six disparate systems. Because of this lack of integration, transportation costs were skyrocketing. Learn about the solution that helped the company automate tendering processes, centralize core functions like carrier management, increase management’s visibility and control—and more.
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Due to ever-changing business, market, and economic conditions, shippers cannot afford to rely solely on a certain size of carrier—and often it’s the smaller regional or family-owned carriers that can fill the unique needs of a shipper. But can those smaller carriers provide the level of communication you expect and get from larger carriers? Learn about a solution that offers integrated communication for any size carrier.
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Dark Pool Trading Systems, used by institutional traders trading in large volumes, help get more liquidity and lower transaction cost. Despite these benefits, there are a few issues, such as inadequate transparency, regulatory requirements, and uniform information access to investors. Considering these systems’ complexity, it’s important that functional testing, as well as gateway and performance testing, be done.
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Brazilian health care cooperative Assefaz wanted to change its health care plan administration system, as it didn’t offer enough options to create business rules and specific procedures. The new system it chose offers new modules, including Medical Audits. Find out how the co-op divided up the implementation, and how the new solution has streamlined numerous processes related to its administrative health care services.
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In today’s tough economic climate, companies need their sales teams operating at peak performance. But traditional customer relationship management (CRM) may be hampering field salespeople’s productivity, with frequent downtime and lengthy sales cycles cutting them off from their managers. Learn how mobile CRM solutions can help speed up and improve the sales process, so your company can survive even the toughest market. (White paper sponsored by Maximizer)
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A few years ago, Progress Paint realized its non-integrated software systems and manual processes were slowing productivity. To boost efficiency, the company replaced the old systems with a single accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Now, Progress manages inventory control, order entry, accounting, formulations, production, and environmental reporting via one automated, integrated ERP solution.
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Tortilla and wrap manufacturer La Tortilla Factory had three software systems to manage its business: one for billing, one for financial reporting, and one for inventory. As the company grew, this multisystem setup wasn’t providing the necessary integration. Find out about an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that helped the company establish process controls to help it grow, while integrating older systems.
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To select a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Katy Independent School District (Katy ISD) turned to Gibson Consulting Group to manage the project’s complexities. Gibson partnered with TEC, taking advantage of the eBestMatch decision support system (DSS). Find out how TEC and Gibson helped Katy ISD reduce the cost and duration of the selection project, and deliver a compelling business case to stakeholders.
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The IT investments that have allowed firms in process industries to increase the efficiency of their operations and supply chains have also created vast stores of data. Unfortunately, many companies are still unable redeploy that data to drive innovation. Learn how the next generation of business intelligence (BI) tools can help your company gain a competitive advantage by harnessing the information IT systems generate.
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Increasingly, companies in the aviation industry are outsourcing their maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations, especially for engine and component repair. However, many companies still report using custom, in-house applications instead of standard, off-the-shelf solutions. Learn how companies are balancing their outsourced and in-house MRO solutions, and discover the top three trends impacting the MRO segment.
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Life sciences manufacturers face new pressure on operations from many directions, including market needs, compliance requirements, and the transition to new IT technology. Many companies recognize that improving performance demands better sync with the plant floor and more accessible data. A real-time performance management solution can help drive excellence in manufacturing performance via better integration. Learn how.
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A producer of whole milk powder for the chocolate industry, VernDale Products wanted to replace its existing manual system with automated, fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The company, aided by technology consultants, found an ERP software system that was the best functional fit—reducing the time needed to perform routine office tasks and improving accuracy in financial statements. Learn more.
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Many buy cycles start months before sellers are even aware of them. A system that provides reps with immediate awareness of a lead’s interest is critical, as is linking marketing’s and sales’ efforts, coordinating campaigns, and consolidating access to information and reporting—including manager dashboards. Learn how eliminating the gap between sales and marketing can increase lead quality and increase sales performance.
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Most businesses are impacted by the slow economy, but recessions and economic slowdowns don’t last forever. Smart companies will be able to manage the challenges and emerge stronger and more vital for the experience. Discover how business process automation, a renewed focus on customer service, new tax opportunities, and other best practices can help your company shine in these tough economic times.
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Even in tough economic times, innovative small-to-midsized companies can still find opportunities for growth. Technology and business software solutions like enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), and supplier relationship management (SRM) can help your company ride out the global economic downturn. Find out how.
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Most midsize manufacturers are as capital-intensive and as subject to global cost and price pressures as large companies—yet they lack the resources to exploit revenue and sourcing opportunities around the globe. However, many midsize manufacturers are optimistic about growth prospects in spite of rising costs and downward price pressure, according to a recent study. Find out how they plan to overcome these challenges.
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You can leverage economies of scale to increase production by using existing equipment and people, lowering cost per unit, and increasing profit margins. The same applies to providers of services. Using the talented personnel you have and expanding the quality and distribution of services and support are much easier than starting from scratch. Find out how you can take advantage of economies of scale for profitable growth and gains in market share.
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Headquartered in Shoreview, Minnesota (US), PaR Systems, Inc. provides specialized material handling and automation equipment to many diverse industries. Each of the company’s customer contracts is unique—like a separate job—with charges included for labor and materials in these jobs. Find out how PaR’s engineer-to-order (ETO) solution helps the company manage its contracts—from engineering and manufacturing to final delivery.
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Order-driven manufacturers—those who engineer-to-order (ETO), assemble-to-order (ATO), and make-to-order (MTO)—face numerous challenges. To stay competitive, they must contend with increased competition, more demanding customers, and the need to refine business processes. Learn how enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can help your company meet marketplace challenges and create sustainable competitive advantages.
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When Taiyo America started manufacturing in 1995, it set up a DOS-based system and three standalone software programs. Despite efforts to “integrate” these systems, Taiyo realized they weren’t designed to handle the unique needs of a formula-based manufacturer. After evaluating five enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Taiyo chose an integrated ERP system that offers data visibility across the company. Learn more.
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A single software system can improve process manufacturing operations. With a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) point of control, this goal is accomplished by eliminating duplicate entry, and by contributing data integrity, detailed drilldown, and more. The advantages of single software system usage fulfill the original intentions of ERP as it can allow process manufacturers to better manage their business.
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For nearly 30 years, Miniature Precision Components, Inc. (MPC) supported its operations with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Though MPC performed well with this legacy system, many custom modifications hindered easy and cost-effective updates. The goal was to get a system that involved less effort and cost, and provided support for MPC’s unique operation requirements. Find out about the system MPC chose.
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American Crane & Equipment Corporation (ACECO) designs and manufactures electric overhead traveling cranes. Managing and tracking custom projects for accurate job costing is key—but ACECO’s legacy system involved labor-intensive, manual manipulation of data. ACECO saw that real-time job cost data was vital to operational performance. It found a solution with integrated functionality for all process operations. Learn more.
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Managing product images is frustrating. Typically, images are not documented nor linked to the associated product information. Worse, suppliers and retailers rarely have a system to exchange images, forcing retailers to reshoot photos that suppliers already had. Learn how including product images in your data synchronization process helps make product information, including images, accessible to anyone who needs it.
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The Internet offers companies the opportunity to present a commercial image independent of size and location. With this and the Internet’s ability to extend a business’s reach, it is valuable to know precisely what various Internet service providers (ISPs) offer before buying. This includes evaluating service level and support capabilities and understanding how these vary throughout the United Kingdom (UK). Find out more.
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InMotion, with more than 50 stores in 33 airports, delivers portable entertainment to the travelers’ market. InMotion faced inventory control issues due to limited store space, and plans to merge with another airport retailer added to the problem. The merger required InMotion to find a solution that could handle multiple sales channels while providing real-time inventory updates to prevent overstock in stores. Learn more.
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This white paper highlights the key challenges facing the manufacturing industry, and discusses how the 2007 Microsoft® Office system can help maximize employee contributions and enhance business performance with innovative and powerful enterprise capabilities.
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Due to acquisitions, Zurn—manufacturer and distributor of plumbing products—was running three disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Financial reporting and data sharing across business units was time-consuming. To handle current and future business needs, Zurn wanted an integrated ERP system that would provide up-to-date accounting, sales, and warehouse data. Find out about the integrated ERP Zurn chose.
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Founded in 1983, Network Equipment Technlogies (NET) provides network and voice exchange solutions for government and enterprise customers worldwide. To increase its operational efficiency, cut costs, and improve government reporting and compliance capabilities, NET needed a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Find out how switching to Microsoft Dynamics AX has helped NET save an estimated $1.5 million (USD).
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For today’s small to medium manufacturers, increasing the bottom line while optimizing efficiency poses an increasingly difficult challenge, especially in our current economic crisis. This, coupled with competition in a global environment, puts manufacturers in a tight spot. Discover the key challenges facing small to medium manufacturers, and the on-demand solutions you can leverage to sustain and win business.
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Formerly just a soccer team but now a large company, Brazil-based Cruzeiro Esporte Clube needed effective administrative management. Cruziero had to choose a new system that would be able to integrate with its legacy systems. The results of the successful integration include business intelligence capabilities that allow a flow of information between the team and the board of director—and a reduction of costs. Learn more.
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Inventory optimization is the area where most enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementations get the highest and fastest return on investment (ROI). However, many companies implementing an ERP solution don’t add a dedicated inventory optimization module. Learn how inventory optimization can offer companies huge potential to maximize the value of IT investments—and keep inventory levels at the right balance.
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For years, Sage MAS 90 ERP served Metrolina Greenhouses well as its accounting and distribution solution. But continued growth and expansion led it to seek a comprehensive warehouse management solution (WMS), to incorporate materials requirement planning (MRP) procedures and radio frequency identification (RFID) for better planning and control. Metrolina discovered Sage MAS 500 had the MRP software it needed. Learn more.
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Old-world quality is great for a chocolate manufacturer, but old-style business systems are not. Hauser Chocolatier learned this the hard way, struggling for years with DOS-based accounting software. Needing a seamless flow of information from a system that would accommodate Hauser’s unique pricing structure, the company chose Sage MAS 90. Find out how Hauser uses this accounting solution for more than just accounting.
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Plasti Dip International has been a leader in rubberized and specialty coatings since 1972, selling its products to manufacturers, retailers, and distributors worldwide. To compete in a crowded retail marketplace, dominated by large retailers, Plasti Dip required integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and electronic data interchange (EDI) functionality. Discover how the company found the right solution.
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Manufacturers already apply transportation management systems (TMSs) to outbound shipping, but they often overlook the money they could save by using a TMS to control inbound shipping costs as well. Find out how improved inbound transportation practices can help you predict true total delivered costs, get visibility on inbound shipments, enforce routing guides, optimize freight, and minimize accessorial charges.
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Looking for the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) package for your small to medium business (SMB) can be a daunting task. A fair amount of information is available about the actual software packages, but there is little advice on how to choose the right one. Learn strategies for a successful software selection—from initial requirements gathering, to evaluation, selection, and final implementation.
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When looking at extended enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), or customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, some companies get distracted by details of the technology and miss the bigger picture. Learn how to choose an operating platform capable of supporting your business needs, today and in the foreseeable future, and ensure that your suppliers will be around when you need them.
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Open source software’s development processes, and the new business models its developers adopt, provide a new way of resolving the problems of cost and quality for enterprise software. To make an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system available to companies, cost reduction is the first priority. Find out how open source software makes it possible to reduce development costs—while resulting in a high-quality product.
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Gama Impresores, a midsized offset printing company based in Mexico City, recently bought an custom-built enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. However, while the ERP solution helped control back-office functions, it also showed that production was inefficient and that late deliveries threatened Gama’s future success. Find out how a planning tool that offers real-time scheduling helped cut late deliveries in half.
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Supply chain operations play a vital role in the success of any consumer or high-tech original equipment manufacturer (OEM). But some companies consistently outperform in the field. Find out how these companies are making their supply chains more effective and efficient by supporting sophisticated business processes with technologies like integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and demand management software.
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Organizations preparing to meet globalization head on face a complex set of business and technology challenges—from the supply chain complexity of entering new markets to the need for global visibility and standardized business processes. Learn how globally implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and integrated business processes are helping companies exploit new markets and lower manufacturing costs.
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Oil company Energen wrestles with volatile energy prices and their effect on operations. Energen’s key challenges included reducing operating costs and improving efficiency. Many tasks related to plant maintenance and purchasing were done manually—both cumbersome and limited in analysis abilities. After an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, Energen has a system that is integrated and automated. Learn more.
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With increased mergers and acquisitions at the global level, organizations have started recognizing the benefits of upgrading to a modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Learn how different approaches to ERP system and architecture upgrades can help your company drive down costs, raise employee productivity, and produce meaningful business process improvement.
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Master data is instrumental in determining how an organization produces, buys, and sells its goods and services. Inaccurate master data can lead to improper business decisions, loss of revenue, and noncompliance with regulatory and quality mandates. Find out how an Enterprise data management (EDM) strategy can help your company avoid these pitfalls by achieving clean, consolidated, and consistent master data.
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Compliance with regional and international standards, such as the Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) or Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directives, has made it more complicated for companies to deliver innovative products to customers. Learn how focusing on product innovation, data integration, and process optimization can help your company satisfy customer needs while meeting compliance standards.
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In today’s economy, competitive advantage can be short-lived. Companies recognize that continued investments in IT infrastructure are required to stay ahead. Executives in all industries must understand how IT drives value and competitive advantage. Explore the relationship between IT investment and gains in performance and productivity, and find out how leading companies are maximizing their returns on IT investments.
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In this challenging economy, standards for materials flow are critical to thriving in the global automotive industry. Successful suppliers know how to meet Materials Management Operations Guideline/Logistics Evaluation (MMOG/LE) standards. MMOG/LE is a self-assessment for material and logistics control used to evaluate production, parts and service, and more. Learn how it can help you succeed in the automotive market.
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In this economy, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a critical business asset and key driver of lean practices. According to Aberdeen Group, best-in-class manufacturing companies are 35 percent more likely than other companies to operate on a current version of ERP. Discover the key considerations―and the potential benefits―that you should keep top-of-mind as part of an overall application lifecycle strategy.
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The common perception is that top-tier enterprise software takes years to implement. This is true for more complex solutions. But other applications, when combined with effective project management by capable professionals, can be rolled out rapidly when it counts—like after a merger or acquisition. Get tips for a speedy enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, from a company that lived to tell the tale.
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As a midsize wholesale distributor, you need to stand out from your competition while improving efficiency. SAP Business All-in-One Solutions offer software designed to help you with your current needs, while remaining capable of supporting future growth. Find out how this solution can help you improve transparency and coordination between the warehouse and the executive suite, but also streamline inventory management.
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It’s not easy for manufacturing companies to improve operating efficiency while responding to market changes. Improving productivity across business processes requires visibility, speed, and automation. The SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program can tailor SAP manufacturing software to your needs and roll it out quickly—and, it can be adapted to changing requirements. Find out how it can grow with your company.
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Midsize companies engaged in manufacturing, trade, or services need innovative solutions they can implement quickly to help them manage changing customer demands, government regulations, and market requirements. Online tools can speed the configuration, control costs and scope, and tailor the solution to your company—and you’ll have the agility and support you need to grow, while staying within budget. Find out how.
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Nissin Foods has a long list of successful and innovative ramen products. In order to maximize profit, it is very important for Nissin to determine which products sell in which areas. Find out how the business intelligence (BI) solution Nissin adopted allows the company to make more precise forecasts, predict its key performance indicators (KPIs), and report important business information quickly and easily.
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In fast-paced, low-margin manufacturing environments, companies must embrace technology in order to solidify or gain competitive advantages. It is equally important to avoid adopting technology for technology’s sake. Find out how leading companies are focusing on efficiency and cost reduction by integrating manufacturing execution systems (MES) or manufacturing intelligence (MI) with enterprise resource planning (ERP).
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The trade-off between best-of-breed functionality and ease of integration is no longer so simple. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software continues to expand, blurring the boundaries of core ERP functionality. The three essential factors to consider in ERP versus best-of-breed decisions are functionality, integration, and the ability to upgrade. Find out the questions you need to ask when considering an ERP extension.
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Globalizing your market reach presents technology and business challenges to profitable growth. Your supply chain strategy for globalization should include an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that provides you with visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs). Find out why standardizing an automated ERP system across multiple sites can result in a 66 percent reduction in total time from delivery to order.
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Today, global trade management issues affect small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and large multinationals alike. While enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a key component of any globalization strategy, not all ERP vendors offer the same degree of localization. Before undertaking an ERP implementation, it’s important to understand the extent to which each vendor provides international support and functionality.
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ThyssenKrupp manufactures and configures custom elevators. To shorten sales cycles, reduce costs, and simplify ordering for agencies, distributors, and customers, ThyssenKrupp opted to implement the Cameleon Commerce Suite e-commerce platform and product configurator. Sales teams can now generate accurate real-time estimates and plans, and validate configurations for their customers using 3D visualization. Find out how.
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Invacare sells made-to-order (MTO) home medical equipment in 20 European countries. To shorten the product launch cycle, optimize the order process, and streamline spare part sales, Invacare chose the Cameleon Commerce Suite. Learn how integrating this e-commerce solution—with product configuration functions—with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helped Invacare reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.
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United Southern company sought an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that would facilitate its new, open-book management philosophy. Automation, comprehensive functionality, ease-of-use, and most importantly across-the-board access to accurate, relevant data were paramount. United Southern found the perfect fit with EnterpriseIQ, the single-source ERP system from IQMS. Learn more.
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To gain a competitive advantage, manufacturing companies that sell complex products are implementing a configurability strategy that provides more options using fewer resources. Learn about the two interrelated phases of a configurability strategy: developing the product—which emphasizes the essential functionality of a product configurator—and executing the lead-to-order (LTO) process in a lean manufacturing environment.
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A superior lead-to-order (LTO) process is essential in today's environment of mass customization. Companies striving to build and maintain market share require an LTO process supported by robust IT and product configuration capabilities. Learn how optimizing your LTO process can help you implement a successful mass customization strategy, and how the benefits of an optimized LTO process relate to lean manufacturing.
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SDMO Industries, a global manufacturer of power generators, sells its broad product line through a variety of sales channels. Communicating accurate product feature and pricing information was challenging, so SDMO looked for a customer relationship management (CRM) and order management software solution to improve sales productivity. Find out how SDMO optimized its global sales teams’ efficiency and reduced overall costs.
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Companies producing and selling complex and configured products can achieve a major competitive edge by successfully implementing product configurator software as a core element of a configurability strategy. This can provide a greater range of product variations, using fewer resources. Learn more about how you can gain the intended benefits from implementing a configurability strategy with product configurator software.
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Globalization and digital technologies provide great opportunities for companies operating in business to business (B2B) markets. There are many strategies you can use to automate the demands of business communication so it is more reliable, efficient, and profitable—and delivers more value to your customers. Learn about the four key practices that can help you improve your B2B relationships with buyers or sellers.
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The requirements of the engineer-to-order (ETO) environment create special challenges for capital equipment manufacturers. Traditional material requirements planning (MRP) techniques don’t account for these manufacturers’ needs. Before you invest in manufacturing software, you should carefully consider 10 questions to ensure that software vendors are focused on your business and can deliver the solution you need.
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The printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing market has changed, as production shifts from Europe and North America to countries in Asia. As markets migrate to these low-cost suppliers, how can a PCB manufacturer in Europe or North America compete? The best opportunities lie in high value-added products and services that can’t be easily duplicated. Learn more about taking the lead with new technologies and processes.
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Kanban—the Japanese term for physical or visual signs that trigger replenishment, which can be a useful part of lean manufacturing—is not a good fit in some situations. Alternatives to kanban can also eliminate waste in lean production by addressing inventory, materials, and replenishment process needs. Learn more on how you can find alternatives to kanban to make your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system “leaner.”
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can facilitate business improvements. But it can also create new challenges, including obsolete technology, lack of flexibility, and high support costs, to name a few. There’s a way to keep your current ERP system while extending its capabilities to remote manufacturing sites, service centers, and supply chain partners: a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach. Learn more.
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Haynes Wire Company produces wire for structural and welding applications as well as medical. The company’s existing homegrown system was increasingly unable to manage and provide access to the information needed to operate the growing business, such as per-order costs. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helped by enhancing knowledge of costs, with increased control, visibility, and profitability.
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From its two locations, All Flex serves industrial, medical, and other customers with printed circuits. Five years ago, All Flex kept its records in multiple, inconsistently updated spreadsheets—leading to parts shortages and production delays. With an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed for the printed circuit industry, All Flex increased sales and reduced delays to less than 1 percent. Find out how.
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B&K Corporation engineers and manufactures test and assembly systems for automotive and other components. But B&K didn’t have the infrastructure and systems support for effective engineering controls and documentation—manual and paper-based processes meant data was often three weeks old. Find out how B&K decreased costs and improved customer service with a new automated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Adkev is a custom molder of thermoplastic injection components. In order to serve its automotive customers, Adkev must meet strict requirements, including processing electronic orders effectively and maintaining control of inventory and production schedules for on-time delivery. Find out why the company’s old enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution couldn’t support these requirements, and how the new system can.
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Anderson Power Products manufactures power connectors for telecommunications and other industries. The company, needing to consolidate data for its standard and customized products across five global locations, found an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that offers one reliable point of entry. Discover how the ERP solution helped improve shipping, customer relationships, financial reporting time, and more.
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When Johnstown Wire Technologies left its parent company, it had to quickly establish its own IT resources, as the legacy system inhibited growth. The new system would have to be integrated, responsive, and include functionality for quality, lot tracing, scheduling, and cost management. Learn about the return on investment (ROI) the company found after it implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Toronto, Canada-based printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer Coretec expanded from one location to three. But its custom systems weren’t well integrated and were difficult to maintain. The company needed an integrated system to facilitate its goals for order volume and customer service and growth. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helped the company increase capacity and improve delivery times.
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A few years ago, the top customer complaint for plastics provider Rowmark was shipping errors. For several reasons, customers weren’t receiving what they ordered. Problems were traced back to handwritten inventory labels, and manual counting and checking of orders. Learn how the company upgraded the system it already had by adding bar code labels and scanning, as well as other electronic data interchange (EDI) techniques.
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A premium aluminum boat builder struggled to fit into a standard enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. But the company found it difficult to schedule and track engineer-to-order (ETO) jobs, and it was wasting a lot of time duplicating efforts. Also, it needed effective communication between computer-aided design (CAD) and ERP systems. Read about the solution that helped the company streamline its processes.
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A fast-growing robotics product manufacturer needed to track an extremely large inventory of individual products. A daily expanding product line presented even greater hurdles for inventory management, and meeting on-time delivery goals. The company’s old enterprise resource planning (ERP) system wasn’t keeping up, so the company moved to a system that allows more options for product customization and more. Learn how.
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Make-to-order company Advanced Scientifics produces medical devices, including bag systems, tubing assemblies, and molded components. Manual paper-based systems severely hampered the company’s growth potential: it couldn’t effectively control production consistency, as its inventory control and job orders weren’t scalable. Learn how annual revenue by went up 20 percent with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Nebraska, US-based Smeal grew to over 315 employees at two sites manufacturing 15 kinds of pumps, 12 types of aerial ladders, and four kinds of aerial platforms—all with over 4,400 custom options each. To increase efficiency and improve inventory tracking, the company installed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that integrated its old manual paper-based systems. Learn more about how the company benefited.
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At first glance, less-than-truckload (LTL) purchasing seems like a straightforward process. However, purchasing approaches that save you money in the short term also introduce your company to financial and operational risk. A truly successful LTL bidding process is data-driven and has very different financial outcomes for shippers, 3PLs, and their customers. Discover more about this and other LTL best practices.
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IVT manufactures and sells heat pumps for houses and properties. The company is one of Sweden’s fastest growing, with an average growth of over 12 percent per year over the last decade. Until 1999, IVT used a enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that lacked certain functionality. With the new system, on the other hand, business “can continue as usual,” claims CIO Mathias Ristl. Find out why.
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The drive to deliver high-quality produce—on time, against increasingly tight deadlines, and at reduced prices—is a challenge for even the most efficient suppliers. Having access to and sharing real-time information is essential to efficient delivery. Learn how an integrated supply chain solution with business intelligence (BI) capabilities offers greater efficiency, reduced of costs, and improved customer service.
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The one thing you can count on today in business is change, whether it’s customers, business models, or the pace of business. To manage change, companies rely on technology. But the most effective management control and optimization of company performance can be achieved only if you have the right systems. Discover how an integrated system can help you manage data and make better decisions, for a more successful company.
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It’s old, it’s new, and it’s the future. Pedigree tracking regulations were originally passed into law through the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA). After two decades of postponing enforcement, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted its final stay. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to be in compliance with 21 CFR Part 203 by the year 2011. Do you have what it takes for compliance?
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Swedish-based Tylö is the world’s leading manufacturer of sauna, shower, and steam bath systems. Family-owned since the 1940s, today Tylö generates growth by leveraging IT-based operational support. Thus, when new growth objectives called for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Tylö considered four alternatives: Movex, Jeeves, Axapta, and an upgrade of ASW. Find out which system it chose.
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Swedish-based PIAB is a global leader in industrial vacuum technology, and develops and sells solutions for improving productivity in the graphical, medical, and automobile industries, among others. Established in the 1950s, PIAB has subsidiaries and distributors in over 50 countries. In the early 2000s, PIAB sought to replace its aging enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Find out which system it chose, and why.
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As raw material and energy costs skyrocket, it is essential that food processors understand and control the costs of production. Unfortunately, many food manufacturers rely on inventory procedures that are peppered with disconnected technologies and inefficient manual processes. Find out how you can avoid the five problems caused by poorly controlled inventory and how to protect your margins in an uncertain market.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is often criticized for being complex and difficult to use—which puts up a barrier to receiving potential benefits. Systems with integrated search functionality and Web-like interfaces can make ERP solutions easier to use. Learn how to evaluate ERP software for its usability, so you can avoid investing in platforms that aren’t evolved toward usable and efficient interfaces.
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Big-name vendors are competing with those that have long catered to midsized enterprises. With a little savvy, midsize companies can make the dynamic enterprise resource planning (ERP) market work to their advantage. Learn the industry’s top 10 strategies to grow your company and revenue by upgrading from an out-of-the-box finance solution to one that better connects systems and processes throughout your business.
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For large organizations, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems promise big gains by helping grow revenue and increase productivity. But can ERP benefit small to medium businesses (SMBs) in the same way? This step-by-step guide includes important decision-making considerations, such as benefits and costs, across some of the top finance and accounting solution providers for small to midsize companies.
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When conducting a mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) system comparison, there are several key questions that you should ask: How much should ERP software cost? What IT resources will be needed to implement it? But don’t stop there. The seas of ERP are vast, and navigating through the current market is not simple. Equip yourself with these questions before evaluating and interviewing vendors.
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Novelis is the world leader in aluminum rolling and beverage can recycling. Novelis produces advanced aluminum sheet and foil products for customers in high-value markets, including automotive, transportation, packaging, construction, and printing. Find out how scheduling technology improved some of its most important key performance indicators (KPIs).
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Organizations are relying more and more on customer information to drive business processes. You probably spend a lot of time trying to make sure you get the right information to the right people at the right time—but is your data capture process as efficient as it could be? Learn about the issues surrounding data capture and data processing, and about a solution designed to help you address specific processing problems.
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One way to streamline the increasing amount of data related to the employees, clients, products, services, and functions of your organization is to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Businesses without a central ERP system waste time performing redundant tasks and reconciling duplicate data. Learn about a step-by-step process that can help you ease into ERP implementation, including training your staff.
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Today’s manufacturing environment requires a relentless drive for cost reduction and efficiency gains. Initiatives like lean and six sigma can bring sustainable improvements. To make these initiatives work, you need to base operational decisions on data rather than intuition and experience. But is your data always available and accurate? Find out how a factory information system can help bring your data out of hiding.
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When your quality control plan is complex because there are many features to control—and it involves many people—you need to pay special attention to your quality control process. Also, a complex plan places high demands on your software solution. Discover how an online integrated factory information system can work across production, job tracking, spoilage, and quality to support all of your quality control processes.
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Making a robust business case to convince management how a software solution can make a valuable contribution to your business isn’t easy. To build a successful case, you need a set of practical examples of what the software does and the benefits it can provide. Examine the strategies and problems associated with achieving your manufacturing objectives, and what the Lighthouse Systems’ solution can do to address them.
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Escalating health fears, new global policies, and a highly competitive market means that traceability is an issue food and beverage companies cannot afford to ignore. All this has led to a need for information on quality and food safety that companies must live up to. Explore the key issues surrounding traceability in the food and beverage industry, and find out why you might need to consider a new traceability system.
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Today’s consumers expect that the products they order will be delivered in a timely fashion—so timely, in fact, that the demands are often far greater than a manufacturer’s capabilities. Being unable to meet order request deadlines can be costly for producers. Learn about a solution that can help: material requirements planning (MRP) software can ensure materials and products are available for production and delivery.
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Gunther Gifts, a California (US)-based company, engraves and ships unique gifts nationwide to over 200,000 customers. An integrated solution that could efficiently manage accounting and inventory was crucial. And with several web sites taking information from the same inventory pool, the company needed a system to track inventory across multiple channels. Discover the company’s chosen solution, and the benefits gained.
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When the first Kenneth David Apparel store opened in 1992, the company could manage operations with an accounting solution alone. But as new stores opened, the company needed software to scale with growth—not only on the retail side, but design and manufacture too. Its new solution has e-commerce and point-of-sale features, and allows the company more insight for more effective management. Read more about the benefits.
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Fischer, the world’s largest ski manufacturer, grew 47 percent in a three-year period and found its operational staff was spending too much time reconciling data among disparate systems. Plus, it was impossible to accurately analyze customer data to forecast sales and inventory projections. After implementing Everest, Fischer has increased customer satisfaction with real-time order and inventory information. Find out how.
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With over 25,000 customers, Holland Bulb Farms of Wisconsin (US) needed a more efficient way to sell and market its gardening items on the Web. The company wanted an integrated system to keep track of its growing number of transactions, expenses, and purchases. With Everest, the company found the all-in-one solution it needed—and within the first month of going live, saw a 300-percent return on investment. Learn more.
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In the competitive auto industry, Nissen Chemitec America knows the need for lean manufacturing. Its legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was preventing the company from adopting lean principles, and so in 2003 it looked for an ERP tailored for contract manufacturers serving the auto industry. Learn how the new system helps the company stay lean within the confines of compliance and changing customer demands.
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In today’s competitive market, businesses are living in a constant state of change—especially in the services sector, which has to contend with a more fluid “people resource” factor. Yet most installed ERP solutions are falling short. Why are nearly half of all businesses essentially blowing their annual ERP budgets to support change? And what are software vendors doing about it? Find out now, in TEC’s 2008 Market Comparison Report.
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The loss of your computer facilities, even a temporary one, can seriously affect your operations, resulting in significant monetary consequences. And the risk of catastrophe has greatly increased. For this reason, you should invest in an effective and reliable backup system. Learn about procedures for server backup management, and the various tools available on the market that can help you protect your vital data.
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In 2007, IT GRCM (governance, risk, and compliance management) became a hot new segment in the IT industry. Many vendors began offering solutions for policy mapping, advanced computer controls collection, and more. Now, IT GRCM providers are revamping their products for increased efficiency and usability. Get ratings for the overall market as well as market segments, and learn from a vendor product and service analysis.
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Nucleus Research reports that NetSuite, a leading integrated Web-based business software suite, can deliver a positive return on investment (ROI) in fewer than nine months, by automating processes, boosting sales, increasing productivity, reducing or avoiding headcount, increasing data visibility, and retiring costly legacy systems. Learn how NetSuite business management software provides a positive ROI to businesses.
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IFS co-founder Ulf Stern and senior advisor Anders Wilhelmsson discuss how project management functionality that is tightly integrated with enterprise asset management (EAM) and asset lifecycle management (ALM) tools is essential to executives of asset-intensive industries. Lacking this integration, valuable asset data is lost and asset utilization cannot be maximized.
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The publishing industry is experiencing dramatic changes that are forcing companies to re-examine their operations, and to implement new processes and technologies to help them in the future. To handle the new cyclical flow of content in digital media, publishers will have to discover new ways to produce and deliver content to meet the changing demands of the market, using an integrated publishing model. Learn more.
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Simply automating business transactions, as part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, doesn’t provide a measurable return on investment. The real value comes from a meaningful use of the data the ERP system generates. Find out how using business intelligence functionality can help you enhance visibility into ERP system activity and improve reporting needs with business dashboards and portals.
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With the economy in India growing like never before, India’s small to medium businesses (SMBs) are in a position to market their products globally. But to succeed, SMBs need the right information about the business solutions market and the benefits of ERP implementation. This guide explains how Indian SMBs can find the solutions that are adaptable to their requirements and that can enable maximum growth at the lowest cost.
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For large organizations, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems promise big gains by helping grow revenue and increase productivity. But can ERP benefit small to medium businesses (SMBs) in the same way? With the increasing number of SMBs, tailored mid-market ERP solutions are now emerging. To reap the full benefit of ERP, however, SMBs must be ready to use it to its fullest capabilities. Find out how.
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Before you commit to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, you should answer several questions about what your company needs and wants to accomplish with its ERP strategy. The answers can help you determine which applications and what kind of functionality you need from your ERP solution—which goes a long way toward easing the implementation process. Discover the key questions now with this convenient checklist.
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Small and medium businesses (SMBs) often don’t know how to engage and manage outsourcing initiatives. Both outsourcing provider and seeker should together address several questions when starting a project to outsource business or technology processes. What’s the cost benefit? What are the risks involved? Find out the customer and the vendor perspectives, and how to achieve cost savings and service-level improvements.
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Inventory optimization enables companies to improve the performance of both the supply and maintenance functions. Your inventory optimization solution should not only identify optimal holdings of each item, but do so automatically—and analyze usage, as well as adjust stock holdings and reordering points on an ongoing basis. Find out how inventory optimization can help you reduce downtime and increase productivity.
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The final loop of information from a warehouse management system (WMS) to a warehouse worker and back is most critical—but in most systems, it’s also the weakest. Hand-held devices, such as touch-screens, bar code scanners, and RFID readers, can result in error-filled transactions. Learn how you can use multiple mobile devices more effectively to help improve the accuracy of your order fulfillment and inventory processes.
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Establishing, maintaining, and making records available as outlined in the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act is overwhelming for manufacturers. To prepare for any type of disaster—from cross-contamination to processing failure—you need to make sure your processes are adhering to regulations. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help minimize potentially adverse effects—on both your business and consumers.
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Your business has a better chance of withstanding the challenges of difficult economic times if it can respond quickly to change, provide accurate data, and fulfill demand in a timely way. Electronic data interchange (EDI) can help give you this competitive edge. But to make EDI work, you need to know the five worst mistakes to avoid making when you embark on an EDI integration project in your small to medium business.
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Increasingly, success depends not only on how fast manufacturers can act, but how fast they can react—and the effectiveness of the actions they take. But fast and effective reactions depend on having the information you need when you need it. Is your response management strategy efficient enough? Do you have enough control over key supply chain processes? Find out how to better manage your response to volatile markets.
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Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, had a rapidly expanding customer base and shortened product life cycles. This led the company to add more contract manufacturers to its supply chain, meaning more complex decisions had to be made in less time. To stay competitive, the company implemented response management technology. Learn more about the company’s rapid growth and the software that helped make it possible.
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Customer and commercial demands are changing the way manufacturers manage their positions in the supply chain. The financial impact on a company that is unable to respond to change can be crippling, especially in a global market. Learn about the benefits of using a response management process, so you can access live data from multiple systems across various locations—for more intelligent and empowered decision making.
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Managing the demands of constant change is one of the biggest challenges facing the electronics manufacturing services (EMS) industry today. Collaboration between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and contract manufacturers (CMs) can help both sides leverage the supply chain to manage change. Find out about a solution that can help you create a successful collaboration strategy that optimizes your supply chain.
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Buying a software solution that doesn’t closely fit your business processes significantly impacts the time and money your company needs to make it work. There are particular challenges in using a generic enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for the printing and packaging industry. Read about the functional gaps to consider when choosing an ERP system, and how to use it to lower your total cost of ownership (TCO).
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While the concept of lean manufacturing is well established in traditional manufacturing industries, its adoption in printing and packaging has been slow. Many companies have yet to fully realize the benefits of a holistic implementation. Find out how and when you should implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for a faster transition to lean processes—and improve efficiency and quality while reducing waste.
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Staffco, employing nearly 20 high-level sales engineers, sought a customer relationship management (CRM) system to free itself from the manual processes of its 2- to 3-year sales cycles, with lengthy design and test processes and associated reporting needs. Maximizer CRM’s functionalities, including automated reporting and a project management system, resulted in time and costs savings for Staffco. Learn how.
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A national health insurance company’s spreadsheet-based telecom management process was leading to time and money wasted as staff tried to make up for lack of spend visibility. Further pressure to prepare the telecom function for upcoming merger activity pushed the company to find a technology that would effect immediate cost savings and long-term telecom expense management. Read more about the solution the company chose.
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A company’s best opportunity to gain major margin improvement is in its front end—the sales, customer service, and processes needed to transform inquiries into orders. And one of the best strategies is to apply lean thinking to the front end. Read about an integrated solution that addresses the unique requirements of your sales processes to help dramatically reduce cycle times, eradicate waste, and increase your margins.
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A parts distributor had poorly used space and storage media with limited material visibility resulting in frequent stock-outs. To replace its old warehouse management system (WMS), the company decided to redesign its existing storage space and media in order to improve picking and replenishing efficiency and to reduce inventory carrying and material handling costs. Find out how a logistics modeling and design tool helped.
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A manufacturer of multiple electronic goods needed to maximize its available storage. A logistics modeling and design tool can help the company benefit from pull replenishment and focused storage approaches to logistics by enabling users to evaluate different storage options. Find out how the solution can support transition during initial design, including re-engineering of existing process, for continued results.
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Georg Fischer, a global provider of fluid-handling systems, was using a simple database to manage customer contact information. But the company couldn’t effectively track the progress of customer relationships, opportunities, and projects, and so key data was often lost. By implementing an integrated enterprise application, the company now has centralized customer contact information, and improved customer relationships.
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Unlike large manufacturing companies, small and medium facilities often handle asset management and maintenance with cobbled-together manual and semi-automated systems. This results in many lost benefits, including uninterrupted production and simplified regulatory compliance burdens. As you explore asset management solutions, you should know five critical factors that can determine the success or failure of your project.
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Oil and gas industry leader MODEC was already using Microsoft Dynamics SL for core financial activities. But as the company faced rapid growth, it began to look at how the technology could be used to improve other vital business processes. Discover how MODEC worked with the NexTec Group to hone those processes, identify areas for improvement, and propose and direct the technology initiatives to effect the needed changes.
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You’re probably already familiar with the role of a warehouse management system (WMS). But a warehouse control system (WCS)? In your warehouse, a WCS can play the role of a conductor by ensuring the individual pieces of material-handling equipment—such as conveyors and sorters—perform with harmony, precision, and efficiency. Find out how implementing a WCS execution system can complement your WMS’s planning abilities.
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To maintain a leadership position in the high-tech complex equipment industry, electronic equipment manufacturers need reliable solutions to improve order accuracy, optimize fulfillment, and increase revenue for value-added services. Does your solution quickly commercialize new technology, integrate software with systems, and differentiate those systems with value-added services? Find out about what you might be missing.
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Food and beverage manufacturers must aim to keep up with customer demands for a wide range of products, while managing the complex global supply chain and taking advantage of growth in new markets. For fast-growing or midsize companies, the challenges are even greater. Find out about a solution that can help optimize sales and marketing, and enable consumer-driven supply chains by speeding collaboration with suppliers.
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It is essential for durable goods companies to effectively manage multi-tiered distribution network and supply chains, to ensure the right products are available in the right stores at the right time—and the right price. What can you do to differentiate your products from your competitors’, control customer value, and accelerate order-to-delivery time while your supply chains become globally more complex? Find out now.
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Product quality and regulatory requirements, including goods traceability, are a key concern to consumable goods companies. Ensuring you remain profitable and competitive, increase market share, and reduce exposure to regulatory risks in quality and safety can be a huge challenge. Find out how implementing complete, industry-focused enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems can be critical to your success.
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The effort needed to manage a non-durable consumer goods company is more strenuous than ever. Business issues such as expanding product portfolios, complex distribution channels, and compliance requirements can impede your ability to compete in the global supply chain. Does your current business application enhance your sales and marketing, and enable demand-driven supply chains? Learn what you need to compete—and win.
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To stay ahead of the competition, medical device manufacturers must find ways to speed product development, create manufacturing efficiencies, and increase the effectiveness of sales and marketing investments—while addressing product safety and regulatory compliance. Read about a solution that incorporates best practices while maintaining the flexibility to support the evolving needs of your growing medical device company.
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Consumer electronics companies of any size must deliver superior customer service, optimize performance, and design agile supply networks. When using business software to deal with these challenges, growing electronics companies face the same issues as larger companies, but also have concerns about cost and implementation speed. Learn how a new class of scalable solutions can meet the needs of electronics manufacturers.
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Efficient procurement and sourcing. Storing and moving inventories. Attracting and retaining customers. Such challenges have an impact on wholesale distributors’ revenues, competitiveness, and profits. To make timely and informed decisions that can impact your business, you need answers to questions like “How can I offer value-added services to improve customer loyalty?” Get the answers to this and other key questions.
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What makes your enterprise resource planning (ERP) requirements difficult for most vendors to satisfy? As a life sciences company, you have operational processes that set you apart from other manufacturing companies. And, your regulatory requirements, including 21 CFR part 11, aren’t like those of any other industry. The challenge is to manage compliance risks and compliance costs. Learn about an ERP compliance strategy.
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Having insight into the real needs of individual customers helps maximize their loyalty. To meet these needs, companies must identify how to achieve higher levels of integration between the supply and demand chains internally—and among partners, suppliers, and customers. Learn how to connect all facets of your company to create value networks in your supply chain that can bring supply and demand systems together.
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The basic spreadsheet and accounting programs you’ve relied on ’til now won’t help your growing business eliminate decision-making bottlenecks, reduce IT costs, increase productivity, or improve the customer experience. To do all that requires an enterprise-wide, integrated software system. Learn how an integrated system can help take your business to the next level, and how to ensure you get the right system for you.
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For many distributors, inventory is the largest and perhaps the most important asset. Inventory ties up more money than buildings or equipment, and is often less “liquid.” It is crucial, then, that distributors develop and use a comprehensive set of tools that allows close monitoring of the performance of inventory investments. Read more about simple measurements that can help you maximize your investment in inventory.
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Though it’s advantageous to maintain operations in one location, distributors must sometimes operate multiple locations to meet local customers’ needs. Unfortunately, branch operations are expensive to operate, and to be successful, their services must be equal—but not identical—to those the home office provides. The challenges of knowing how to stock those branches can be overcome with a distribution software solution.
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Do distributors always have to settle for a trade-off between cost management and customer service? Is it impossible to keep costs down, yet still respond to customer needs and provide high-value products? Cost control needn’t impinge on customer service, and in fact, efficient processes can result in happier customers. How to use an integrated business management system to promote efficiency isn’t a secret—learn more.
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HSB-Stockholm, a property management firm, manages more than 200 client work orders daily. The company realized its back-office solution couldn’t address customer satisfaction, and that a new solution would have to keep up with the growth of field operations. Learn how HSB implemented a mobile, Internet-based solution that increased the speed of service delivery and maintenance operations by 50 percent.
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The number of mid-market manufacturers and other businesses using electronic data interchange (EDI) is expanding—and with it, the need to integrate EDI data with in-house enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting systems. Unfortunately, over 80 percent of data integration projects fail. Don’t let your company join that statistic. Learn about five key steps to buying and implementing EDI to ERP integration software.
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An online American bank, providing various financial services, needed to replace its legacy script-driven batch job processes with a job scheduling solution that could handle the bank’s growth. The bank’s IT team, however, faced two major hurdles affecting growth: both batch job processes and script-writing were manual and inefficient. A job management solution helped the bank achieve new levels of growth. Learn how.
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As a demand-driven manufacturer, you know how crucial up-to-date information is. But when shop floor data is collected with pen and paper, then transferred manually to multiple databases that aren’t always connected, you risk having your data uploaded after it’s needed. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can ease data integration. But first, separate the myths from the facts of bridging ERP and the shop floor.
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Distributors rely on software to help them make decisions about when and how much product inventory to replenish or reorder. But for the software to work effectively, it must be set up and used correctly. Learn how to implement the key replenishment parameters found in most distribution applications software packages, and how you can optimize their functionality to maximize your return on investment (ROI) and your profit.
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Increased competition, lower margins, and more customer demands mean that distributors have to provide better product availability and more services with fewer profit dollars. To accomplish this, estimates of future use of stocked items must be as accurate as possible. Discover how analyzing weighted averages, trend factors, and other formulas can help you accurately anticipate—and manage—future demand for your products.
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Distributors must ensure the quantity of products shown to be available in their software system agrees with what is physically in their warehouses. If it doesn’t, valuable time and money are lost as customers seek other suppliers, salespeople physically check stock, and buyers are forced to overstock. Learn the policies and procedures that can maximize your inventory management system to maintain accurate stock balances.
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IT administrators need to simplify both complex and routine tasks to deliver increasing value with limited resources. Data center automation can help minimize the duties associated with maintaining the existing infrastructure. Learn about a solution that can enable automated batch processing for more efficient operations, and integrate the diverse application and platform environments often found in today’s data centers.
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When buying a job scheduling solution, you should gather as much information as possible to make an objective comparison of competitive products’ key capabilities. Seek out customer references, analyst recommendations, and press articles to supplement vendor marketing materials. And to make sure you don’t miss any important evaluation criteria, benchmark the functions of job-scheduling software with a detailed checklist.
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Many of today’s business processes require batch operations. But IT organizations are struggling to keep up with scheduling as batch windows shrink and more jobs are added to a growing number of platforms. Are your batch production lines not as smooth as they should be? A scheduling tool can simplify, consolidate, and automate your batch scheduling; lower the cost of batch management; and reduce the risk of failed jobs.
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Rapid changes in the market and in customer needs mean small to medium businesses (SMBs) must work harder to stay competitive. Setting and achieving goals in this economic environment is increasingly difficult. Upgrading to a next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) can be a way to manage change—and even benefit from it. Learn more about how to customize an on-demand ERP solution that’s right for you.
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Ever stricter guidelines and policies to ensure the safety of the US food supply mean many food company executives need to assess their methods of minimizing food safety incidents. Existing “one-up” or “one-back” measures no longer go far enough. Make sure you get a wider view: find out how multi-dimensional traceability (MDT) can help collect and analyze information at every step in the food production process chain.
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Simulation software can give you valuable insights into the forecasted outcomes of your business processes and decision making. But if you don’t have the type of simulation software than can develop and analyze the types of models made for your particular industry or service offering, you won’t get insights that really help. With this concise list, learn about the functions of three types of computer simulation software.
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Successful strategic planning relies on your ability to develop and evaluate alternative strategies to identify the most viable approach. But when the outcomes are dependent on complex systems that are difficult to predict, you might conclude that the unknowns are insurmountable. Avoid making decisions based on intuition—develop models using computer simulation for clearer pictures of the outcomes of your strategies.
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Many companies now combine services in pre-packaged, high-value bundles to reduce customer churn rates. And these bundled services have proved to bring returns. But they also bring complexity—some major service providers may have over 150 product catalogs. Get tips on how to overcome the problems of bundling, and avoid catalog duplication in your product or service offering, with product information management (PIM).
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All government projects must be run as efficiently as possible. Modeling and simulation tools can help maximize efficiency and predict the costs and risks associated with many government projects. Model-building templates, plus features that allow users to share and re-use models and create custom models, can help government successfully design and complete major environmental and infrastructural projects. Find out more.
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Spreadsheets are great for accounting, but they simply don’t cut it when you need to build realistic and dynamic models of complex business and engineering systems. What can you do when your calculations—and your need for visibility and risk management—demand more than rows and columns? Create and manipulate data and equations, and predict the future behavior of systems, with a flexible, object-based simulation platform.
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Wellman Thermal, a make-to-contract (MTC) manufacturer of boilers and industrial furnaces, needed an information system to record actual costs and allocate resources for each project from beginning to end. It also wanted help forecasting the outcome of individual projects. The system Wellman implemented allows the company better control of factory capacity planning and high visibility into operations. Get the details.
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By implementing a job costing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed for discrete manufacturing, Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) was able to save almost $250,000 (USD). Managers now have more accurate views of job completion and employee performance. Plus, the system’s ability to sort service contracts by region enables YESCO to be more responsive to its customers. Learn about the other benefits.
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Nol-Tec, a manufacturer of conveying equipment, needed a job costing solution that would integrate key information about parts and assemblies. Why? So its sales and engineering teams could communicate better about customers’ systems. The company found Jobscope’s order analysis, accounts payable, and customer tracking modules integrated well with its own sales quotation system and helped improved visibility. Learn more.
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Inventory has been—and continues to be—the lifeblood of the distribution marketplace. While many companies are slow to adopt new strategies and technologies, a growing number of distributors are leveraging inventory practices to improve key metrics like customer retention, gross margins, and inventory turns. Read these research survey findings to find out how you can make better inventory management technology decisions.
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In today’s increasingly competitive global economy, manufacturers must find ways to improve quality while maintaining compliance with government and industry mandates. But in the search for a suitable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, many are often left with empty promises. Discover why key capabilities such as traceability are vital in an ERP solution—especially for high-precision manufacturers.
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Identifying and managing the risks associated with water resource projects is a challenge due to the variables of water systems. To overcome this challenge, you need to compile all available information into a framework that can be used to predict the outcome of alternatives. Find out how a computer simulation model can help water resource engineers improve the financial and environmental performance of their operations.
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When it comes to the business challenges of the distribution industry, one solution does not fit all. Packaged with smart functionality to address key business issues, Infor’s products have successfully fulfilled the needs of distributors worldwide. Learn how its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) solutions have helped companies improve market position, streamline business processes, and more.
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Manufacturing today is fraught with uncertainties in the supply chain due to a variety of global issues, including weather and exchange rates. You can counter supply problems with “safety stock.” But this extra inventory goes against the rules of an efficient lean environment. How can you stay demand driven, without a supply snafu? Find out how an information management system can help forecast your supply chain needs.
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Companies looking to expand their facilities and strategize their way into the marketplace often focus most of their efforts on bottom line results. During the process, they factor in infrastructure costs but often pay little attention on how to control them. Find out how a Web-enabled solution that puts infrastructure management sharply in focus can help you easily access distributed information while helping curb costs.
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While consumer products manufacturers are relatively recent adopters of lean programs, they are already achieving value through a firm commitment to understanding how lean will affect their business processes. Those who are eager to begin the lean journey, however, must learn how to prioritize the metrics that matter, and frequently measure them in order to monitor the effectiveness of the program. Discover why it works.
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As a fast-growing company, you have the same objectives as any business. But you’re probably finding it challenging to gain the control you need to achieve these goals without sacrificing your IT budget. And when you try to achieve control, it’s often at the risk of slowing down your business. Find out how having enterprise-wide visibility of your business processes and activities can put you back in the driver’s seat.
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This report identifies the major IT issues faced by small to midsized businesses (SMBs), including information silos, lack of IT staff, and outdated business applications. Because they lack the right information to meet customer expectations, SMBs have difficulty reacting quickly to fast-changing market dynamics and growing their revenue. Find out how the elimination of information silos can create a more consistent effective customer experience.
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Complying with current good manufacturing processes (GMPs) is no easy task for food manufacturers. Companies that don t have a solid foundation to help with quality control procedures, audit trails, and product traceability and recall are at an even greater disadvantage. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can help with food safety compliance—so it's your cookie that crumbles, not your foundation.
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Flakeboard's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system could not communicate effectively amongst its global sites. To address this challenge, and to manage growth, the company worked with Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) to perform a detailed comparison of vendors' solutions. Read more about how TEC's expertise helped Flakeboard reduce the costs, risks, and time involved in the vendor selection process.
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Some managers have concluded that strategic planning is nothing more than an exercise in futility, to be taken out and dusted off at annual meetings. However, strategic planning can still help direct your company and improve earnings. The trick is strategizing well—which means having all the information you need, when you need it. Find out how to hone your competitive edge with integrated business planning capabilities.
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Over 80 percent of consultants in service organizations consider spreadsheet-based business plan modeling inadequate. Weak client–partner relationships reflect this inadequacy. An integrated business planning and modeling platform can provide deeper insight into a range of strategic and operational issues. Find out how this can result in enhanced decision making and optimized long-term client engagement and satisfaction.
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There's a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for every business. But which one is best for yours? With so many variations in CRM modules, such as sales force management, marketing, and analytics, it can be difficult to find the one that meets your functional requirements. Read this checklist for five steps that can help you choose the CRM solution that aligns with your company's budget, scale, and goals.
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When buying customer relationship management (CRM) software, it s important to know what functionalities are offered in the wide range of solutions available. But just as important is your need to define your company's requirements in sales force management, marketing management, customer support, and analytics. Find out how to match vendor offerings with your needs with this concise guide to CRM essentials.
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A lean supply chain consists of two major components—lean manufacturing and lean distribution—which focus on satisfying customer demand efficiently, at the lowest cost, with the least amount of waste. But what if your replenishment strategy is your distribution center’s weakest link? To improve customer satisfaction and achieve efficiency and balance, your replenishment strategy must consider all the key variables.
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Getting lean is not a simple task; it requires an aggressive, iterative approach to examine complex tradeoffs. And given the number of variables that characterize a distribution center (DC) and its constituent stock keeping units (SKUs), performing this type of analysis without using the right tools can be daunting—if not impossible. Find out how a tool-based approach can make getting lean easier.
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JM Family Enterprises knew there had to be a more efficient way to organize its picking, packing, and tracking systems. Because of the specific nature of its documents, it was vital they arrive at the correct dealership on time. In order to achieve continued growth, it would need an automated system. Since implementing a warehouse management system (WMS), the company has reduced its paper processing by 80 percent.
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International Marketing Group (IMG) was used to tall orders. And although fulfillment mistakes were rare for the third-party logistics company, any errors that did occur were extremely costly. In order to stay competitive, IMG realized that it would need to increase its fulfillment output. With its new warehouse management system (WMS), IMG’s shipping time has gone from several days to mere hours.
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To effectively serve their customers, operations managers need to have visibility as well as control of the delivery and quality of their outsourced components. And because supply chain management is such a critical part of the manufacturing process, it’s important to have the right tools to optimize performance. Find out how real-time collaborative manufacturing is now helping to solve some key manufacturing problems.
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The media industry is undergoing radical and rapid change driven by liberalization, privatization, and digitization. Broadcasting is no longer highly regulated, but is ever more dynamic and competitive—and the logistical challenges of production planning for TV and radio ever more complex. Implement a composite resource planning and scheduling solution to maximize your equipment, facilities, and employees.
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Service excellence alone is not enough to ensure future growth and profitability in today’s challenging market. Streamlining IT processes is essential to your business workflow. Whatever your professional services software needs—from customer relationship management (CRM) to human capital management—it’s time to learn your lessons: find out key strategies and best practices that can help your company grow profitably.
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Software alone is not enough to make your business run more smoothly and cost-effectively. For software to deliver value to your organization, your users must have the skills to use it accurately and intelligently. With careful planning and the right process improvement tools, best-in-class businesses are creating performance cycles that establish user acceptance and understanding up front. Shouldn’t your business be one of them?
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In the past, full efficiency was almost impossible for most manufacturing sites thanks to lack of integration between plant systems and business systems. But that’s changing now, with the advent of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA allows you to change and improve your processes without expensive IT integration projects. Learn about the business opportunities SOA can create for you.
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The future, they say, is demand-driven. Not having the data you need to forecast your supply and demand processes means you’re in the slow lane toward a successful future. But if you already know store information is vital to your supply chain, you’re halfway there. Go the distance: learn how direct store delivery (DSD) solutions can give your consumer package goods (CPG) company more control over supply chain processes.
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How can you leverage your current IT infrastructure without increasing complexity—and cost? Creating the next generation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) via enterprise services architecture (ESA) outsourcing can make your IT system leaner, less expensive, and more adaptive. Read more for a clear picture of how to avoid difficulties when adopting an enterprise services approach for your back-office processes.
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Changing business practices, especially those that consolidate business and IT functions, requires careful research and decision making. For companies needing to move beyond traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, enterprise service applications (ESA) can help reduce the complexity of having disparate IT systems. Find out about the benefits of ESA and how it can help you achieve operational excellence.
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Managing growth is a monumental undertaking—and one that Valero Energy Corporation has mastered. But as one of the largest oil refinery companies in North America, with revenues exceeding $90 billion (USD), the company needed to find a way to fit new applications into its existing infrastructure in a quick and cost-effective manner. By switching to SAP’s NetWeaver platform, Valero saved $480,000 (USD) in the first month.
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A common issue facing small to medium business (SMB) manufacturers today is finding out how to increase revenue and grow business without significantly adding staff. With larger firms able to compete by drawing upon greater financial resources, the SMB manufacturer is at a distinct disadvantage. Find out about five ways a lean strategy for small business can help you maximize resource use and minimize overhead costs.
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As one of North America’s premier producers of duck products, Maple Leaf Farms knew the importance of delivering fresh, quality goods to its customers. But in order to streamline its manufacturing, shipping, and reporting processes, it would need to invest in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Since implementing ERP, the company has profited from greater inventory control and improved customer service.
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As one of the largest gear manufacturers in India, Sona Koyo knew that in order to retain its competitive edge, changes to its legacy systems would be required. On average, Sona’s employees were wasting 5 percent of their time redoing paperwork and tracking activities. Since integrating a business process management (BPM) system, Sona’s employees have cut down their tracking time down to zero hours with minimal efforts.
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Purchasing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a huge investment for any business—and knowing whether or not you’re buying the right system for the best price isn’t easy. Before meeting with your ERP vendor to negotiate the contract, there are a few important things you should take into account. Discover ten tips that can help you reach an agreement on pricing and service levels quickly and painlessly.
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Despite varying locations and industries, distributors worldwide often face similar inventory-related problems. Too much of one product, not enough of another… and the list goes on. Discover how many forward-thinking distributors have learned to better manage production inventory—and increase efficiency and profitability—with smart inventory management strategies based on tried and proven methods and best practices.
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Although enterprise resource planning (ERP) software industry consolidation is nothing new, the constantly changing market dynamic affects product lifecycles, supportability, and ERP return on investment. In fact, you could say that it both creates new potential and contributes to old problems. Get a handle on what this changing market means for you, with this overview of industry consolidation pros and cons.
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For many companies, enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the single most important infrastructure element, thanks largely to its power in delivering end-to-end integration. New technology in ERP software has grown in sophistication over the years, enabling even further automation of business functions. Find out how you can leverage one ERP solution to deal with one of your biggest bugbears: Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
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Unlike most other business, transmission and distribution companies do not have the flexibility to adjust their prices independently based on demand-supply dynamics. Given the practice of performance-based rate-making, these companies must continually strive to reduce cost. To achieve this, supply chain managers must create a blueprint of their processes by systematically analyzing their supply chain practices.
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Production lines and distribution centers have optimum target levels for leanness, but reaching these levels can be difficult. By implementing LeadTime Technology (LTT), manufacturers benefit from leaner inventories, greater customer service levels, and increased economic profit. Find out what the five most important points on LLT and lean operations are and how applying these tools can work to your advantage.
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Canadian manufacturers are getting squeezed. Challenged by a rising Canadian dollar, forced to hold the line on prices in the US market, pressured by customer demand for lower prices, better quality, and quicker service, these manufacturers need a way to retain their competitive edge and increase bottom-line profitability. Find out why product data management (PDM) is a solution you can turn to in these challenging times.
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What’s the difference between the right enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the wrong one? What it’ll do to your bottom line. Knowing which questions to ask when researching your options, however, can help mitigate this risk. Here are five essential criteria that should top your list when evaluating ERP vendors. Find out how exercising due diligence can help you choose a system that won’t drain your IT budget.
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To continue to grow and provide better value to its customers, PICO Electronics required a comprehensive system to track and control its large and fluid inventory—and handle a tremendous number of daily orders. It also needed solid insight into procurement processes in order to fill customer orders on time. Find out how PICO’s management finally got what it was looking for—on time and on budget.
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For a decade, IndustryWeek and the Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) Census of Manufacturers have provided data to US manufacturers. This year, MPI fielded a similar survey in Canada, offering an intriguing look into the differences between the Canadian and US manufacturing landscapes. This executive summary presents combined data from these surveys, aimed at helping manufacturers meet future challenges.
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This second annual survey of the warehousing and distribution industry, conducted by the Manufacturing Performance Institute (MPI) Census of Manufacturers, explores the metrics, management practices, and business concerns of over 200 US warehouse and distribution facilities. This data is presented in easy-to-understand tables and charts, and may be useful for companies currently facing distribution center challenges.
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Manufacturers today face increasing pressures to boost revenues and secure profitability. But for them to realize the full financial value of these initiatives, they must invest in a system that can quickly and easily implement or consolidate core business applications. With QAD on-demand, businesses can reduce IT complexity and costs with simplified deployment options and complete application management alternatives.
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In today’s business environment, companies that used to compete with each other routinely form alliances to attain their business objectives. Find out how PMOLink, a business consulting firm, managed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) selection project for a client by joining forces with Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC). The end result: a best-match ERP system for the client—nine months ahead of schedule.
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Soudronic AG’s incoming order confirmations were getting out of hand and finding misfiled critical documents was increasingly laborious. Before implementing OCR for AnyDoc, documents were printed and filed in binders, together with supporting documentation. With AnyDoc’s optical character recognition solution, Soudronic can retrieve its documents more quickly, and its labor and storage costs have been reduced.
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UreSil, a manufacturer of specialized health care products, feared its legacy manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software was hindering efficiency and compliance. The Sage ERP X3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) came to the rescue, and after a formal ERP training program, full implementation required only one week. All processes, including tracking and inventory, are now streamlined, flexible—and compliant.
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Food-borne illnesses are recognized as a significant public health problem in the US today. As such, food inspection and safety administrators have implemented Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems regulations. Without the proper software system, however, complying with HACCP requirements can be difficult. With Sage ERP X3 process manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP), it doesn’t have to be.
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Today, more and more companies are purchasing goods from overseas. But once those goods are on the water, many companies find it difficult to keep track of where they are at any given time. Ineffective container management leads to extra costs, but with Sage ERP X3’s import tracking functionality, business functions are tied together in a single database—enabling real-time access to information and improving productivity.
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Golden Artist Colors knew that operating its business with several stand-alone software packages would no longer cut it. To streamline the flow of information throughout its facilities, it felt the time had come to invest in a true enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Sage ERP X3 offered Golden the most functionality for the best price, and since implementing it, Golden has increased on-time shipments by 15 percent.
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Software implementation can be complex. Even when it seems all your business processes and systems are “go” after the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, there might still be room for improvement. Find out how a post-implementation system assessment of technical and functional systems can improve data capture accuracy, increase user buy-in, and boost your return on investment (ROI).
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Computerized numerical control (CNC) is crucial to the successful operation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, but the road to success is sometimes rocky. To surmount the challenges of meeting your CNC needs, learn how an on-demand (or CNC managed services) model can improve your return on investment, and streamline and standardize your business processes.
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Kelly-Moore Paints, the largest employee-owned paint company in the US, was looking to consolidate all business activities into one company-wide platform. The challenge: it had only 10 months in which to complete the project—including requirements-gathering, evaluation and selection, and implementation. Find out how Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) helped Kelly-Moore take control of its software selection project.
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Manufacturing industries have their own challenges to increase customer value and lower costs. How can enterprises make the most of their resources to create new market opportunities and more efficient supplier and customer networks? An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with transparent and hierarchical manufacturing plans can offer increased accuracy, lower inventory costs, and better supply chain performance.
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Today, more business than ever is done in branch offices or at remote sites, but very few IT resources are actually hosted there. To reduce costs, businesses often consolidate applications—but consolidation can lead to poor performance. With the right solution, however, acceleration techniques—like bandwidth management and protocol optimization—can be properly dispersed to remote applications, helping increase performance.
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Logo Business Solutions’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Unity, was implemented by several automotive parts manufacturers and suppliers. Unity’s ability to integrate with electronic data interchange (EDI) helped these companies better handle purchasing, planning, production, invoicing, reporting, and sales. Learn more about the features and functions of Unity ERP.
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Istikbal, Turkey’s largest furniture manufacturer, implemented the Unity enterprise resource planning (ERP) system throughout its seven main companies in 2005. With Unity, the company found better sales management, efficient production planning, and optimal distribution management, among other benefits. Learn how Unity’s inbound logistics, warehouse management, finance, and other modules can work for your enterprise.
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Compliance with regulatory requirements is a business-critical need you must maintain. But meeting this need is more challenging with the creation of new regulations, such as 21 CFR Part 11, governing the use of software for secure data processing. But compliance is possible: an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can help with audits, document and digital signatures, validation scripts, and other security needs.
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Aceto Corporation, a global importer and distributor of chemical-related products, was operating on a legacy system that didn’t allow the company to meet new compliance demands. To increase automation and improve real-time performance, Aceto implemented the Sage ERP X3 Process enterprise resource planning solution. Learn more about how Aceto’s needs for compliance and industry-specific functionality were met.
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Web-based collaboration with international partners, suppliers, and customers helps companies make end-to-end processes more efficient and cost-effective. An electronic enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution allows you to set up various types of external connections to your business applications, and reduce complexity. One result: you will be better able to respond to the needs of your customers. Find out more.
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A secure and accurate flow of information in your supply chain operations has never been more critical—and complex. Digital transfer of unstructured information is a security risk, for both confidentiality and compliance, and traditional file transfer methods are now falling short. A managed file transfer solution combining hardware, software, and networks can meet your demands for visibility, security, and compliance.
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What kind of tangible return on investment (ROI) can you expect from your enterprise resource planning (ERP) software? The answer: a lot more than you might expect. Purchasing ERP software represents a significant financial commitment, but in most cases, the software pays for itself within the first year—and will continue to generate cost savings for many years after. Where do these cost savings come from? Find out here.
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As the solution of choice for many companies, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have helped many manufacturers operate more efficiently and effectively. By streamlining business operations, ERP systems can solve many of the problems faced by today’s manufacturing companies—and help them become leaner and more competitive. Find out how an ERP solution can work for your company.
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For years, outsourcing has been a way of life for many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), as they regularly offload certain activities to contract manufacturers (CMs). But despite the significant benefits that outsourcing provides, there are also risks and challenges involved that OEMs must consider. Learn about the seven common pitfalls to avoid, and how they can impact your manufacturing outsourcing success.
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Every company faces different challenges and has different needs in regard to enterprise resource planning (ERP). Choosing the right ERP system can be difficult because there is really no one-size-fits-all ERP solution. However, there are certain basic principles that apply to nearly every company’s situation. Find out what they are, and learn how you can increase your chances of a successful ERP implementation.
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The first step in any enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation involves bringing together the team that will plan and implement the project—your ERP task force. But who should be a part of this task force and why? Selecting the right people is imperative and can play a major role in determining the success or failure of your ERP effort. Find out about what you should beware of when assembling your team.
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Implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system—even for small to medium businesses (SMBs)—is a smart move. But depending on the type of business, there can be many different processes to integrate—making it difficult to know what type of system to choose. For growing project-based companies faced with the challenge of managing many complex projects, the ideal ERP system should be customizable yet scalable.
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It’s no longer acceptable for salespeople to respond to customers’ inquiries with “I’ll get back to you.” In the time it takes to respond, a competitor with stronger product knowledge, customized proposals, or better pricing will win your business. Find out how to provide your salespeople with the ability to explain complex manufacturing processes and other key factors—before you lose your sales to your competitors.
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Maybe you’ve already invested in an e-commerce site for your business. However, to fully maximize its potential, it must be integrated with your accounting system. If not, your staff may be wasting valuable time re-entering inventory and customer data from one system into another. Save time, reduce labor costs, and boost your competitive advantage with an e-commerce solution that allows full integration.
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For over 30 years, Madison Chemical Industries has sold 100 percent polyurethane coatings and linings to companies around the globe. With the technical challenges it faced as a growing company, it was becoming clear that the DOS-based system it was using to maintain its inventory had to go. With an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, however, Madison has been able to reduce its inventory by 15 percent.
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Raining Rose, maker of body care products, started as a family hobby back in 1996. Since then, business has soared—making it one of the fastest growing companies in the US. In 2004, however, it faced serious challenges related to this rapid growth; poor inventory control was affecting customer service. But since deploying an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, it has seen vast improvements in inventory accuracy.
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Superior Quality Foods was growing, but poor inventory control was impacting its profitability. To ensure there was enough stock to meet production needs, it always ordered extra raw materials—just in case. To reduce costs and improve inventory control, Superior chose an enterprise resource planning (ERP) and mobile wireless inventory system—and since its implementation has realized 98 percent accuracy in inventory.
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Corporate governance encompasses the processes and systems by which organizations operate—and it affects every business. To effectively participate in governance processes, businesses should consider closed-loop service oriented architecture (SOA). Although stand-alone applications for governance, management, and security exist, find out why they do not enable the demand and value management that closed-loop SOA offers.
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International Coatings International (ICI), a producer of plastics compounds, upgraded to BatchMaster’s 2002 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution in order to support its projected growth. This resulted in improved cash flow, reduced inventory, and an elimination of shortages. Read on and find out how ICI plans to optimize production and gain tighter inventory control by implementing additional BatchMaster modules.
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Desserts of Distinction was using too many ingredients to take care of its key business activities. Storing recipes, controlling inventory, and tracking orders required various accounting software applications, spreadsheets, and databases. As a result, simple processes were time-consuming and manually intensive. Find out how BatchMaster addressed a number of needs, including inventory accuracy and traceability.
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Growth is predicted for the nutraceutical industry, as well as consolidation. Will the nutraceutical manufacturer find ways of thriving in a competitive market? Five critical requirements increase your chances of survival. The first is to integrate your business processes and information, with a single, unified enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution database. Don’t miss the other four—find out how you can benefit.
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Having the right IT infrastructure is critical to consistent growth and profitability for midsize companies. Sadly, many business applications don’t support changes to both business processes and a company’s organizational structure. In fact, many are inflexible and create disconnects between departments. However, there is a solution that’s built to enable growth and adaptability in all business functions and operations.
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Software company Terra Technology’s development team often worked remotely, without a centralized development system. Managing documents manually was quickly becoming an unproductive use of the team s time—and increased its chances of making errors. Since using ProjectLocker’s document management system, Terra Technology has saved valuable time and money, and can now focus on its core competency—supply chain software.
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A customer relationship management (CRM) solution can enhance your overall business performance by integrating your front- and back-office activities, now and in the future. There are five key considerations involved in an effective CRM implementation. The first is the quality of your customer and business data. Secondly, it’s important to maximize user adoption. Learn about the other three and how you stand to benefit.
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Amcor Sunclipse realized that although it knew the importance of encouraging and rewarding employees, to actually demonstrate support for them through timely, comprehensive appraisals was becoming a challenge. Since implementing Halogen’s employee performance management (EPM) solution, Amcor has improved the speed and quality of its employee appraisals and has centralized the results to enable reporting of employee skills.
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What does Visibility’s .NET enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution have that others don’t? .NET technology. And because it contains no legacy code, it provides a system that’s accessible using a web-browser and has a user interface equal in functionality to a client-server application. In fact, any client PC with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later can operate it—without compromising the quality of the user experience.
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In today’s business world, heightened privacy concerns and tightened regulations such as the US Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act have forced organizations to improve their workflow and archival and records management processes. That's why many results-oriented organizations are now using workflow software—bringing together people, processes, and documents to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and meet compliance requirements.
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Small businesses often become trapped by their outdated accounting systems, limiting their profits and arresting their growth. How can your business avoid this software trap? Planning and anticipating your business growth will help you minimize this costly mistake. Find the right accounting or enterprise resource planning solution to help your small business continue to expand and remain successful.
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Accounting and enterprise resource planning software are not interchangeable solutions. How do you decide which option is for you? Outlining your business structure and considering four key facets of your selection process will help you determine which software meets all your business needs. You can find the right product for your business, whether you need a bookkeeping or all-encompassing business software.
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Manufacturers’ business needs have changed significantly over the past few years, evolving the roles that technology plays within the manufacturing process. Two key technologies—enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM)—have developed into key success factors for manufacturers and when combined, provide a collaborative environment that adds value and helps in maintaining a competitive edge.
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Developing a good disaster recovery plan (DRP) in today’s business world is a must. In fact, downplaying the importance of a DRP can be costly—especially if you’re a small to medium business (SMB) that is slow in adopting DRP. Recent studies have shown that 40 percent of businesses that have encountered a disaster close their doors within the following five years. To stay afloat, here are ten steps that should be taken.
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Information lifecycle management (ILM) is rapidly gaining acceptance as a process crucial to the success of many IT initiatives. The reason for this is the importance of managing data. With the growing demand for ILM comes a variety of solutions that follow a disjointed, point product approach. By choosing an ILM software designed to scale to its needs, a business can benefit from software built on a unified platform.
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Data breach is a very real problem in business today. Every day, organizations store massive amounts of data inside database tables—data ranging from credit card transactions to product inventories. This valuable information is what runs the business. In order to protect this data and stay on top of compliance, an enterprise data management solution that respects information privacy regulations should be considered.
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Fax hardware plays a crucial role in the sending and receiving of business documents. With high-volume use over time, instabilities in performance can occur. Therefore, how well fax boards and fax software applications perform together becomes an important consideration. With IQ Express intelligent fax board series, fax servers send and receive corporate documents electronically—reducing costs and improving productivity.
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For automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, consumer demands are high and global competition is fierce. To compete successfully, manufacturers must meet expectations and still generate an acceptable profit margin. By using QAD’s Just-in-time (JIT) Sequencing process together with its Manufacturing Execution Workbench (MEW) tools, automotive manufacturers will have the foundation needed to meet these challenges.
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Best-in-class manufacturers are driven to improve plant floor data management by the need to enhance performance improvement program effectiveness, as well as operational performance visibility. Up to two-thirds of these manufacturers address these pressures through technology. If you want to lead the pack—instead of getting buried under it—read this white paper to find out which technologies are right for you.
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Leading research finds that the top pressures for improving sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes include rising customer order fill rate expectations, shrinking profit margins, and customer retention challenges. However, current S&OP processes are failing to alleviate these pressures. Is your company on the wrong side of the industry benchmark? Learn what steps your company should take before it’s too late.
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Process industries (chemicals, food and beverage, oil and gas, etc.) face rising manufacturing and logistics costs. And they’re finding that the old strategies for cost containment no longer pack the same punch. Some surveys show that 75 percent of all respondents are redesigning their supply chains to keep these costs in check. Are you one of them? No? You’ve got a lot of catching up to do—and very little time to do it.
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When Naghi Group’s annual revenue began to soar, it realized that running core business operations on multiple systems was no longer feasible; its current solution lacked the integration capabilities necessary to communicate with its distribution and manufacturing departments. After only a few months since integrating VAI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, Naghi has already realized its many benefits.
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In today’s economic climate, you need to ensure you keep your business and operational costs down while delivering world-class customer service. Conventional stand-alone business software applications do not enable you to do this. The business benefits of software as a service (SaaS) applications are leading many smart companies to use SaaS to help cut costs, improve operational productivity, and increase efficiency.
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To boot or pre-boot, that is the question. There’s no doubt that operating systems (OSs) are complicated given the sheer amount of code that must be flawlessly interfaced and the potential vulnerabilities that can ensue. While full disk encryption (FDE) is one step closer to a more secure OS, encryption without strong authentication isn’t enough. For security-conscious users, pre-boot authentication is the only way to go.
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Looking for a supply chain management (SCM) strategy that will give you a competitive advantage and ensure that projects yield results? Want to make sure that your SCM solution will allow continuous improvements? Already using six sigma and lean thinking practices, but want a way to bring them together and maximize their functions? Find out how a business process reference model can amplify your existing architectures.
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Many manufacturers want to increase production efficiency and improve quality—but how can they ensure their efforts are successful? A process-oriented enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may be the answer. This white paper includes case studies on a variety of process manufacturing industries and provides valuable insights into the ERP capabilities required to successfully manage a process-oriented implementation.
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On top of the many challenges faced by IT managers today comes yet another challenge: ensuring efficient and secure user access to SAP. Because of the unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend servers, the SAP environment—and the confidential data it stores—become vulnerable. With a secure single sign-on solution to SAP, however, you can significantly improve the security of this environment.
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Today’s business environment is more mobile than ever. With more employees traveling—using laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and home computers to conduct business—vulnerabilities increase. Companies are now protecting their digital assets with full disk encryption (FDE). Recent advances in FDE allow businesses to protect data stored on users’ mobile devices, without jeopardizing intellectual property.
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Protecting your company’s data is not only wise, but often legally necessary. In order to beef up their data security programs, more companies are implementing full disk encryption (FDE). In the past, FDE was software based, which left it open to greater security risks. With the advent of new technology, however, it is now possible to migrate from software- to hardware-based FDE while still protecting your existing systems.
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What would you do if a critical error occurred during production—all because the wrong data was input into your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? You’d probably be asking “how could this happen?” The ability to communicate information between teams can mean the difference between production success and failure. Avoid these snafus with a system that can integrate the data of both the design and ERP systems.
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With ever-changing technology, businesses often spend too much time and money trying to sustain their outdated systems. But is it possible to maintain a legacy system without the substantial costs of frequently updating it? By adopting service-oriented architecture (SOA)—which provides a suite of automated tools and services for migrating and extending legacy platforms—businesses can maximize quality and minimize costs.
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Lost sight of your bottom line? Product pricing not in step with your actual costs? So busy trying to stay on top of cost behavior that you can’t keep your costs under control? Cost and pricing models, as part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, can help you better understand your costs. Put corrective measures into motion before problems occur—and save your food and beverage enterprise time and money.
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Over the last 25 years, successful manufacturers have made dramatic improvements in the speed and efficiency of production. But with increasing global competition and time-to-market requirements, the need to continuously improve efficiency—and become lean—has never been more important. But these days, it’s difficult to imagine any enterprise software provider as being truly focused on efficiency for the customer.
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As a leader in x-ray analytical instrumentation and software, PANalytical’s global business was growing rapidly. But with that growth, complexity in its information and communication infrastructures had also grown—making it impossible to optimize and standardize its business processes. Since partnering with QAD, PANalytical has successfully consolidated two manufacturing sites, 31 sales offices, and 17 databases.
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Laird Technologies has been executing its global growth strategy since 2004. But in order to form a unified global enterprise with the 20 independent companies it acquired, Laird needed a new system—one that could address its needs in every country where it had manufacturing facilities. With QAD’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, 10 of those 20 sites were up and running in just nine months.
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As a global leader of products designed for use in the manufacturing process, TigerStop LLC realized that in order to remain competitive, it would need to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. After purchasing a CRM solution from a leading software developer, it has realized many benefits, and at the same time empowered its field sales team with a system it can access while on the road.
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Worldwide, various standards have been created to provide some form of structure with respect to delivering products and services. Over time, however, the adoption of industry compliance guidelines has seen many pitfalls, specifically with the advent of technology. Developing a sound compliance strategy requires a unified solution—one that includes all the necessary components, but also keeps the business users in mind.
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To build or not to build—that is the question. Is building an enterprise application from scratch better than modifying existing application code? With a .NET framework, the answer is an emphatic yes. Building applications from scratch using only .NET code not only provides cost savings, it also allows software developers to extend applications to users via the Internet—without sacrificing functionality or security.
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Many manufacturers have already implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. That’s why questions about the need for an additional system to track, analyze, and manage costs are no surprise. Does it replace the entire ERP system? Is there additional work for cost personnel? While each user of enterprise cost systems uses them differently, the road to success lies in using them in conjunction with ERP systems.
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Success in today s manufacturing sector requires disciplined approaches to all aspects of business strategy. For process improvement, companies implemented lean manufacturing programs. Data integration needs led to data warehouses and enterprise resource planning systems. Companies must now dedicate the same level of strategy and planning to developing a cost management process that drives results.
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If you base your selection of an outsourcing partner on a service provider’s strengths, it can be difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison among the various models. The best way to make a comparison in a thoughtful and effective manner is to develop individual specifications matching buyer needs with service provider strengths in order to make an enduring match. Find out how.
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The rules have changed for IT outsourcing companies and their clients. The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) casts a giant shadow over every person and organization that comes in contact with a company’s financial records and reports. We’ll look at ways in which outsourcing companies can take proactive measures to meet both the spirit and letter of compliance guidelines through audits and adherence to industry best practices.
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As a world class supplier of metal stampings, automated assemblies, lamination stamp¬ings, and die castings, Orchid International’s products can be found in virtually every home or automobile. Its challenge was to find a way—with an IT staff of three people—to run five manufacturing facilities operating varying manufacturing processes as a tier-one and tier-two supplier to demanding customers in a variety of industries.
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In the life sciences industry, marketing operations (in particular the packaging, labeling, and final steps of new product development) remain virtually untouched by the computerized systems integration pervading the rest of the sector. However, cost-effective approaches do exist for digital workflow and asset management software and services, and can provide you with a wealth of cost savings and operations efficiencies.
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Line managers and finance staff are frustrated by the inability of spreadsheet-based planning systems to deliver useful budgets and rolling forecasts. A major problem is the disconnect between the operational elements of business and financial plans. What's missing is driver-based planning, a best-practice methodology where financial plans incorporate assumptions about business activities modeled to drive financial data.
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Many small companies have limited resources to devote to the implementation and maintenance of enterprise resource planning (ERP). Fortunately, the price performance of ERP and the underlying infrastructure supporting it have improved steadily and significantly over the past two decades. In fact, solutions that were once beyond the reach of these small companies are now well within their grasp.
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As the creator of performance apparel, Under Armour has become the fastest-growing designer and distributor of its category of apparel in the world. In 2005, to sustain growth and compete on a global scale, it needed a flexible IT landscape that could offer better visibility to data and scale over time. With an out-of–the-box scalable solution, Under Armour is on its way to reaching the $1 billion (USD) revenue mark.
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Benchmarking is a process where companies compare their performance over time against their competition. In doing so, they can identify where their strengths lie and where improvement may be needed. The point of benchmarking is to focus on areas that will yield the best return. For companies to succeed in their benchmarking efforts and gain a sustained competitive advantage, five key steps should be considered.
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Improving the supply chain is essential for any company that wants to gain or maintain a competitive edge. To do this, companies are adopting sales and operations planning (S&OP) strategies. Years ago—when the pace of market change was slow—S&OP was a nice-to-have; today it’s a business imperative! But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. By taking a five-step approach, companies can implement S&OP at their own pace.
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To respond to an ever-changing environment, steel manufacturers are making investments to improve their systems. But over time, these modification dollars can add up! With an integrated and collaborative approach—combining the capabilities of a manufacturing execution system (MES) with the advantages of an advanced planning and schedule (APS) solution—manufacturers can realize considerable benefits without the added cost.
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The complexity of the metal manufacturing process often poses problems when it comes to planning and scheduling production. The sector’s many different processes often cause bottlenecks that slow down production—not only within plants, but throughout entire supply chains. With an industry-specific production planning and scheduling system, manufacturers can improve productivity, reduce lead times, and increase revenues.
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As a supplier to Wal-Mart, appliance manufacturer Haier America was required to implement a radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging system. To satisfy this requirement and to keep costs to a minimum, Haier needed a solution that would seamlessly integrate with its current enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. That’s why it turned to a custom-designed modification package. But was it enough for Wal-Mart?
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Spam considerably lowers user productivity, as it delivers unwanted, irrelevant, or anonymous e-mail messages. The best way to manage the incidence of spam is to measure it. The Spam Index—a tool for measuring improvement in spam control systems and for comparing spam control performance with competitors—is a method used by businesses worldwide to achieve lower spam levels and improve business performance.
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E-mail is a powerful business tool that most enterprises can’t live without. Unfortunately, along with its capability of accelerating commerce, productivity, and social interactions, there are some drawbacks—such as spam! Companies that rely on e-mail to do business simply can’t afford the negative affects of spam. However, new technology is emerging that helps stop spam and allows users to get on with business.
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You can’t pick up a business or IT magazine today without seeing numerous articles about the growth of mobile and wireless technologies. Why are these technologies so trendy? The answer is simple: developments in mobile computing, wireless communication, bar codes, and other data collection and communications technologies help businesses extend visibility and control over the operations that really matter to them.
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When it comes to two-dimensional (2D) symbologies, less is more. While 2D bar code symbols may be less costly to print, they are considerably more expensive to read, because of the complexity of developing decode algorithms. However, with the integration of public domain 2D symbologies into a range of application standards, solutions employing these codes are beginning to reach their full potential.
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For manufacturers, improving internal processes and supply chain responsiveness can help maintain profitability. That is why many are tuning into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, the benefits are immediate throughout the supply chain, and organizations that take the time to understand its capabilities and limitations can increase their inventory visibility while streamlining their operations.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has retailers talking. The reason: RFID helps reduce labor and improves the ability to gather data. Retailers can use this data to make positive changes to business processes, which can be tremendously advantageous for them. With careful planning, an RFID system can provide immediate benefits, as well as long-term competitive and total cost of ownership advantages.
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Although small to midsized manufacturers employ more than half of all workers in the US, today’s demand-driven, global economy is challenging them to operate with the same agility as their larger counterparts. To stay competitive, it is essential that these manufacturers implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology. With the right ERP system, they can become mighty and thrive in the face of bigger competition.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) often face the same challenges as large businesses—just on a smaller scale. One such challenge is finding a business solution that manages expansion and addresses complex reporting and compliance issues. Many SMBs are now adopting enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions—complete with tools to help them meet the current and future needs of their growing business.
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Wide area networks (WANs) are essential to the majority of businesses, enabling effective communications within the organization and with customers, partners, and suppliers. As more bandwidth-intensive applications are added to the mix, these networks are expected to handle the extra load—which can decrease its performance. Ensuring WAN usage is well-managed eliminates unwanted traffic and accelerates business activity.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) face the same challenges as large businesses when it comes to IT management—they have increasingly complex systems they rely on to drive their businesses and gain a competitive advantage. Operating and maintaining a complex IT infrastructure requires specific skills, but getting the right staff at an affordable price can be a problem. Outsourcing IT management may help to ease the strain.
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How can a budget administrator, burdened with the task of gathering data from hundreds of spreadsheets from all over the organization, manage this monumental undertaking? Additionally, how to avoid using a costly packaged budget application that doesn’t take the organization’s business rules into consideration? The solution: a spreadsheet automation tool that easily adapts to the organization’s unique corporate processes.
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Today, companies are looking to improve work processes, comply with legislation, and increase productivity—and they’re implementing electronic document management systems (EDMS) to help them effectively manage their information. By deploying EDMS—which are capable of capturing, storing, and retrieving records, files, and folders—these companies are achieving unprecedented levels of control, efficiency, and automation.
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Industry today demands more quality of manufacturers, and as such, ISO 9001—the yardstick by which quality products and services are measured—is forcing more and more companies to become ISO-certified. However, companies can use a browser-based tool to help bridge any information gaps they may encounter during the process—and to give them the head start they need to intelligently manage their ISO certification.
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What is compact, lightweight, ergonomic, and power-friendly? A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based scan engine—an innovative scanning technology that provides outstanding reliability and performance. When it comes to supply chain laser scanning, the advantages MEMS scanners have over traditional lasers are unparalleled. While MEMS is not a new technology, it does provide a new option for bar code scanning.
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When it comes to workers’ safety, companies shouldn’t take any chances. The growing safety, security, and regulatory and reporting requirements are forcing many organizations to implement more sophisticated systems to monitor and manage their work environments. To help determine which mobile devices are approved and appropriate to use in your work environments, it’s important to have clear guidelines on what to look for.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology can provide a strong return on investment (ROI) when combined with improved business processes that reduce labor and prevent errors. But mobile RFID systems, with forklift-mounted readers, can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of traditional infrastructure configurations. They can improve supply chain visibility, reduce capital expenditure, and slash labor costs.
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Scanning technology has changed dramatically over the years with new, more powerful, and reliable imaging scan engines now surpassing the laser scan engines of yesterday. Although both laser and imaging technologies continue to improve, there’s a debate on which technology is superior. When researching data capture equipment, you may be asking yourself, “How do I choose the best scanner for my application?” Here’s how.
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For a lot of companies, making the decision to replace an existing business software system can be a difficult one. The process can be so unpleasant that many organizations may be reluctant to even get started, coming up with a number of reasons why they could probably get by with the systems they already have. If your company is struggling with this tough decision, you may want to ask yourself these ten basic questions.
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Choosing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that’s right for your business can be difficult and time consuming. Finding a software provider and discovering what doing business with them will be like is as important as the overall functionality of the software itself. Before committing to a long-term relationship with any potential software provider, there are some really tough questions you need to ask them.
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Carefully tracking components and assemblies throughout the manufacturing process can prevent costly production and sequencing errors, but executing these procedures can be difficult. While bar codes provide accurate, efficient product identification, they are not viable in many common industrial processes. Specialized RFID tags, however, are optimized for use on or around metal, and are an effective and viable alternative.
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Going mobile has become a growing trend, with many businesses reaching well beyond the use of cellular phones as their only lines of communication. Why? Because these businesses realize that linking the mobile workforce with the enterprise and its data resources—using mobile applications—is key to enhancing productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right devices, however, can be very challenging.
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Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been around for more than thirty years, and today’s manufacturers are using this technology to help connect trading partners and align supply chains. But just as businesses need to look beyond the manufacturing supply chain to see the benefits of investing in RFID, they need to look beyond the tag to understand how RFID will create value and provide a return on investment (ROI).
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Technology has fundamentally changed the way industrial and manufacturing companies manage their businesses. Sophisticated solutions like warehouse management and enterprise relationship management (ERP) systems—with their advanced data capture and wireless networking tools—enable companies to squeeze more efficiency out of their operations by providing real-time data to all interdependent parts of the supply chain.
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In today’s global market, providing quality products and services is essential for any manufacturer’s continued growth—but maintaining a competitive edge is not always easy. For success, quality awareness must begin at the conception of the product and continue throughout the various stages of its development. To improve in this area, many manufacturers are now adopting the total quality management (TQM) approach.
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When considering any software solution, two things come to mind: flexibility and cost. With virtualization technology, multiple applications can now be hosted safely and securely on a single server, eliminating the overhead of running multiple operating systems (OS) per server. This capability can greatly reduce costs and help organizations deliver consistent service levels despite unpredictable workloads.
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Any organization that deploys multiple same-application servers with regularity could benefit from virtual appliances. Virtualization solutions eliminate the need to copy an operating system (OS) and application into each virtual environment, by creating a single, centrally installed master copy instead. It saves time on installation and enables greater levels of efficiency, manageability, flexibility, and resource use.
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To be certain its materials management functions were up to par with industry best practices, a South African fertilizer plant obtained the services of an inventory optimization firm. In doing so, it was able to identify weak links in its inventory control processes, and achieved a savings of over $2 million (USD)—an impressive return on investment (ROI) considering it had invested less than 4 percent of that amount.
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An important question facing IT professionals today is how best to harness computing power to further improve automated business processes. This is especially critical in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. While service-oriented architecture (SOA) delivers the benefits of IT integration to business, it needs a programming language—such as Lisp—that can optimize its capabilities and scale in size and complexity.
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New Star Asset Management was looking to maximize its existing sales channels and drive more information gathering via the Web. In order to achieve its aggressive targets, it needed to find a way to make better use of the Web, while reducing costs. Since integrating a Web content management system, New Star has seen a significant drop in Web-related expenditure—with cost savings of nearly 68 percent in the first year.
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It’s no coincidence that the surge in counterfeiting over the past decade has coincided with a huge increase in Internet access around the world, and the more recent shift toward broadband connections. The Web provides a shop window to the world, yet it is impossible to police. New, intelligent, automated monitoring technologies are beginning to offer powerful solutions to this rampant online problem.
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In 2004, Microsoft offered a midwestern-US-based financial services corporation a range of options to renew and replace its existing enterprise agreement. But without the right negotiating skills, how could it be certain Microsoft’s offer was the most cost-saving approach? The company engaged an independent consulting firm, and in less than three weeks recognized savings of 28 percent on a $3 million (USD) agreement.
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The clock is ticking for Canadian manufacturers to come up with a solution to the ongoing loss of knowledge capital. Natural employee attrition, such as departures or layoffs, inevitable retirement, and the brain drain are contributing to an exodus of knowledge. That’s why the best hope for Canadian manufacturers lies in introducing knowledge management strategies across the enterprise—before it’s too late.
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Industry analysts and retail executives agree that, although competitive prices are a must, “low price” as a leading strategy will no longer lead to long-term business success. To successfully compete, midsized retailers must carve out a niche based on creative strategies, including better and more localized product assortments, flawless price management and execution, and optimized inventory down to the store level.
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Traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions are becoming a thing of the past. Companies today are moving toward business solutions that can help maintain a competitive edge while empowering business executives across the enterprise. Operational BI is an approach that incorporates traditional BI best practices with the benefits of real-time information flow, resulting in more user-directed initiatives.
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Point of sale (POS) software was designed to speed up sales checkout processes. However, it has evolved to include many more features, and is now more commonly referred to as retail management systems (RMS). The benefits of implementing RMS are clear—they can help increase profits, improve marketing strategies, automate manual processes, manage inventory, and—most importantly—make the customer experience more memorable.
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Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) encounter many of the same challenges as larger companies in unlocking information from the data they collect, yet they lack cost-effective solutions. Many must choose between expensive business intelligence solutions or complicated homegrown solutions. With many hosted reporting solutions now available, SMBs have an option that may meet their requirements—at a fraction of the cost.
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Manufacturers of all sizes are more efficient, better managed, and more profitable because of lean—yet this improvement has plateaued at many companies. What’s holding up the progress of lean? The real problem is that as lean evolves and spreads beyond the plant floor, its conflict with traditional accounting is escalating—and becoming more dangerous to the financial health of manufacturers.
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Wisconsin Film & Bag, a leader in the flexible packaging industry, was set on expanding its business to the global market. The goal was simple: center its business model on superior customer service and quick turnaround. Since implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could address its unique industry requirements, it has enhanced customer relationships and significantly reduced sales lead time.
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As a plastics molder, Dreco Inc. required an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could manage its sizeable inventory. The original application it had purchased ten years earlier delivered a minimum of manufacturing functionality at the greatest possible expense. What did Dreco do about it? It replaced the old system with an industry-specific ERP system, and is now realizing a significant return on investment.
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Chemtech Plastics Inc., an injection molding company founded in 1982, believed technology could help it obtain an edge over the competition—but the first generation software it was using had some limitations, and many of its processes were manual. By implementing an industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Chemtech has doubled its sales volume to more than $20 million (USD) in the last seven years.
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Tackling the transformation to lean production is high-priority in the aerospace industry. After all, lean manufacturing eliminates waste from essential manufacturing processes and helps you measure up to your competitors. But how can you attain true lean transformation—and what specific steps does your company need to take? Take a self-rating test and see where your company really stands.
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Today, shipping complex products without documentation is not an option! As products become increasingly complex, product documentation has become a critical, constantly changing corporate asset. Content delivery processes must yield accurate, up-to-date information in more formats and languages. As such, organizations are adopting automated technologies that enable the dynamic creation and publishing of product content.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) like yours are the lifeblood of the economy. However, you may feel you need an operational boost—one that transforms your enterprise into a customer-focused business with the ability for future growth. An integrated suite of applications can give your business processes the depth and flexibility to achieve what a collection of stand-alone applications cannot.
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The printed circuit board (PCB) industry is changing rapidly, and information technology (IT) is becoming an essential part of it. PCB manufacturers are challenged to reduce production costs and lead times, while improving profitability and product quality. So what steps can you take to identify solutions that decrease costs and time-to-market, all while providing you with up-to-the-minute business intelligence?
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Few printed circuit board (PCB) companies create dedicated engineering system, and even fewer are successful when they do. Some computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) suppliers promise the capability to customize their systems—but the task is usually left to overburdened engineering and IT staff. So how do you transform engineering from organizational bottleneck to a corporate asset?
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Most project-oriented businesses are faced with poorly designed, archaic computer systems that have inadequate project reporting and accounting structures. This can limit the information provided to project managers for project reporting. However, properly designed work breakdown structure (WBS) systems give cost and general accounting the ability to rely on a simpler chart of accounts, while providing more project management flexibility.
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Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy, enabled and supported by various techniques, to eliminate non-value adding activity. However, aerospace and defense (A&D) government regulations impose very different business practices from those followed in the commercial sector. Can lean manufacturing principles really work in A&D? The answer: it depends on the architecture of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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For many years, business intelligence (BI) has proven to be invaluable for enhancing database information in the retail and banking sectors. But to be truly useful in the manufacturing sector, the manufacturing environment’s existing technology information structure needs to continually inform the BI system. This can now be accomplished more efficiently by embedding BI into the enterprise software itself.
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The process of implementing a new enterprise solution is incredibly complex. This process can send your organization down a long road of beneficial—and sometimes painful—change. The good news, though, is that if the implementation is done right the first time, you won’t have to travel that road again. The key question: how do you do it right?
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Special Metals Welding Products needed to adapt an actual cost methodology in order to effectively compete in the erratic nickel market, where profits are measured in pennies per pound. It was clear that cost management was a critical application. By implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as its integrated business system, its profitability doubled in less than two years.
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In order to fully leverage its world-class manufacturing facilities, Perryman Company, a global leader in specialty titanium products, foresaw the need for a comprehensive information system that would integrate its internal processes—and one that would also support continued growth. One year after going live with its new system, Perryman has seen many important benefits, including improved visibility of costs.
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When Johnstown Wire Technologies became an independent company, changes to its existing enterprise resource management (ERP) system were needed. Their goals were clear: improve the quality of the information it was working with, and at the same time reduce system costs. By partnering with its ERP provider in ongoing enhancements, Johnstown has doubled sales volume to approximately $100 million (USD).
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Hendrix Wire & Cable, an underground power distribution product manufacturer, had a highly functional in-house-developed system that fit its manufacturing environment. However, it was expensive to support and maintain. Management wanted to establish a foundation to support planned e-commerce initiatives and provide better visibility and executive decision support. And above all, they wanted to lower the company’s IT-related costs.
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As the number one supplier of cold-rolled strip steel in North America, Gibraltar Industries wanted to keep the ongoing cost of IT reasonable. Having experienced the high cost of maintaining heavily customized software systems, it decided to use an off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that was specific to its industry and that effectively supported resource sharing across facilities.
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Gruppo Tosinvest is by no means a single-process company. Beside a core focus on health care, it also runs businesses in the media, real estate, financial services, and engineering and construction sectors. With such an array of processes, controlling IT costs is of utmost importance. That’s why it decided to upgrade the enterprise software it had been running since 2001.
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Most metals companies are recognizing that it’s time to consider replacing their aging in-house developed information systems with a commercial enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. There are many reasons why these companies should make the move to an industry-specific solution—the first being that the quality of their systems can be the limiting factor for growth in today’s competitive markets.
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As a wire and cable manufacturer, you probably already have a computer system in place that you couldn’t operate without. However, this system may be outdated, or may not provide the capabilities you need. But moving to a new enterprise-wide business system is an important step—one you can’t afford to take lightly. What, exactly, do you look for?
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Since 1985, TrailTech Inc. has provided the agriculture, construction, and transportation industries with state-of-the-art trailer equipment. However, inaccurate bills of materials (BOMs) were causing bottlenecks, missed delivery dates, and substandard productivity. After TrailTech implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that created real-time BOMs and eliminated bottlenecks, customer complaints of delinquent deliveries reduced dramatically, improving stress levels throughout the plant.
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Qualitel couldn’t keep up with the growing demand for its electronics. With revenues increasing 30 to 40 percent per year, its order entry and accounting systems were rapidly becoming obsolete. Qualitel needed a solution—and fast. Just one year later, after selecting and implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel’s revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD).
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Within the manufacturing community, the arrival of the latest, greatest enterprise software technology is often met with skepticism. The right service-oriented architecture (SOA) application, however, can reverse such doubts, as SOA continues to emerge as the dominant technical platform for building next-generation business applications. Its potential to transform enterprise software applications is not only well hyped—it’s also well documented.
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In times of economic recession, many businesses take the opportunity to look inward and seek ways to streamline their operations. It’s no wonder that lean manufacturing has been such a hot topic across the manufacturing industry. Lean manufacturing helps manufacturers work smarter and more efficiently, and has become a refined version of traditional just-in-time (JIT) and demand flow manufacturing concepts.
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The indifference of software vendors to the industrial and commercial machinery manufacturing sector has limited this market’s progress in leveraging IT tools to their advantage. This indifference also affects the sector’s success in addressing key business issues. For these manufacturers—and the software vendors that serve them—recognition and response to these issues can no longer be delayed.
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.NET technology is a wake-up call, and some people are sleeping through it! Remaining competitive means mission-critical software systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, must be designed from the ground up for connectivity and integration. But software developers don’t advertise their shortcomings, and some ERP vendors—and by association, their customers—are being left behind.
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Engineer-to-order (ETO) and project-based companies look to information technology (IT) to improve processes and gain a competitive edge. However, building complex products to exact customer specifications requires unique software. But what exactly are the software requirements of ETO and project-based manufacturers? Remember, the wrong software can cost about the same as the right software—until you try to use it!
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Keeping track of your key business indicators is the difference between a thriving business concern and a business on life support. But even with this knowledge, one-third of chief executive officers (CEOs) feel they don’t spend enough time reviewing financial and operating numbers. But is spending more time agonizing over piles of data really the best solution?
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All too often, fragmented IT landscapes make it difficult—and sometimes downright impossible—for wholesale distributors to improve processes, control costs, and create the efficiencies needed to succeed in a competitive industry. Nevertheless, enterprise technologies do have the potential to be powerful tools, quickly reacting to shifting market forces in a consolidating industry, and achieving operational excellence and solid growth.
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By automating financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics AX links people, processes, and information. This document consolidates the core features and functionality in the solution, and is intended for use as a tool for users to familiarize themselves with the full scope of the solution.
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Many businesses owe their very survival to improvements that would have been impossible without radical changes to business process systems. However, many of the promises implicit in these systems—dramatic increases in business success, with minimal negative impact—have proven to be overly optimistic for many, and flat-out fantasy for some.
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It’s common knowledge that asset downtime disrupts production and drives up both process and per-unit operating costs. However, executives often lose sight of this because they focus on output, not on the assets used to create it. The irony is that companies can use asset performance management not only to make more widgets, but to make each widget more profitably.
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Demand planning applications can help manufacturers establish baseline sales forecasts and perform analysis to improve resource usage. They can also help manufacturers optimize pricing capabilities and better understand their markets. Yet to get the most out of these tools, manufacturers must be willing to reorganize their planning processes—and to share the resulting insights with supply chain partners and customers.
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Competitive pressures and increasing customer demands are driving most manufacturers to produce goods ever faster, at lower cost, and in compliance with more exacting quality, regulatory, and market requirements. However, technology can help manufacturers meet these challenges, increase operational efficiency, and step ahead of competitors with more proactive planning, greater shared visibility, and more profitable responses to change.
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Fraenkel Company is an employee-owned manufacturing distributor of household furniture and related products and services. The company created a sophisticated in-house ERP system in the early 1990s. However, homegrown software can be unwieldy to maintain and difficult to upgrade. In 2001, Fraenkel saw a solution that offered more advanced capabilities, and implemented VAI’s S2K Enterprise Edition for Manufacturing.
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In times like these, when IT spending is increasingly subject to cutbacks, finding out how to get "more for less" is as crucial to a company’s IT department as making sure that applications run smoothly. In Rome, Italy, Gruppo Tosinvest managed to prove that this challenge—which keeps legions of IT managers awake at night—can be solved.
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Mine business planning is a time-consuming and complex task involving many participants, systems, and separate processes. It is often extremely difficult to precisely replicate a planning process from budget to budget, or to trace the origin of figures in consolidated reports. However, a sensitively deployed and fully integrated end-to-end solution can go a long way toward solving these problems.
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Streamlining your supply chain can boost revenue, reduce costs, and help grow your business. No matter what business you’re in, the days of managing your supply chain from the back office are over. Today’s successful companies understand that lean supply chains maximize revenue and help stimulate growth—and their top executives aren’t afraid to wield their supply chains like weapons.
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A process manufacturing company has several options in its approach to deploying a single integrated clinical supplies or commercial product supply chain system. However, rolling a project out in phases is the most attractive option for many firms because it reduces risk, breaks the project into manageable and affordable stages, and spreads out resource demands over time.
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Founded in 1989, Plastic Components, Inc. (PCI) uses complete process automation to keep costs low and quality high. To support this vision, PCI adopted lean manufacturing principles, such as staffing for efficiency, investing in quality equipment and support systems, and pursuing process improvements. In 2002, with these goals in mind, PCI sought to replace its multiple databases and software packages.
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For over eighty years, the Edlund Company has been a leading supplier of stainless steel appliances and equipment to the food service industry—a highly competitive sector with lean operating margins. In 2003, to uphold quality standards and gain tighter control over its manufacturing process and customer service functions, Edlund decided to replace its material requirements planning (MRP) software system.
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How can you ensure that you make the right choice when purchasing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software? The answer: take all the critical components into consideration. ERP selection is not just about what different people in your organization want or don't want, it's about getting what you need for now and the future. Remember, you're not just buying software; you're buying into a vendor and its company culture.
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Certain lean initiatives can be hugely strengthened with a synergistic enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation—and vice versa. In other cases, the two efforts should be viewed as separate initiatives. But it doesn’t depend on “what you want”: specific lean initiatives will fail if specific ERP aspects are neglected. However, other lean initiatives and ERP functionality have little in common.
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Industrial machinery and components (IM&C) manufacturers are challenged by global rivalry, industry consolidation, and shrinking margins. And with more manufacturers vying for business, customers are demanding customized products delivered on short lead times—all at lower costs. At the same time, manufacturers are struggling to extend their supply chains to incorporate offshore manufacturing. So where can they turn for help?
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All companies use some form of sales and operations planning (S&OP) to synchronize market data with production output. But most practice a planning process based on logistics rather than strategy. Taking a more strategic approach, however, the S&OP process can be designed to bring together a company’s marketing, finance, sales, and operations departments to continuously monitor—and meet—customer demand.
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You may have survived the slowdown of the last few years, but you must still find new growth opportunities to stay competitive. However, you can only cut so much. Midsize businesses in particular need to ask new questions: What strategies and practices are right for the company? And what are the best solutions for facilitating—and even improving them?
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Today, engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers—also known as project-based manufacturers—experience significant market pressure across their sales, engineering and manufacturing groups as they strive to win business and streamline end-to-end processes. But by capturing engineering knowledge and using it to automate key business processes, manufacturers can increase sales bid and win rates, decrease internal operating expenses, and shorten lead times.
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A common question that comes up in most discussions about lean is whether it’s the tools and processes, or the people that make lean work. In reality it is both. Applying lean tools, new technology, and new business processes to a traditional silo-oriented culture will not work. Lean, at its core, is a cultural and people-oriented initiative.
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Significant management issues posed by multisite manufacturing environments include optimizing resource use at each site and delivering the lowest possible cost for each stage in the product manufacturing cycle. To facilitate meaningful results in achieving these requirements, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software must thus provide the right tools for ensuring that multisite processes come up to “best-in-class” standards.
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Many organizations have made enormous investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications such as JDE, PeopleSoft, and SAP. Designed to manage the daily
operations critical to their businesses, these systems are not, however, optimized for business intelligence (BI). Accordingly, data must be moved to optimized BI solutions for robust analysis. But which strategies are most effective for extracting this data?
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Créée en 1991, Chief est le numéro un français sur le marché des gondoles réfrigérées. Son chiffre d’affaires s’élève à 40 millions d’euros et ses produits son distribués à partir de 3 sites de production. La complexité de son offre et la spécificité des besoins de ses clients – plusieurs centaines de milliers de configurations sont possibles pour chaque unité – ont rendu nécessaire le recours à une solution de configuration d’offres personnalisées.
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Established in 1991, Chief is the leading French supplier of cold-storage units. With revenues of €40 million (EUR), it distributes products from three production sites. Given the complexity of Chief’s operations and the specific nature of its customers’ requirements—including hundreds of thousands of possible combinations for each unit—Chief decided to deploy an interactive selling and product configuration solution.
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In today’s competitive business environment, wholesale distributors face critical factors that directly affect customer satisfaction and profit margins. These challenges, combined with customer demands for product availability, can conflict with operational goals of increasing inventory turnover and minimizing costs. However, business automation software can deliver sophisticated distribution capabilities designed to help you with these important business issues.
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Héma-Québec manages the collection and distribution of blood and blood products for the province of Quebec (Canada). As Héma-Québec worked to enhance availability and quality, company leaders identified a need to make changes in the organization’s information technology (IT) systems. In June 2001, the company decided to implement a new system for the procurement and distribution of fractionated blood products.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers have historically embraced shop floor improvements as a way of increasing efficiency and maintaining profitability. But in today’s radically altered industrial environment, there is a clear imperative to look beyond the shop floor. To hold down costs and compete against other low-cost companies, manufacturers must find areas of improvement in all aspects of business.
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Manufacturing analytics is fundamental to enabling an enterprise to run at peak performance. For management to achieve this condition, it needs to have an underlying data collection and management system that looks to the total enterprise. Data collected at the packaging line must be available and compatible with financial and operational data, so that maximum value can be achieved.
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With retailers trying to stem consumer migration, and consumer-packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers striving to achieve sustainable growth and profitability, retailer and manufacturer joint value propositions can increase inventory turns, improve cash flow, and increase revenue and profits. However, joint value propositions involve more than retailer-specific packaging or unique products. For ultimate success, a different way of doing business is required.
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While open innovation is a hot topic, capitalizing on opportunity requires a holistic strategy—not just increased collaboration. Companies must have repeatable, compliant, and responsive business processes. These processes must be supplemented by a global information infrastructure that provides a single source of the truth, along with alignment across departmental silos, and solutions that evolve without coding.
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In recent years, industry-leading companies have identified process innovation as a real competitive advantage, since outsourcing can provide “virtual scale” to companies of any size. While every company has examples of a select few projects or product launches that were stellar and considered best-in-class, what sets best-process companies apart from the rest is their continued business process innovation and scale.
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AstraZeneca, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, undertook an initiative to integrate
demand flow technology in logistical operations, leading to a major supply chain management (SCM) project at its packaging plant in Wedel (Germany). With an existing SAP technology platform, AstraZeneca project leaders opted for the mySAP SCM solution and the SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization component.
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As competitive pressures on consumer products (CP) companies rise, the industry is reaching the limits of business as usual. CP companies must look to increased collaboration with retailers, partners, and suppliers as a way to build and improve on the core cycles of planning and forecasting. And the blueprint for expanded collaboration and increased automation? The adaptive business network.
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Inadequacies at the front end of the product development process is one of the leading causes of product failure for consumer products companies. Many companies thus make ill-informed decisions that turn into costly mistakes. The challenge is to establish a front-end process that nurtures profitable innovation and maximizes portfolio value in light of resource constraints, portfolio balance, and strategic alignment.
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The odds against successful product innovation are long. New products need to win over consumers and convince retailers—a challenging task for many reasons, including saturated markets, a growing variety of products and brands, and shorter product life cycles. To shorten time to market, companies need to integrate all development-related areas, within a single sphere of visibility and influence.
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In the automotive industry, companies face an ongoing struggle for market share and constant pressure on margins. To differentiate themselves in this competitive environment, many companies focus on sales and service operations, which are key to providing a high-quality customer experience. With that in mind, companies must automate processes and leverage integrated information to increase efficiency throughout the value chain.
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Large or small, every company can profit from streamlined processes, insightful business intelligence, and systems that are flexible enough to grow with changing business needs. SAP Best Practices for Automotive comprise preconfigured business scenarios that cover the most important requirements of the automotive supplier industry, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), supplier relationship management (SRM), and a business information warehouse (BW).
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Aerospace and defense (A&D) companies are constantly seeking better ways to manage complexity, cut costs, and boost productivity. One of the most challenging areas within the A&D industry is maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO). To introduce new efficiencies and reduce MRO costs, many companies are looking beyond standard business practices to new strategies that promise solid business results.
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The warehouse management system (WMS) concept has matured into a collection of time-tested technologies that reduce inventory costs and increase overall inventory management efficiencies. By implementing WMS technology, organizations can achieve a higher return on their software dollars and provide better service to their customers. A WMS can provide organizations with tangible benefits that improve warehouse operations without adding headcount.
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If you’ve worked for more than one manufacturing company, you know that each one is different. Different processes, systems, problems—all these variations mean you need a system tailored to your needs. And with so many available solutions, you could spend months looking at demos, and still not find it. However, you can start by asking yourself eight simple questions.
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The Gantry Group, a strategic advisory and market intelligence firm, conducted interviews with nine companies that have deployed Sage MAS 90, 200, or 500. While every company is involved in distribution, they represent a wide range of industries. The aim of Gantry Group: a comprehensive analysis of return on investment (ROI) for Sage MAS 90, 200, and 500.
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Gen-Probe Incorporated is a global leader in the development, manufacture, and marketing of nucleic acid tests, used primarily to diagnose diseases and screen donated blood. In 2004, thanks to rapid growth, it needed applications to support its customers’ ever-rising performance demands. In addition, it required advanced business applications for continued focus on product innovation and expansion into new geographic markets.
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Successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations can force organizations to reevaluate their business practices and processes, create a higher understanding of the need for data accuracy, and enable a more effective data-sharing environment. However, such high-level benefits require a new approach to project implementation—one that applies the lessons of the past to reinvent the systems of the future.
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The aerospace and defense (A&D) manufacturing industry is always changing. That’s why A&D manufacturers are constantly seeking better ways to manage complexity, cut costs, and boost productivity. In pursuit of these objectives, A&D manufacturers are looking beyond standard practices to new business strategies that promise solid business results. But which strategies and practices are right for your company?
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Today’s manufacturers are feeling pressures from many directions. Dynamic market needs, increased compliance requirements, more distributed manufacturing operations, and the transition to new technology are all manifested on the plant floor and throughout the enterprise—often leading to pleas for technology solutions. Integration and data utilization are thus the key issues to address in order to improve responsiveness and performance.
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You know the statistics—lean can shorten your lead times, reduce inventories, cut operating costs, free up resources, and more. But countless surveys have confirmed that most lean initiatives fail to deliver expected and needed results. Why? Are successes confined to a restricted list of industry sectors? Are only "lean experts" capable of leading an organization through a successful implementation?
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Gaps between enterprise resource planning (ERP) functionality and best-of-breed applications are diminishing rapidly. Deciding between the two may thus come down to overall IT strategy. If it is already segmented, it makes sense to add best-of-breed applications for specific operational areas. However, if a more rationalized common operating platform is the strategy, there are compelling arguments for supply chain ERP.
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Installing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is both challenging and exciting. Yet many organizations do not recognize that one of the largest threats to such a project is a failure to focus on process improvement. If process change is not seen as a necessary element of the project, it will never be as successful as it should be.
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You have convinced upper management that flow manufacturing will enable your company to leapfrog the competition. You have appointed a flow process leader, and selected a line for your flow pilot. Now it’s time to physically perform your first line implementation. The big question is, what exactly do you need to do to make the transition from discrete to flow?
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Photon Dynamics, a manufacturer of test, repair, and inspection equipment for flat-panel display manufacturing, was finding it difficult to track orders, materials, and finished goods. It considered abandoning its mid-tier enterprise resource planning system, in favor of a tier-one application. But to justify the cost, the company decided to first make sure that the system was, in fact, the problem.
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A group of serial entrepreneurs was look¬ing to jump-start business operations at a series of high technology startups by implementing advanced manufacturing software early in the business cycle. In implementing Expandable ERP at each of their startup companies, the entrepreneurs were able to minimize their risk by developing a repeatable methodology for establishing sound manufacturing operations.
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After receiving US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its ground-breaking product, medical technology startup Thermage, Inc., was looking to install manufacturing software that would fit a limited budget and meet its long-term needs. By going with Expandable ERP, Thermage was able to implement a full-featured manufacturing system that helped it ramp up production and maintain FDA compliance.
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In the automotive industry, purchasing has become a critical business component. Some experts estimate that a 4 percent reduction in sourcing costs can add as much to profits as a 10 percent increase in sales. With intense global competition putting constant pressure on vehicle prices, many companies see improved sourcing and procurement as key to increasing margins, profits, and competitiveness.
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Compliance with US FDA regulations is a market requirement. Thus, among the nearly 1,500 installations of mySAP ERP software among pharmaceutical, medical diagnostics and devices, and biotechnology companies worldwide, it is vital to be aware of the functions and features of mySAP ERP that demonstrate technical compliance with US FDA 21 CFR Part 11 Electronic Records; Electronic Signatures; Final Rule.
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When enterprise architects first conceived and created enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the mid-1980s, their predictive genius was praised during successive dot-com eras as Nostradamus-like in reading the future market’s thirst for transactional-driven solutions. Today, those transactional systems look like aging athletes on steroids—over-bulked, over-paid, and with very real worry that they’ll be found out.
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Multinationals achieve global presence through networks of subsidiaries. However, managing these subsidiaries poses a significant challenge for the corporate headquarters. Failure to monitor, govern, and control subsidiaries can cause inefficiencies in the value chain, even threatening the future of the entire corporation. In this context, how multinationals decide to implement business applications in their subsidiaries is nothing short of critical.
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Sermatech Manufacturing Group, a producer of precision components for the aerospace industry, was at a crossroads with its business management software. Its original 1980s software was outdated, and it needed a more robust system to guarantee company-wide access to real-time operations data. After researching numerous enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, Sermatech turned to Enhanced Systems & Services’ Finesse ERP system.
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Enabling lean manufacturing and six sigma principles to improve operations requires a nontraditional approach. The old idea that lean manufacturing and six sigma principles don’t require IT isn’t valid anymore. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) applications are critical for enabling holistic, lean manufacturing operations, and work hand-in-hand to better enable consumption—not forecasts—to drive replenishment.
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On the path toward global competitiveness, the benefits and basic principles of “Lean” are widely known. However, many organizations struggle to gain a foothold when embarking on the Lean journey. Or, perhaps more commonly, Lean initiatives stall and are sometimes eliminated due to a lack of understanding of what it takes to both make and sustain the Lean transformation.
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Intuit recently identified a need to better serve larger and growing users within and outside the QuickBooks base. Thus, Enterprise Solutions 7.0 was designed with growing businesses in mind. For current users, Enterprise Solutions offers a way to support growth with a familiar interface. For those not currently using QuickBooks, it may be a viable alternative to their current solution.
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The multitude of messages and media in this interactive age contributes to a fragmented consumer goods market. Shorter product life cycles, mass product customization, and increasing supply chain complexity are all symptoms of the new project economy. The arrival of this new age must be recognized by business leaders, and the systems supporting business must change to accommodate this reality.
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Exceptional customer experiences revolve around one central principle: knowledge at the point of action (KAPA). Learn how your marketing, customer service, and sales systems can work together to drive customer loyalty and advocacy.
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Small and medium businesses (SMB) need to address inventory challenges by using a tightly integrated approach that reflects the dynamics of the extended supply chain. Data must also be available to other application modules within the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. An inventory optimization solution allows companies to effectively fulfill demand and identify how to gain additional profits from their inventories.
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The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) addresses the issues of corporate fiscal accountability, accounting standards and practices, and reporting, as well as investor confidence in publicly owned corporations. SOX thus presents challenges to satisfy regulatory requirements, as well as opportunities to improve processes. That's why SOX compliance can be aided by an integrated, automated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
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Responding immediately to product availability requests with accurate delivery dates, and following through on commitments, is critical to serving the customer base. Improvement in this area will impact the bottom line through higher customer satisfaction, and decreased costs for goods sold. It is especially critical for enterprises to manage supply commitments to customers when products need to go on allocation.
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In August 2006, Microsoft conducted a Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 standard distribution benchmark to measure the performance and scalability characteristics of the application in a simulated distribution scenario. This benchmark exercised core accounts receivables scenarios around order entry through invoicing, in addition to procure-to-pay processes around purchase order creation through receiving of goods. We look at the methodology and results.
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The client/server trend in multi-tiered computing has been made possible because of reductions in the cost of hardware and software components, as well as the availability of high-performance database engines. The utility of this technology is reflected in the Microsoft Dynamics AX application. Its three-tier client/server technology provides a solution that can be accessed through networks, even with limited bandwidth.
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is no longer just for giant companies. Time and critical mass have dramatically cut the cost, complexity, and speed to value of ERP solutions. Today’s ERP systems enable companies of every size to maximize speed and flexibility to close the gap in core business processes, and to gain visibility into customer needs and supplier performance.
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Executives in the life sciences industry work under tremendous competitive pressures. At the same time, they must meet regulatory guidelines and ensure that product safety remains a priority. Information must be meticulously tracked through all phases of a production cycle, which can slow production significantly. That’s why solutions for the industry must help streamline and simplify the regulatory compliance process.
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Adaptive manufacturing enables companies to produce goods efficiently and manage variability proactively. However, it must be managed as an end-to-end, closed-loop process with tight linkages between manufacturing applications, adjacent enterprise applications, and—most importantly—the technology behind these applications. Such integrated networks enable the process visibility and collaboration capabilities that, ultimately, are the key to building an adaptive manufacturing enterprise.
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Industrial equipment manufacturers have historically embraced shop floor improvements as a way of increasing efficiency and maintaining profitability. But in today’s radically altered industrial environment, there is a clear imperative to look beyond the shop floor. To hold down costs and compete against other low-cost companies, manufacturers must find areas of improvement in all aspects of business.
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La abstracción es el ejercicio de comprender una serie de problemas a la vista heterogéneos y darles comprensión homogénea. Una de las principales abstracciones del mercado actual de las entidades es la administración, motivo por el cual se anunció el Microsoft Business Framework, el cual afectará el ERP clásico de las supuestas Best Practices.
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To work through all the issues necessary to improve sales performance, executives have a number of options for leveraging people and knowledge. However, an area that shows significant potential for helping sales teams meet or exceed their goals is the effective alignment of sales process and technology. Executives looking to optimize performance should consider this approach to achieve their goals.
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Many manufacturers are seeking to deploy manufacturing technology to satisfy increasingly rigorous business demands. However, the prospect of traditional software implementations can be daunting. Furthermore, managers and executives often cannot wait for IT resources to become available to implement traditional installed software to address pressing manufacturing needs. Many companies are thus willing to consider a new alternative: on-demand manufacturing software.
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Una vez atravesados los problemas del ERP en los noventa, en el año 2000 logra alcanzar su madurez, enfrentándose al mismo tiempo con problemas tales como la regionalización y la actualización de versiones, entre otros. Actualmente se acerca otra etapa en la resolución del modo administrativo, en la que el problema del ERP será atacado con productos de plataforma.
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Conventional enterprise resource planning (ERP) falls short in a few areas: competitive pressures are making it clear that business is still in need of more effective solutions. ERP II, however, delivers on the original concept of ERP. No longer is corporate information isolated in departmental silos, but it is housed with all corporate information, used to benefit the entire organization.
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When it comes to software implementations, organizations large and small share common goals of rapid deployment and return on investment. Unlike large organizations, however, smaller firms cannot rely on sizable budgets or internal teams to deploy an enterprise-wide initiative. But by following some fundamental concepts, smaller companies can make their technology investments pay off, with little disruption to the business.
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Current enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation methodologies give too much attention to the ”hard core” technical side of the project, and too little to the organizational change needed to complete the project successfully. Because of the complex nature of these projects, different experts are required—not only ERP or IT experts, but also experts in managing organizational change.
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Customer churn rates are higher than ever: although businesses say they are devoted to loyalty, their management systems and budgets do not support that claim. But in a landscape of similar products, cutting down on defection—or churn—is vital. There are in fact four steps to improving loyalty and retention which, if focused on the appropriate customers, will improve profitability.
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In today’s world, current and future customers are interested to know whether or not you have implemented a quality control system. Some customers will demand International Organization for Standards (ISO) certification, and others may just ask about it. Whatever their requirements, having a quality control system assures your customers that the products and services you offer are of high quality.
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The Yosemite Association is a US-based not-for-profit organization that was operating disparate financial systems that didn’t integrate data across the organization, resulting in data it could not trust. It chose to implement an integrated business management software solution based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The organization has now gained better management of its financial information, with access to reliable, real-time information.
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Mulhaupt, a distributor of specialty building products, knew it needed dedicated software that would help track its numerous inventory items, as well as the financial aspects of the business. To do this, Mulhaupt’s implemented Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision. Since its deployment, the solution has helped boost business revenues by 70 percent, while increasing the employee base by only 10 percent.
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US-based Skarnes, Inc. distributes material handling products and provides warehouse storage and material handling solutions. Migrating from RealWorld to Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision provided Skarnes with improved reporting capabilities, the ability to track costs, and the ability to view work in process. Furthermore, elimination of redundant data entry provided a 40 percent reduction in accounting work time.
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As one of the very early adopters of Microsoft products and technologies, Microsoft Dynamics NAV continues to use Microsoft products and technologies to help customers increase productivity, collaboration, and business insight. Instead of wasting valuable resources on integration, partners can focus on adding more customers and developing solutions that help small and medium businesses around the world achieve business success.
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Chemtech, a plastics injection molder, experienced doubled sales, achieved a 99.7 percent on-time delivery rate, and generated time savings and process efficiencies after implementing DTR Plastics ERP. In fact, after running this application for seven years, they were winning new clients as a result of being able to handle more demanding orders, and provide more comprehensive documentation.
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PEMCO Corporation, a manufacturer of high quality mining products for multinational original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), realized increased on-time delivery performance and reduced customer service costs while preventing product shortages through just-in-time material availability. The improved quality of information and improved flow of product through the plant has even resulted in revamped employee morale and job satisfaction.
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Jasper Seating, an Indiana (US)-based manufacturer of wood furniture products, faced intense pressure from Asian imports, rising raw material prices, and a shortage of skilled labor. But the company achieved significant business improvements after implementing the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System in 2003. These results included expansion into new markets, and a 25 percent increase in revenue over a two-year period.
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Based in Cleveland, Ohio (US), Fuserashi International Technology, Inc. is a manufacturer of precision nuts, bushings, inner metals, piston blanks, and specialty cold-formed steel products. The company achieved significant return on investment within the first two years of using the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System. In fact, as revenue climbed, F.I.T. made a name for itself as a quality benchmark leader.
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Lean execution strategies within enterprises and across supply chains can dramatically reduce cycle times, improve quality, reduce waste, and improve bottom lines. In other words, lean is more than an advantage: it is a competitive necessity. Oracle’s Flow Manufacturing module capabilities in lean execution can enable the transition from a discrete, push-based manufacturing environment to a flow, pull-based one.
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In today’s manufacturing environment, suppliers and manufacturers alike need to be highly selective when choosing an enterprise resource planning vendor to support their product-specific Lean value-streams. Technology is a key element in the success of Lean manufacturing, and should be selected with an eye to the entire value-stream. Infor examines all elements of a Lean value-stream in this must-read white paper.
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Functionality comparisons for different enterprise resource planning (ERP) modules from different vendors often leads to unbalanced disparities among their approaches, which in turn makes it hard to properly evaluate the solution. On the other hand, a process-oriented ERP system is much easier to evaluate, and its degree of match with company needs is visible from the beginning.
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When Newport Corporation needed an integrated business system, it enlisted CSCG to help evaluate existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. CSCG leveraged innovative software assessment tools to help make a selection decision at a savings of $50,000 in project costs, mitigating risk by delivering key reporting capabilities based on impartial data. This case study shows how it was done.
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In the future, companies will partner for competitive advantage, building supply chains excelling in every aspect of their operation. But companies excelling in their own fields may find themselves excluded from these supply chains if their technical foundations are incompatible with popular standards. Technological adaptability is paramount, and Lawson’s M3 Enterprise Management System was developed with this imperative in mind.
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Successful retailers focus their efforts on the unique attributes of each store in the chain. Tailored assortments, promotions, and pricing create environments that foster increased sales. But how can orders to supplying warehouses reflect the intricate details of store-level realities? Can time spent forecasting and ordering into the warehouse be freed up, to enable a focus on store-level opportunities?
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) provides the visibility and agility to improve product management and promotional planning, minimize unnecessary buildups of inventory, and predict revenue more effectively. S&OP works because it develops a well-coordinated operating plan in support of your customer demand, your business plan, and your strategy. So what is S&OP exactly, and how does it work?
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Consider the case of two hypothetical companies—Company A and Company Z—each using an identical enterprise software package delivering identical core functionality. Company A has the same number of users, but the total cost of ownership (TCO) experienced by Company Z is about twice the TCO enjoyed by Company A. Why? We explain.
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IFS Applications is built using the same principles employed by successful manufacturers—the production and assembly of components. This allows change and evolution within a component without affecting other components. With a proven track record of building for change, IFS provides step-by-step, non-disruptive introduction of new technologies into operational systems.
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Anyone even peripherally exposed to business media that touch on enterprise application technology has seen the term service-oriented architecture (SOA) bandied about in advertisements and articles. Given the central role of SOA in information technology, it is important to get beyond a buzzword level understanding. There are three key concepts surrounding SOA: granularity, Web services, and change management.
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Any enterprise suite will pay for itself faster if you work diligently to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). Those who interact with companies on implementing and maintaining their systems know that some project owners are very good at keeping the cost of their enterprise applications as low as possible. We’ll look at their TCO secrets.
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The evolution of global discrete manufacturing is ongoing. How executives at manufacturing companies answer questions and anticipate what will be the right answer six months, a year, or two years from now will determine the success of their company. Infor examines current industry trends and identifies what it believes to be the seven trends producing the greatest stress and change in discrete manufacturing today.
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En éste documento se desarrollan los problemas presentados en la adaptación de los ERP clásicos en Sudamérica al sufrir los traspiés del mundo subdesarrollado. Para esto se buscó dar una solución eficiente a esta problemática, de ésta manera se generó un nuevo paradigma conformado por una capa de tecnología, una funcional y otra de modelo.
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Southern Pump & Tank Company (SPACTO), is a value-added distributor specializing in liquid handling equipment for the petroleum and industrial marketplaces. By using SAP Service Management to track equipment at its customers sites, receive incoming service calls, dispatch work, and track labor and materials, SPACTO was able to lower inventory by 28 percent, and reduce slow and non-moving items by 70 percent.
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Seeking a solution to compress lead times and better customer service, Schumacher Elevator Company, a manufacturer and installer of passenger and freight elevators, implemented a SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. In doing so, it enabled online ordering and customer service, and boosted its competitive advantage in just nine months.
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NexPress, a mid-sized company specializing in print solutions and services, needed to integrate its business processes across its supply chain. It also wanted to increase inventory visibility, and control and eliminate redundant data maintenance. By implementing mySAP and SAP SI s MaxValu, it reduced its operating costs by more than $1 million (USD) in just sixteen weeks.
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Fusion UV is the world s leading producer of ultraviolet curing equipment. Its outmoded legacy system couldn t handle the company s complex manufacturing system, and was threatening Fusion s ability to meet its promised delivery dates. By implementing FastTrack, a mySAP All-in-One partner solution, it improved accuracy in pricing, shipping, and purchase order processing.
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Capstone Turbine Corporation, an energy innovator, needed to implement management, business model, and strategy changes. It also needed to improve product reliability, modularize configurations, and provide visibility. By using SAP products, such as SAP BI, SAP EP, and SAP Best Practices, it realized performance measures for key business activities, and improved sales and inventory management.
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Traditionally, software is packaged as a product with rigid functionality with change only possible through the vendor s release plans, or by developing custom solutions from the ground-up. This results in high lead times, high total cost of ownership, and challenging maintenance issues. However, software assembly allows solutions to be constructed from a mix of existing and newly built components that are stored in a repository or library.
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Implementing standard enterprise resource planning (ERP) products and other enterprise applications is risky. Industry statistics show that more than 60 percent of implementations fail. A common reason for failure is that the purchased software does not support one or more critical business processes. However, a change-on-demand system ensures that incomplete or changing business requirements are met through adjustments in the application model.
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Service oriented architecture (SOA) is a term that is still not well understood by many enterprise executives and managers; however, it requires direct interaction between these two areas. The relationship between enterprise resource management (ERP) and SOA is a meeting point for these areas. Business owners, executives, and managers can lead their enterprises to greater profitability and efficiency by understanding SOA.
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The globalization of discrete manufacturing is forever changing the notion of what a "small manufacturer" is. Even companies that are considered relatively small in revenue, employment, or client base, must now operate like the largest corporations when structuring and conducting their businesses. Infor examines how today's mid-market manufacturers are transforming themselves—focusing on business processes and employing ERP systems for their own operations.
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Project-driven organizations face numerous challenges, including increasing competition, more demanding clients, and changing regulatory requirements. Many organizations also face internal challenges that range from dispersed employees and partners to disconnected business processes and disparate information systems. This paper explores the best practices that project-driven businesses should consider.
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By seeing a business as a "value system" for customers, companies can shift lean strategic priorities towards growth-oriented targets instead of cost-cutting. Instead of squeezing additional margins to boost the bottom line, lean philosophy can increase demand response and sales, while maintaining and lowering cost per unit—thus enabling lower prices, a competitive edge, and more business.
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North American Electric Motors needed an accounting software package that better met its growing needs. By implementing QuickBooks, the company was able to gain transparency into its warehouses and monitor inventory. Security controls enabled employees to process orders without access to sensitive information, and the company saved up to twelve hours a week when processing daily activities.
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"Lean thinking" can cut down waste, enhance quality, and reduce lead time. This philosophy is part of an overall fitness campaign for the manufacturing sector. Businesses that are fitter are more flexible, responsive, and efficient. Navigating through the decisions required for Lean projects requires the decision support that only a well implemented enterprise resource planning system can provide.
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Faced with mounting competitive pressures and product customization, Davis Controls, a representative and assembler for international manufacturers needed to provide its sales force with business analytics and intelligence. With Exact Business Analytics, Davis Controls transformed corporate data into business information, accessible from wherever it resided within the organization without the need for a data warehouse or data mart.
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When selecting an ERP package, you must be sure that the software has the functions and features that support your organization. But once that assurance is obtained, you have to worry about implementing the software. There are four categories of tools that 3i Infotech supplies with its base ERP solution, ORION™ Enterprise, which can make implementation easier for all the stakeholders involved.
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Alltech, a multinational biotechnology company providing
natural solutions to the feed and food industries, found itself with a disjointed, IT infrastructure with overlapping accounting systems. Using a powerful dashboard, users can view information from sixty-three databases to manage the business more proactively.
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Successful demand-driven fulfillment manufacturing, include optimal channel and customer relationships, informed on-line buying and selling, order fulfillment, and integrated operational infrastructures. Manufacturers need to overcome challenges to demand-driven fulfillment by implementing a system that supports flexibility, openness, visibility, planning, e-commerce, collaboration, and integration where the ultimate objective is to minimize waste and optimize resources.
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Plastic suppliers require software systems that provide resources for multisite operations, including engineering, warehousing, and purchasing. However, most vendors solutions do not meet the specific needs of the plastics industry. IMPACT Encore solution gives plastics suppliers an encompassing solutoin that minimizes waste and streamlines process.
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires pharmaceuticals and medical device companies to comply with numerous standards. Medical device manufacturers have long embraced enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), but primarily use them to achieve operational efficiencies. However these systems can play a significant role in their abilities to comply with strictly FDA regulations.
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Enterprises must collaborate or they will surely stagnate. Guarded proprietary information has given way to collaborative approaches where information is shared both inside and outside the enterprise’s walls. To survive, an enterprise must be flexible enough to collaborate externally with suppliers and partners while fostering the same environment with its employers.
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Every supply chain professional must consider certain factors when comparing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and best-of-breed warehouse management system (WMS) solutions for warehouse management. Effective management of warehouse, fulfillment, and distribution operations is key to business success. With so much riding on your decision, you need to thoroughly compare ERP warehouse modules and best-of-breed WMS.
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For food and beverage manufacturers, the failure to meet demand peaks can result in poor customer service, lost revenue, stockouts, brand erosion, and—in extreme cases—being delisted by a major customer. However, with stock build optimization, manufacturers can minimize the time and total value of the stock being held, and realize higher profits and working capital.
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The Expert Hardware Industry System provides critical information whenever you need it, in addition to full support in handling and controlling your business, easily and quickly. This will help you to substantially cut processing times, reduce errors and, as a consequence, make your processes more effective. All interrelated process are linked with the Expert Hardware System, which means that when a process is carried out, it automatically affects another.
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Intelisis ERP es un sistema administrativo inteligente, integra los datos y las operaciones de todas las áreas y departamentos funcionales en un mismo flujo de información y permite un control oportuno de la organización. Esta herramienta esta diseñada especialmente para el mercado mexicano, utilizando actualmente la tecnología SQL Cliente-Servidor con el objeto de satisfacer la forma de trabajar de las empresas nacionales e internacionales y evitar adaptaciones o traducciones de otros sistemas
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Vission XXI, S.A. de C.V. fue creada en el año de 1991 con el objetivo de ser la empresa líder nacional en venta y renta de soluciones con equipo audiovisual y de servicio. Es representante en México de los principales fabricantes de equipo audiovisual. La dirección de Grupo Vission requiere monitorear las
variables críticas de operación y realinear todos sus procesos en base a mejores prácticas y sus prioridades de negocio, a la vez, necesita integrar todos sus procesos para mejorar sus niveles de servicio, tanto en la matriz como en sus siete sucursales. Para esto Intelisis le ayudó
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Organización Papelera Tauro (OPT) es una organización cuyoprincipal enfoque está basado en cinco líneas de negocio:papelería, consumibles de cómputo, equipo de cómputo, cafetería y limpieza.Sus líneas de negocio han ido creciendo en paralelo al crecimiento de la organización,pero todo esto no hubiera sido posible sin el apoyo tecnológico de Intelisis. A raíz de la implantación de Intelisis ERP, OPT ha visto beneficios tangibles, tanto en su operación como en el mantenimiento de la solución.
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Cada módulo cuenta con múltiples funcionalidades que facilitan la operación de los procesos lo que permite su adecuado control y administración. Entre los módulos se encuentran: Punto de Venta, Activos Fijos, Asistencias, Warehouse Management System, auto transporte, Vales, Tesorería, Servicios, Servicios internos, Recursos Humanos, Producción, Proyectos, Precios y Costos, Planeador de Ordenes, Nómina y otros.
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A partir de éste artículo analizaremos la problemática del mercado ERP a fines de los noventa y paralelamente el gran surgimiento del CRM, lo cual nos lleva a reflexionar sobre el rol de cada uno y los límites de la integración. Ante esta situación, podemos encontrar otra manera de encarar el problema, que es a través de la generación de un marco de trabajo de objetos de negocios en el cual al momento de definir los objetos la diferencia ERP-CRM queda casi nula y para lo cual Calipso ha creado Biframe.
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Assortment optimization, pricing decisions, and promotional activity fall flat if a product is not available for purchase. Out-of-stocks, overstocks, and markdowns drive down already strained profit margins. Replenishment, however, maximizes sales while minimizing inventory expense. By understanding replenishment, and planning and allocation, enterprise can determine the best strategies for addressing forecasting and inventory concerns, and improve profit margins.
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Global manufacturers want an integrated view of the shop floor. In response, manufacturing execution systems (MES) have emerged as a powerful tool for integrating plant-floor data with information provided by applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). MES can connect the world, and it has an exciting future when combined with promising technologies such as business process management (BPM) and service oriented architecture (SOA).
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The benefits from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been well documented. However, its return on investment (ROI) is rarely satisfactory. The failure of an ERP package can be disastrous, but by understanding how to deliver a positive ROI, and by following a business process and business technology optimization strategy, companies can reduce the total cost of ERP system ownership.
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Formed by a merger, Saint-Gobain Semiconductor Equipment decided to replace its dual systems with a single application that could handle many users, but be supported by just five people. Sage ERP X3 was chosen for its enterprise-wide capabilities, ability to interface with SAP general ledger software, and ability to accommodate a large concurrent user population on a single client/server system.
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Dropped by its application service provider, Onsrud Cutter, a router bit manufacturer, decided to replace its enterprise resource planning system with a scalable, flexible, quickly installed solution. Further narrowing down its requirements to include customized reports, real time information, and e-business capabilities, the company selected Sage ERP X3. The installation took less than five months.
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In 2002, Ganong, a midsize confectionery, selected Sage ERP X3 to fulfill its requirements for a software application with both batch and discrete capabilities for their mixed-mode manufacturing processes. Since the implementation, Ganong has reduced billing errors, and improved the accuracy and timeliness of production.
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The global automotive and wholesale distribution industry moves more than 50 million motor vehicles from factory floor to dealer to customer every year. Companies that operate in this market sector perform a difficult balancing act between the vehicle makers on the one side and the dealers and the consumers on the other. However by leveraging IT strategies, their goals are attainable.
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Aberdeen research shows that developing innovative products is a top priority for manufacturers today. Such manufacturers must understand how enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, like Arena Solutions, support innovation.
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Replenishment is an area within operations where retailers can find a competitive edge. Excelling at replenishment enables implementation of promotional, pricing, and assortment strategies. Also, profit can be gained by minimizing inventory levels and reducing lost sales. This increases time for analysis and special projects, as it’s no longer necessary to fight the fires of overstock and out of stocks.
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How can retailers maximize their return when investing in cutting-edge replenishment solutions? After all, if forecasting and purchasing decisions are driven by advanced math and logic, then surely there is little room for users to influence success? Actually, establishing a service-level goal strategy can blaze the path to profit for retailers looking to separate themselves from the competition.
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Traditionally, small and medium businesses (SMB) use the same ERP selection methods as large enterprises. However, the lack of an implementation standard, shifts from large-scale purchases, vendor consolidation, and niche solutions have left the market in turmoil. Learn how SMBs can meet the challenges of the new market.
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The competitive drivers of the twenty-first century are time and service (responsiveness and flexibility). Many small and medium enterprises (SME) have implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) as one of the technology tools to improve their performance. This whitepaper on supply chain management (SCM) for SMEs highlight the crucial role and importance of supply chains to SMEs, and distinguishes the different roles of ERP and SCM.
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Maytag had set very aggressive inventory goals, and material manager, Richard Dix needed to find a solution to lower material related downtime, reduce airfreight bills, and reduce overall production costs.
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Abrica.net is a "software-as-service" collaboration solution that enables supply chain partners, of all sizes, to quickly, easily and inexpensively exchange business documents. To send a supply chain document, simply "print" it to the Abrica printer.
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Groschopp initially purchased TCM in
1994 and subsequently expanded its
usage to over 40 TCM licensed users
and 12 data collection users.
Groschopp has evolved into an expert
user of the entire suite of TCM
applications, including MRP, MPS,
and Shop Floor Control with complex
scheduling. One of their main
objectives was the ability to bin
track and optimize inventory,
leading both to cost savings and
also a more efficient operation.
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The biggest single issue in ERP is the failure of a successful implementation. It is mind-boggling to continually encounter companies who make major ERP gaffes in this day and age, especially since most of the trials and tribulations of MRPII implementation were suffered and
learned from in the early 1980's with alpha, beta and gamma releases.
The pertinent question is what are the main causes of ERP failure and what can be done to prevent this from happening to you? There are twelve major reasons for why companies get bogged down or fail in implementing ERP. This white paper addresses them.
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Packaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be expensive and resource-intensive to implement, but they are critical to business. Disruptions due to application failures, performance problems, or unavailability come at a high price. ERP systems are highly change-oriented and must adapt; as a result, ERP teams are struggling to keep up. This white paper focuses on the issues surrounding the automation of the application life cycle for ERP systems. IDC conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen large PeopleSoft customers to better understand their challenges and needs.
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Availl, Inc, the leading solution provider of sales, supply chain management, and logistic services for the aviation industry. Learn how it used Click Commerce Service Parts Optimization solutions to extend its inventory planning capabilities, enable comprehensive demand forecasting, and provide Web-based visibility into global inventories.
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Over the past 30–40 years, manufacturers have made dramatic leaps in improving their businesses by using lean manufacturing and Six Sigma techniques. The systems these businesses use, however, have changed relatively little in comparison. The ERP systems manufacturing companies rely on to run their business are greatly at odds with the strategy and processes lean manufacturers use to maintain their competitive advantage.
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Every corporation needs to make decisions about the selection and implementation if new IT solutions on a regular basis. However, an industrial manufacturer or retailer cannot see this as being one of their core competencies. In most cases such a selection process is seen as a necessary evil rather than a challenge that uncovers new potentials within the company. Only the ones that are able to fully understand and control this process in conjunction with all internally and externally involved parties will be more successful then others. The implementation of new IT solutions can be a chance to increase efficiency, but only if the right goals are defined, the right solutions and partners selected, and results are being monitored on a continual basis. This white paper was designed to deliver you many hints on what to consider and help you reach your goals in your IT selection process faster.
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Industry analysts, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), recently conducted research to understand how widespread the acceptance of Six Sigma is for managing IT service quality. This research, which was targeted primarily at enterprises, showed that 65 percent of those surveyed acknowledge the relevance of Six Sigma for IT-based service management. While many IT organizations have yet to adopt Six Sigma for service management, 80 percent stated that they have plans to do so. This research suggests there is a growing interest in Six Sigma.
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Core business processes must be at the center of go-to-market strategies if a company is to attain its revenue objectives. Sales configuration and pricing are a lethal combination—and an overlooked process. Learn how leading companies are using technology to successfully leverage this combination.
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Manufacturers of capital equipment and highly engineered products face design, production, and delivery obstacles. The most challenging of these activities is scheduling projects and resource demand in a concurrent engineering environment. Learn about a resource scheduling tool that can allow you to put demand on materials, work-centers, and labor as soon as it is known—so you can deliver projects on time and on budget.
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Many organizations are undertaking some form of lean initiative, but if one were to ask one hundred different people, one would probably different explanations from each person. With a variety of methods, techniques, and terms bandied about, many are forced to use the same definition that the late Justice Potter Stewart used for pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Shop floor practices that move inventory to the point of consumption, like kanban, are also associated with lean. But what really is lean? And does it go beyond the shop floor to impacts all areas of the business?
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SKF (AB Svenska Kullagerfabriken) was founded in 1907, with headquarters and a laboratory in Gothenburg, Sweden, and an R&D center in the Netherlands. SKF is the leading global supplier in its field, offering products, customer solutions, and services for rolling bearings, seals and specialty steel, claiming 20% of the world market share. SKF has 80 manufacturing sites employing about 40,000, and an additional 20,000 distributors in 130 countries worldwide. Revenue in 2001 reached 24.6 billion U.S. dollars, and for the first 9 months of 2002, SKF Group’s revenue showed 25.3 billion, grossing 2.04 billion.
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Following the general tendency in the metallurgy industry -knowing very well your product costs - Ductil Steel "alloyed" with Epicor iScala 2.2, the enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system provided by Epicor Scala in Romania, in order to maintain its leading position in manufacturing wires and wire products," said Gellu Brotan, CIO of Ductil Steel Romania.
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Gracias a sus planes de expansión y a la correcta implantación de sus sistemas de planeación de recursos, hoy en día cuenta con más de 90 sucursales ubicadas en la Ciudad de México, Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Estado de México, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes y Querétaro.
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Tal como sucede con todas las empresas que mantienen una evolución y crecimiento constantes, hace un par de años Spring Air se enfrentaba con el grave problema de que la información se encontraba en diferentes sistemas que, en la mayoría de los casos, no estaban entrelazados
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Identification of landed costs—a long-time goal of manufacturers, distributors, importers, and retailers—has grown in importance for all successful businesses in today’s increasingly competitive market. This white paper focuses on mid-size business needs. It provides comprehensive background information; examines some common business challenges; suggests cost-effective solutions provides links to case studies; and lists resources for additional information.
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Learn how JE Mondou Ltd., a 33-store, Montreal-based pet food and accessory chain updated its retail IT system with a cost-effective, end-to-end ERP solution from Microsoft.
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The lack of visibility in sales performance caused tremendous frustration. Multiplereports came from a myriad of sources – executives had to determine which report had
the relevant numbers, rather than focus on the numbers themselves. And by the time actual sales were reported for the previous month, it was too late to make necessary
adjustments with suppliers or shift promotional programs. Marketing couldn’t gauge the sell-through of product lines. The company accumulated significant excess and obsolete.
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This paper examines key issues for CFOs and CEOs in managing ERP systems in the new world of SOX, IFRS, Basle II. While most IT management attention seems to be on document retention, reporting quality, and security, there are broader issues to be considered toward ensuring good governance and compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, IFRS and Basle II.
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Companies everywhere have realized the need for greater efficiency and improved quality within the enterprise to stay productive and competitive in today's business environment. In order to obtain these efficiencies, corporations have turned to the successful model used by manufacturers for years known as lean, just-in-time (JIT), or kaizen. The fundamental goal of lean manufacturing includes the reduction of waste increase in productivity and improved quality. Most manufacturers launch their lean initiatives in order to maximize work flow and obtain dramatic improvements in performance.
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Corporate governance concerns, exacerbated by a weak global economy, have driven shareholder value to drop sharply in recent years. Boards of directors have intensified their pressure on CEOs to create execution-centric organizations and restore shareholders’ and analysts’ confidence. In this era, CEOs are looking to their information technology organization (ITO) to strategically and efficiently deploy technology solutions that enable business process innovation, resulting in world-class products and services on planned costs and release dates. Find out how your organization can develop skilled IT architects deliver total business solutions.
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An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a significant investment for any enterprise. A functional ERP system that benefits a company should contain the following essential components: A to Z modular functionality, high value proposition, your way of doing business, leverage technology; and proof with a configured demo. Learn the basics about these components and how they can benefit your enterprise.
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When it comes to software implementations, organizations large and small share the common goal of rapid deployment and return on investment. Small and medium businesses (SMB) however, face unique issues and challenges that might not be satisfied by vendors that typically serve the Fortune 1000 or tier one community. Such vendors may tout specialized "SMB solutions", but many times they are nothing more than scaled-down versions of the larger enterprise suites that do not take into account SMB concerns. By following some fundamental concepts, smaller companies can make their technology investments pay off, with little disruption to the business. This paper discusses nine steps to easier ERP implementations and better profits.
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When flexibility and speed are requisites for success, it’s the lean organization that leads the race. World-class manufacturing organizations know the value of focusing on the lean fundamentals: eliminating waste, simplifying processes, and continuously improving. By pursuing lean strategies—optimizing inventory and streamlining manufacturing processes—they can reduce inefficiencies and costs in their production processes, and improve customer responsiveness.
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This workbook is designed to help firms that are in the process of investigating their need for more advanced business management and accounting software. Companies have a wide variety of potential software and system needs based on their size and industry. Determining exactly where a company stands in terms of needs and current technology will be necessary for deciding the exact approach it should take toward upgrading. This document has two types of information designed to make this process easier: interactive self-assessment tools and educational text based on IDC research covering the small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise applications markets.
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Think SAP's Industrial Manufacturing Solutions are too big, too difficult, and too expensive? Our 30,000 midsize customers beg to differ. Companies like yours get powerful, proven solutions that are developed with industry specific functionality, live in as little as sixteen weeks, and delivered with fixed, affordable pricing. Smart solutions that save you time and money. That's no myth. With more than 30,000 companies under $1 billion and over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 as our customers, nobody knows how to support your business objectives better than SAP. Two-thirds of our customers are midsize companies like yours ... and the other third used to be.
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The requirement that enterprise software vendors deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI) has never been greater than right now. Customers are demanding that ROI analysis be a critical factor in their decisions to acquire new enterprise software. Without a demonstrable return, few customers are willing to invest scarce capital and human resources in new enterprirse software. A more complete analysis of return can be had by looking at the overall payback that enterprise software can offer to a company. Enterprise software payback includes not only quantifiable improvements in bottom and top line functionality, but also more qualitative measures-—such as new business opportunities, improved customer and partner relations, and improved time to market—-that contribute significantly to the success of a company's enterprise software implementation and use.
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SAP's manufacturing solutions are based on thirty years' experience of the processes that drive your business. When you choose SAP, you're assured of powerful, best-in-class solutions designed specifically for midsize manufacturing companies like yours. All from a single provider. SAP provides mission-critical solutions to more than 1,400 industrial manufacturing customers around the world. If fact, we're currently the market leader, with a commanding 54 percent share of the global market, compared to just 13 percent for our next closes competitor. Gain greater visibility across your enterprise, get closer to your customers, and reduce inefficiencies.
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Recent legislation has bought about unparalleled emphasis on corporate governance and regulatory compliance. In the United States, the Enron and Worldcom affairs have led to a new law Sarbannes-Oxley. In Europe, the EU parliament has decided that all countries must streamline the laws for financial reporting in accordance with IFRS rules from IASC. Bringing organizations into compliance with new demands for corporate governance is having immediate and long-term effects. In this paper we discuss the current business environment, those facets of legislation impacting manufacturers and how QAD enterprise suite of applications can assist you in achieving corporate governance and regulatory compliance quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
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Read about how QAD JIT Sequencing (JIT/S) is helping automotive suppliers execute JIT delivery of custom configured products to their customers. Results: reduced inventory levels, improved order management and cost avoidance caused by expediting activities in the supply chain.
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No matter how sophisticated your ERP solution may be, the most critical factor in its success will be how well it handles exceptions--the seemingly quixotic mission of planning for the unplanned. These issues outside your established operational parameters can include supply, operational and demand exceptions, and can have a "butterfy effect" on your enterprise--impacting customer service, purchasing, plant scheduling, shipping and accounting. How well you respond depends on four critical factors: The speed at which you identify these exceptions; how thoroughly you communicate them within your enterprise, the business rules you have in place to handle these exceptions and how responsive your ERP system is to handling the above four factors. In this white paper, we will explore how you can manage these four factors in planning for exceptions in your enterprise.
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It’s all of these, plus more. Read this new white paper, Any Color Including Black: A New Guide to Demand-Driven Manufacturing, to find out how successful manufacturers—enterprises of all sizes, in industries as varied as consumer goods, industrial, life sciences, high-tech, and process manufacturing—-are using principles of demand-driven manufacturing to successfully compete again low-cost competitors.
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In this paper we have taken ten key areas of influence in the evolution of business practices, we look at the changes that have taken place in those areas, and then look at the way ERP systems have to support those areas. In many cases, the requirements today are very different from the requirements ten years ago. Every company's requirements will be different, but the following ten areas seek to highlight the areas of business change which have implications for the ERP system choice, from which a specific and detailed requirements checklist can be drawn up. At the end of the paper, there is a functional checklist that can referred to each of the sections.
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In the relentless pursuit of profitability and competitiveness, more and more companies are turning to lean manufacturing to reduce or eliminate waste in their production processes. Once confined to the automotive industry, lean principles are becoming standard operating procedure in many industries today. The reason is simple: When implemented with a good performance management system, lean principles have a proven track record of operational and strategic success, which ultimately translates into increased value to the end customer. This paper illustrates how IFS Applications supports lean principles, particularly in the many manufacturing environments that require both rate-based (takt-driven) and order-based shop-floor execution.
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Enterprises of all sizes today face common problems dealing with handling increasing business complexity while reducing costs. The solution continues to be the automation of business processes. SAP is an established leader in addressing the needs of large enterprises. Building on that performance and identified best practices, SAP built and launched SAP Business One. SAP Business One was designed to offer small and medium businesses the same business streamlining and efficiencies at a scale and scope appropriate to their needs. IDC recently interviewed a number of companies that have successfully deployed SAP Business One. The purpose of our interviews was to determine what impact the software had on their productivity and cost reduction.
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Current manufacturing practices have been made cumbersome by the imposition of data recording activities required by manufacturing systems through the release, issuing, and expediting of the infamous work order. An integrated lean system utilizes full containers to signal the completion of product and backflushes the component material within the ERP system. Additionally, the integrated lean system (pull) can work simultaneously and in harmony with your MRP planning (push) to schedule your shop floor bottlenecks so that the bottleneck becomes the heartbeat (pull) for the remainder of the plant. Although originally scheduled, the bottleneck may use the integrated lean backflush routines as well! This white paper defines the integrated lean environment.
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Continuous process simplification of inherently complex enterprise applications should be the primary goal. Apptricity believes that the primary focus for business-
technology managers should be on achieving a rapid application integration and deployment to guarantee measurable return on investment (ROI). Business technology and business managers should not have to constantly recalibrate solution delivery objectives or re-scope project deliverables with reduced functionality because of finger pointing or other rationalized justifications. How can ROI be assured and achieved more rapidly? What are the major decisions faced by organizations relative to their information technology (IT) strategy, and how does this impact ROI? And why would a company choose an (application suite) versus extending in-house legacy systems?
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A decade ago, process manufacturing excellence was defined by long runs, high capacity utilization, and low production costs. Today, excellence is determined by a company’s ability to respond to customer and market demand. In this report, Aberdeen and Ross explore winning strategies leveraged by world class manufacturers to achieve process manufacturing excellence.
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Productization of services is accomplished by associating tangible features with intangible service offerings. Tangible features may take the form of personnel, collateral, methodologies, pricing, facilities, or other attributes. Automation tools like enterprise service automation, database, and project management tools serve as enablers to service productization. By associating tangible features with intangible services, the professional services firm can build client confidence.
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To survive in today economy, every enterprise must put the reins on spending across every location and category. Rogue spending infiltrates even the most disciplined distributors, and is even more apparent in organizations with remote locations and employees. Vendor lists grow like weeds. There is confusion over who manages what service area, and manual approval procedures for requisitions and invoices are cumbersome. The ability for an enterprise to effectively source, procure, and manage its spend must keep pace with the demand for promptness and compliance in supplier relationship management (SRM).
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Successful implementation of an extended ERP system is the result of knowledgeable and dedicated people working together. It entails company-wide commitment, openness to change, good planning and experienced guidance. Three primary criteria determine the probability of recognizing significant return on investment (ROI) from an ERP system. Using these criteria as guidelines during the system selection process and subsequent implementation can ensure that the chosen system will support and enable the business improvements envisioned. That’s ROI.
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Howard Johnson’s Enterprises, Inc. (HJE) is a provider of lawn and garden fertilizer products whose discrete manufacturing package assumed a discrete process. It took ProcessPro eight months to implement a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that worked to address HJE’s unique needs.
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Strem Chemicals, which manufactures and distributes specialty chemicals, implemented ProcessPro’s Warehouse Management Solution (WMS). The solution helped them streamline their processes and reduce operational costs, by reducing their overall shipping errors, eliminating the label planning function, and eliminating the dual recording of a majority of their inventory transactions.
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is more than just software or a set of processes--it's a business culture solidly focused on winning and keeping the right customers. A good CRM solution builds value to your business. Learn about the value of an integrated CRM suite.
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NexPress Solutions, Inc., a midsize production printing company, needed to improve its internal processes and to coordinate with both its parent companies. A SAP software implementation based on SAP best practices for industrial machinery and components (IM&C) reduced operating costs by more than $1 million (USD) in sixteen weeks.
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In today's rapidly changing world, businesses need software that can easily adapt to meet new needs as they arise. SAP® Business One is an affordable, easy-to-use solution that allows small and midsize businesses to streamline and integrate a broad range of operational and managerial tasks.
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This document describes how SAP’s mySAP supply chain management (SCM) software can help a company transform its sequential supply chain into an adaptive supply chain network to remain competitive and successful.
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The small and medium business (SMB) market is ever changing and very demanding, and has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Today, there is a very faint line that separates the demands that SMBs face versus that of large corporations. If you plan to be in the game of business, it really doesn't matter if you are small or large; the rules are the same and tools are as complex for one as the other. SMBs are creating a demand for more and more complex solutions, but their budgets have not expanded with their needs. Learn about the cost drivers for SMBs and how mySAP is a suitable solution.
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SAP Business One is a new offering from the largest business application software company in the world. It offers tremendous potential synergy for buyers of mid-market enterprise resource planning (ERP) software by combining state-of-the-art technology and first class business consultants with companies who are serious about building a highly tailored ERP system that can organically evolve no matter what future challenges their businesses may face.
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Learn how Alltech, a multinational biotechnology company, overcame poor standardization resulting from rapid international growth, to have a common view of financial and sales data, track product through the international supply chain, and cut implementation time from 3 to 4 months to 2 to 4 weeks.
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Learn how Altman Lighting Inc., a family-owned and operated international manufacturer of architectural and theater lighting fixtures overcame isolated customer information and business records by replacing their paper-based order processing system. Read how they improved productivity, centralized data, and gained real-time access to customer information and critical business information.
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Learn how PADI Americas, an international recreational company that develops and encourages public interest in scuba and snorkel diving worldwide, maximized employee knowledge and improved customer service by integrating multiple departments to promote seamless knowledge sharing, and collaboration on one platform.
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Despite the efficiencies brought about by technology, many organizations remain dependant on paper driven, labor intensive tasks. If companies embrace the issue of compliance head-on, they can actually improve business practices, financial performance, and reduce the business risk of their organization. Learn how to develop a process that embraces Sarbanes Oxley compliance and boosts organizational efficiency.
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Business process management (BPM) is a term used by many organizations to refer to the procedures that tie diverse operations together. However, as technology vendors come up with BPM solutions, they often fail to focus on the entire organization, leaving certain segments of the enterprise fragmented and fending for themselves. So how can you bring the employees and processes living outside the system back into the fold?
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Companies are moving away from the linear production path of the supply chain to embrace value cycle management (VCM). VCM is the optimization of supply chain functions across all levels of suppliers, partners, and customers through the integration, collaboration, and synchronization of technology, data, and people-centric processes. Learn how companies can employ VCM to make business processes smoother, more productive, and more profitable.
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Lean manufacturing, which focuses on eliminating waste in the production process, has been called the production system of the twenty-first century. Learn how IFS’ lean manufacturing solution gives you the technology platform you need to make your lean initiative a success—and your business more profitable.
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Vantage 8.0 is the next generation manufacturing solution developed by Epicor Software Corporation. It builds on the successes of the Vista, Vantage, Avanté and other associated discrete manufacturing product lines by introducing a total manufacturing solution for the midmarket. It is built to leverage the Microsoft® .NET Framework™ and Progressreg® OpenEdge™ Business Platform in order to provide a leading-edge technological solution that offers Epicor’s manufacturing customers a framework that will support their business needs now and in the future.
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Companies in virtually every industry today are striving to meet the ever-increasing demands of their customers. The issues of innovation, price, quality, and delivery have never been greater. Customers want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. To give customers what they truly want, manufacturers need to have a deeper understanding of the detailed attributes of the products that meet customer needs. Winning companies, those who will prosper now and well into the future, will need to manage the use of this knowledge with advanced information technology as their key competitive strategy.
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This case study shows how U.S. Tsubaki, a major producer and supplier of roller chain, engineering class chain, and other drive components, adopted the QAD MFG/PRO enterprise solution to address the ever increasing complexity of it’s inventory and supply chain.
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To keep pace in today's automotive industry, suppliers must be able to move information swiftly through and beyond their organizations. With manufacturing sites increasingly scattered across the globe, the ability to exchange information rapidly is key to staying in the competitive race. Learn about the growing need for interoperability and how to overcome its challenges.
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The MMOG was a self-assessment process developed by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) to provide consistent methodology for evaluating supplier performance, identifying weaknesses, and focusing improvement efforts. The Global MMOG/LE incorporates the Odette Logistics Evaluation (OLE), developed by AIAG’s European counterpart, to provide a single global standard for self-assessment. The MMOG is a proven tool for supplier development and provides a recognized industry standard for suppliers who have been asked by customers to complete a self-assessment. Although it was developed by the automotive industry, QAD believes it can be a helpful benchmark tool for customers across many verticals.
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As globalization, competition, and downward price pressures show no signs of easing, lean manufacturing—matching supply to demand, eliminating waste, and streamlining operations—still holds great promise for automotive suppliers to meet this challenges.
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This case study shows how Cephalon, a biopharmaceutical company, adopted the QAD MFG/PRO enterprise solution to address the management problems for their global spread manufacturing sites, packaging site, and workers. Read how it improved visibility and synchronization across global operations, improved inventory tracking, and better leveraged knowledge of enterprise assets.
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Today's cost conscious automotive environment requires that information technology (IT) projects be implemented rapidly, be delivered on time and on budget, and meet or exceed expected return on investment (ROI) projections. Learn how Cascade Engineering increased its efficiency and eliminated waste in virtually every aspect of its business, and saw cost savings of $500,000 per year as a result of business process improvement.
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Small to medium businesses (SMB) want to stay competitive, increase revenue, and remain profitable at the same time. This can be a challenge. Whether companies find this challenging because of a slow economy, market saturation, or other reasons, many companies are re-evaluating business strategies and internal processes to overcome these obstacles. For many successful companies, creating a customer-focused business strategy was the first step. Learn how leadership and customer relationship management software can help breed corporate success.
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Contemporary firms must recognize a fundamental shift in the management of distribution activities as a strategic driver of their competitive success. Instead of the traditional focus on pushing products to customers through distribution channels, there is a need to migrate toward adaptive distribution networks. Such networks focus on managing the flow orders from customers by providing them with high levels of convenience while preserving attention to responsiveness and total distribution costs.
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Innovative companies improve efficiencies by integrating logistics and transportation functions with critical operating processes. By factoring transportation constraints into the planning and execution of warehousing, production and fulfillment, these companies are outperforming their competition.
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Predictive control, reactive control, and passive insulation enables enterprises to predict and adapt to fluctuations in customer demand. Ultimately, adaptive supply chain networks that exploit innovations to consistently improve efficiency and responsiveness are key to surviving a hyper-competitive environment.
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Dynamic efficiencies can help companies combat margin erosion and cope with compressed product lifecycles. By shifting from advanced planning to adaptive planning, enterprises can increase their top and bottom line. Integrating the demand planning network, optimizing the supply chain network, and strengthening execution planning will help this move to adaptive planning and eliminate pockets of waste.
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Enterprise applications can't provide value unless they work within the realities of the business they are trying to support. The current generation of enterprise architecture, while reflecting the best thinking at the time they were designed, does not address key realities of business and does not address the support gap their absences generate. In this paper, we introduce the concept of The Three Realities of Enterprise Solutions, which are fundamental truths about the way that businesses use enterprise solutions.
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Model-based architectures are conceptually superior on all fronts to conventional approaches to development. So far, they have not yet attained high levels of maturity and robustness and hence most organizations are living with conventional approaches. This paper compares the next generation of architectures, called model-based architectures, with current generation architectures from these perspectives. The extent of improvements in model-based architectures over current generations of applications is evaluated based on the above listed criteria for sustainable competitive advantage.
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The new reality for manufacturing CIOs is that budgets are far less than what they used to be and the ability to provide business intelligence to front line users in a simple and workable format is a new measure of information technology (IT) performance.
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Primarily due to rapid development of technology in the past thirty years, the market structure throughout the world has changed considerably. Local markets have become accessible to foreign manufacturers, who are able to perform well in their newly established territories in part due to their superior application of technology. In this light, most companies, including small and medium size, have embedded globalization in their expansion strategies, consistently seeking for new markets abroad. Consequently, local manufacturing companies are facing global competition, forcing them to adopt new concepts with respect to people, process and technologies. This document describes these approaches to production planning in detail as well outlines a software solution. The software solution (Production/3) combines both pull and push techniques and enables small to medium size organizations to fully automate their production system while retaining their investment in their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
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Asset life cycle management is an increasingly important strategic initiative for asset-intensive industries to explore. Innovative organizations can use their assets for competitive advantage and thereby improve the profitability of their business. Learn how advanced asset life cycle management strategies can contribute to organizational agility, security, and flexibility, and improve responsiveness in a demanding marketplace.
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What does it mean to be a world-class competitor? It means being successful in your market against any competition—regardless of size or country of origin. It means matching or exceeding any competitor on quality, lead time, cost, customer service, and innovation. It means picking your battles—competing on the terms dictated by you. But how do you get there?
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Computers were meant to simplify common, tedious tasks. Patching multiple systems together is a band-aid approach to the critical issue of resource management. Should your limited information technology (IT) staff be maintaining a series of interfaces, over several servers and applications? Or should they focus first on delivering quality information to those who need it most? What if a system could deliver world class functionality, be simple to maintain, yet still be affordable and robust enough for the most demanding environments?
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Without strong system controls in place, job shop and make-to-order manufacturing environments can be extremely challenging. So where do you begin to make improvements? The Sales and Profit Growth Strategies report will help you evaluate your business and make that determination.
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Every day you make decisions that affect the short and long term success of your company, regardless of role. Exact Software has developed Macola Enterprise Suite (ES). Macola ES was developed based on three simple, though sometimes elusive, criteria: innovation, speed, and user-friendliness. Learn how ES can benefit the customer service, purchasing, plant management, and controller departments.
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E-mail marketing is experiencing dramatic growth as marketers in virtually every industry begin to take advantage of this power technique that helps to increase revenues and reduce sales costs. Learn how to take full advantage of this high-response, low cost marketing technique by learning the characteristics of this unique medium through proper management to generate metrics and facilitate future successes.
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In this document, we will explore the power of online self-service and how it contributes to healthy customer relationships and delivers viable cost savings. We will also address how technology from Epicor Software Corporation, a leader in the CRM space, can help deliver successful self-service.
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When a company is selecting any piece of enterprise software, there is invariably someone assigned to "look under the hood" and evaluate the application's architecture. While this is a critical step, many organizations do not have a clear understanding of how their short and long term application needs can be directly impacted by an underlying architecture. This white paper serves as the foundation for understanding how Clientele's next generation application architecture shatters traditional enterprise software boundaries.
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Product lifecycle management (PLM) enables companies to manage all information regarding a product, from the initial design and engineering through to manufacturing, sourcing, support, and run down. Traditionally, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have successfully managed manufacturing-related information, but have at best, limited integration to the engineering systems such as product data management (PDM). Learn how the Vantage manufacturing solution offers a complete end-to-end solution that manages all aspects of a product's life.
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An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is your information backbone, reaching into all areas of your business and value chain. That’s why replacing it can open unlimited business opportunities. The cornerstone of this effort is finding the right partner. And since your long-term business strategy will shape your selection, it’s critical that your ERP provider be part of your vision.
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Enterprise performance management (EPM) is the validation of perceptions. It is the ability to analyze business conditions and provide visibility into day-to-day operations to enable more effective and timely decision-making. Learn how to link strategy and execution to encourage the continuous improvement with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Whatever the reasons for pursuing a lead-time reduction strategy, time compression across all company processes is critical to growth, and in some cases means survival for today's manufacturers. Learn about the complementary nature of enterprise resource planning (ERP), value chain exceleration, and quick response manufacturing (QRM).
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Successful implementation of an extended enterprise resource planning system (ERP) is the result of knowledgeable and dedicated people working together. It entails company-wide commitment, openness to change, good planning, and experienced guidance. Learn about the three primary criteria of recognizing return on investment (ROI) from an ERP system and how using them during the system selection process and subsequent implementation can ensure that the chosen system will support and enable the business improvements envisioned.
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Midmarket service organizations face challenges in administration, project management, and business management. Learn how Australia's NATA reduced expenditures and increased return on investment (ROI) and how FMC improved customer visibility with Epicor's integrated solutions and enterprise systems architecture (ESA).
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When researching the right manufacturing software for your business, it is important to realize there is a difference between process and discrete software. A discrete software solution for a process manufacturing company will inevitably fall short, but after you identify your manufacturing operation and requirements, what is the next step? Learn about what guidelines to follow when viewing manufacturing software to ensure your company needs are addressed.
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So-called best-of-breed software solutions may not always actually be the best. Sometimes less heralded niche products more closely aligned with a company's requirements make a better choice. Learn how Tinnerman Palnut Engineered Products, LLC used a feature-rich, enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to get a highly efficient system for its over 15,000 products.
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When Stryker Corporation acquired Howmedica, it had only one year to integrate the new business and completely replace its information technology (IT) infrastructure. Learn how Stryker improved its rapid time to benefit, global capabilities, lowered cost of ownership, and achieved standardized business processes to provide world class service.
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This case study covers why a sporting goods and apparel manufacturer's selection team chose to purchase and implement the Made2Manage® Enterprise Business System from Made2Manage Systems.
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In 1999, Qualitel Corporation, an electronics manufacturer, earned $2.85 million (USD) in revenue. Just one year later, after implementing a new business model and the Intuitive enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel's revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD). By modernizing its operations, Qualitel decreased lead times and increased on-time delivery from 30 to 90 percent.
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Learn how Fabcon, once a small manufacturing company and now the premier sheet metal shop in Southern California catapulted its 55 percent on-time rate in 1993 to a 97 percent on-time rate a year later through business vertical integration and the help of Global Shop Solutions enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.
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As Wiltshire Precision has grown, it has faced challenges common to manufacturers—controlling costs, constant efficiency improvements, competition from abroad, and expansion of customer base and shop space. After implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Wiltshire’s newly automated processes resulted in greater efficiency—and a near-perfect quality rating. Discover the ERP solution’s other benefits.
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In 1996, Davis Controls, a licensed assembler of instrumentation and control products, implemented Exact Software’s Macola Progression solution. The subsequent 50 percent increase in their sales convinced the company to deploy Macola Enterprise Suite (ES). Macola ES’s integrated business process management (BPM) tools have led to improved productivity.
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Learn how SunGard Treasury Systems, a provider of Internet-based treasury management solutions to global corporate, government, and financial services organizations, consolidated its disparate databases into one centralized database for company and customer information.
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Learn how Boeing Autometric, a software and technical solutions provider for modeling, visualization, simulation, and analysis to customers in the defense, telecommunications, and commercial mapping industries, implemented a solution to manage customer communication and information.
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Learn how Viewpoint Construction Software used Clientele to combine its different databases into one common customer database that is customized to fit the unique needs of the company.
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Learn how InVision Technologies Inc., a leading provider of explosives detection systems (EDS) for airports, implemented a flexible support system that gives real-time visibility into customer issues.
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Learn how Mid-West Spring Mfg. Co., a spring manufacturing and stamping wire forming company, improved inventory accuracy by nearly 100 percent, streamlined operations, enhanced customer service, and improved intelligent analysis.
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Learn how Eastern Plastics, a small precision plastic machining, design, and assembly company, implemented an integrated solution and document management system to aid in its growing, international business.
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Learn how Harvey Vogel Manufacturing Co., a metal stamping and value-added assembly company, improved job costing and reporting.
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Learn how three small and medium businesses (SMB), ITW Wilsonart Canada, Neutronics, and Polk Audio, respectively employed an enterprise system to improve operation, visibility, and performance.
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Learn how Manitowoc Beverage Equipment, a leading designer and manufacturer of ice and beverage systems equipment, streamlined its new product introduction and engineering change order processing.
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Learn how Oetiker Inc, the foremost manufacturer and distributor of quality clamps, rings, and couplings improved customer satisfaction, shipping accuracy, and on-time delivery.
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Learn how AVCOM Technologies, a provider of comprehensive information technology (IT) products and suites to high-growth middle market companies, integrated its business processes with Microsoft .NET Framework and "e by Epicor" suite.
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Learn how Swiss-American Inc., a leading manufacturer of medical products, improved the accuracy of its inventory levels by adopting a new manufacturing system complete lot traceability, manufacturing resource planning (MRP), purchasing, and manufacturing projections.
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Learn how Cubic Defense Systems improved their overall product quality and government compliance, while conforming to support mission-critical processes by using Cincom's integrated quality management solution.
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Learn how Boeing Aircraft and Missile Systems reduced its manufacturing costs and increased production, while decreasing its warehouse footprint, and keeping all of its current staff in place.
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