Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software Solutions
As a software consultant at Cincom, I met with clients from various industries like manufacturing, pharmaceutical, electronics, and automotive just to name a few.
I specialized in a software delivered by Cincom that provided an agile ERP environment designed to boost business efficiency, while being less complex and heavy compared to other ERP systems on the market.
The Goal: Delivering flexible, end-to-end business management solutions for organizations of all sizes and industries. To optimize business performance and the customer experience, and access to business data and insights in the cloud, on premise, and mobile ERP.
The system serves 75,000 customers in 40 countries, helping manage and grow businesses.
What is an ERP System?
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution automates critical business processes and serves as a shared database for the entire financial and operational data across the company divisions. It accesses this data from a number of modules built to help various departments perform their individual functions. These departments may be from accounting, to supply chain, to human resources.
An ERP solution gives employees access to information they need to answer crucial questions about their department’s current performance and future planning, as well as target areas for improvement. This single source of information maximises data accuracy and consistency and ensures everyone is looking at the same numbers. It drives better decision-making that leads to more efficient processes and cost savings. ERPs can automate many tasks, reducing human errors and freeing up employees to focus more on strategic work.
Common ERP modules support back- and front-office functions like finance and accounting, procurement, manufacturing, inventory management, order management, warehouse management, supply chain management, customer relationship management (CRM) procurement and workforce management. More functionally-rich solutions may also include professional services automation (service resource management), human resources management, ecommerce and marketing automation.
ERP Modules.
Below are 13 of the modules ERP systems can encapsulate.
An Innovative, Flexible ERP Solution.
Be Independent.
An ERP that’s easy to maintain, and enhance, where users and admins are self-sufficient, minimizing dependency on third party vendors.
Cloud & Hybrid.
Scalable, secure and risk-free system that safeguards your business data; accessible from anywhere, any time with your choice of full SaaS or rich hybrid environment.
Mobile.
Revolutionary Mobile App Generator enables non-developers to build mobile apps in just minutes, as well as out-of-the-box mobile apps and mobile field solutions.
Artificial Intelligence.
Fast-emerging integrated AI capabilities, actionable data insights for a 'complete picture' of your operational business data. Automates routine processes and boosts the user experience through interaction.
Open System.
An ecosystem with detailed SDK and a full set of REST APIs, enabling easy integration with 3rd party apps, IoT, and external devices.
Collaboration Tools.
Share ideas, tasks, documents and data to achieve a common goal, and simplify team collaboration.
Intuitive.
Modern and friendly UI that gets you up-and-running fast with personalized screens, shortcuts to common tasks and responsive Help tools.
Manufacturing Industry Client Case Study.
Our ERP software and implementations gave manufacturers a competitive edge by offering:
Full visibility of product lines
Improved agility/response times
Seamless workflow synchronization
Real-time alerts at every stage
Simplifying complex processes
Reports and analytics to help optimize operations, and remove inefficiencies.
Automated processes empower seamless and immediate synchronization between units, preventing delays and errors, from engineering to production. With advanced planning and control capabilities, manufacturers can easily manage complex and critical supply chain management processes.
Inventory Control
The cornerstone of any successful manufacturing operation, inventory management and control is what drives the shop floor, supports raw materials’ handling, and helps increase revenues. Maintain optimum inventory levels with real-time inventory analysis, save time and resources, improve service levels to serve current and future production needs, and manage tracking and traceability, with tight control on inventory replenishment.
Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
An essential information management system, our MES gives you the control you need to skillfully control and monitor work-in-process on the shop floor, keeping close track of all manufacturing data in real time. This means receiving up-to-the-minute data from robots, machine monitors, and employees, tracking operations and production progress, quality control, rework, and scrap ratios. All this, while supporting data collection via bar codes or RFID tags, our MES helps ensure optimal manufacturing operations, and quality production output.
Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
A powerful production planning, scheduling, and inventory control system to manage manufacturing processes, MRP determines material requirements based on sales orders, open work orders or frequency of need. Integrated into our ERP, MRP helps you effectively plan your manufacturing activities, delivery schedules, and purchasing activities.
Multi-Division Planning
Our ERP is built to serve multiple divisions for any size organization. Powerful manufacturing management tools and functionalities support organizations with multiple divisions and/or distribution centers. To best support your company’s needs, our manufacturing processes are easily customizable for multiple production control used in discrete, repetitive, and mixed-mode manufacturing.
Serial, Lot Tracking & Traceability
If you’re in a highly regulated industry, your business demands stringent control over product tracking, and lot traceability. You need to be equipped to respond quickly to any defect or hazard, down to the individual parts or ingredients. Our Serial and Lot Tracking ensures reliable management of material and product traceability through every stage in the supply chain, from receipt of raw materials, through delivery to the end-customer. You’ll have full control over parts as they move through your production process, and track serialized parts and their lot attributes throughout the entire part lifecycle.
ECO Management & Revision Control
Manufacturers have to respond quickly with engineering changes to maintain and increase your market share. Our ECO management, combined with tight revision control, delivers an immediate response to market demands, government regulations and safety issues, and service, functional and competitive requirements in the manufacturing process. It’s our robust and reliable ECO management tools that optimize, organize, and track the entire approval process.
Quality Control & Assurance (QC/QA)
Key to any successful manufacturing process, our manufacturing module is equipped with robust product-oriented QC functionality to detect and remove defects from your system, while QA is a systematic approach to ensure the ERP system process. Our ERP system gives you the tools you need to fully automate QC processes and tests for serialized, lot or batch tracked inventory/non-inventory items. To support your QA activities, our ERP clearly defines test procedures and standards for inspection of purchased or outsourced components, inventory sampling, work order testing, and final QA.
Client Case Study: Stillwell Jacks.
With our ERP on board, Stillwell processed up to 30% more orders with the same resources
“The ERP system took the manual management out of running the business, and today, we can do a lot more with less.”
The Challenge
Help Stillwell ramp up their operational processes – purchasing, manufacturing, sales, and customer service.
The Results
Our ERP helped transform and accelerate workflows, produce more, and deliver better quality products on time and on budget.
The Company: Manufacturer of hydraulic trailer jacks and seals, cylinders, and parts for agriculture, earthmoving equipment, and automotive industries, and US military
Headquarters: Minnesota
Industry: Construction
Users: 100
The Challenge
With a fast-growing business delivering products nationwide, the Stillwell team knew they could no longer rely on Quickbooks to manage their accounting. They needed an alternative to manage their entire operations, namely manufacturing and order tracking. The VP of Operations stated, “We knew we couldn’t handle our growth without a system in place to cover purchasing, manufacturing, sales, and customer service.”
Leading the team, the VP understood the advantages of an ERP system, and how a single, company-wide, cross-functional platform could do the job. “In this industry, we’re constantly creating new products to better serve our customers, but we're also developing new technologies to grow our brand and remain competitive. We knew we needed an open, flexible, and scalable ERP system that could grow with our business. ”
A thorough onboarding, implementation, and user training program were fast put into place. “We were ready for a long and exhausting process, but the ERP implementation team were quick and professional, which meant little to no system downtime. Processes were really straightforward and delivered in manageable sized steps. Our employees, all new users, adapted relatively quickly, too. The UI is super intuitive, and once you understand the basics, it’s easy to become proficient – and that’s a huge benefit.”
The Results
After the ERP was implemented company-wide, the Stillwell team now had a system that let them enter the orders on the front-end, and drive the actions throughout the rest of the business. Manufacturing knew what to build and when it was due, purchasing knew what to buy, and management had real-time visibility of operations. They had never had so much information available and it’s changed the way they worked.
Stillwell Jacks grew over the next few years, attributing their growth to the ERP system. “Since implementing the system, we’ve been able to take on up to 30% more orders. Single-handedly, it’s taken the manual management out of running the business, and we can do a lot more with less. The time saved allows us to book, build, and ship more orders – and that’s good business.”
Stillwell’s plans for the future involved a module expansion and adding a shipping interface via the open API, to save time and reduce manual errors.
Flow Chart of Implementations Process.
PRE SALES
Work with the business consulting team to discuss the client, their industry, business needs, current processes and goals
Discuss, plan and create a demo and modules presentation plan focused around the business needs
Meet with the business operations team and potential users of the system
Talk to the business and gather business and user requirements
Talk to the engineers, the technicians and back end manufacturing side of the business. What are the requirements, processes, their order, dependencies, limitations, constraints, needs, inputs, outputs. What is the source of input data? What is the output and who are these accessible to?
E.g. Inventory lists, parts lists, production order entries, sales entries, parts orders, components lists, individual parts / components distributors, lead times, preferred manufacturers or components, prices, time to order / receive, different types of reports for different type of people e.g. engineers, sales, management, production
DURING IMPLEMENTATION
Map out the processes, journey maps, divisions, people responsible, sequence of events, dependencies, inputs / outputs
How do the processes fit with the current ERP system?
How can we rename and reorganize modules, screens, reports, queries, and interfaces to streamline the workflow and also make it customized to the business within the scope of the existing ERP software without compromising on the quality of operational efficiency?
What other modifications are crucial that the ERP doesn’t support?
How can we minimize major back end customizations without risking the integrity of an optimal solution?
Make any necessary modifications and custom implementations as required: Front end and database related modifications were performed by myself
Extensive modifications to the software were made by software developers following documentation and hand off to engineers
DELIVERY
Discuss with and present demo to the business stakeholders and users to confirm modules and process flows work correctly as per requirements
Deliver and launch fully customized ERP system
POST DELIVERY
Training of users
Post sales support to users
Further modifications as necessary, both front end and back end