You’ve heard the term Smart Manufacturing or Industry 4.0; but what does that really mean for your manufacturing company? Can a company be “Smart” and use basic software like Quickbooksor do you need to have a realEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP)system? The short answer is: yes, your company needs an ERP system to truly adopt Smart manufacturing and be ahead (or even keep pace) with the competition.
For those still wondering what Smart manufacturing or Industry 4.0 are, don’t worry, the terms are newer and only recently been used in a fairly regular manner. Smart Manufacturing is, simply put, the melding of operations technology (OT) and information technology (IT). Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing are really the newest phase or a new Industrial Revolution if you will hitting manufacturing on a worldwide scale.
In order to remain competitive, manufacturers must invest in inter-connectivity, automation, machine learning, and real-time data analytics.
Holding together various systems needed to properly track and analyze the smart manufacturing data captured, is a strong ERP system, which can marry the shop-floor data with cost breakdowns, operational information, job details, and customer information, etc. I find it interesting how many manufacturers still run homegrown systems or rely on access database, excel, etc to track production, which is clunky, prone to data corruption, and does not collect all relevant data to provide a company with true business analytics.
One of our clients used a homegrown system before deployingEpicor ERP a few years ago. They noticed immediate improvements in inventory control, accurate cost measurements for their products, and better shop floor scheduling. Now, image if the same company deployed machine learning and automation married with real-time data analytic software? The potential to outpace the competition is dramatically increased.
So to get back to the second question, no, Quickbooks or other smaller software systems will not support manufacturers focused on growth since they lack the basic shop floor data collection and analytics needed to streamline your business. Manufacturers that wish to remain competitive, and have an optimized business require an ERP system.
Is your company looking to move away from small accounting systems and move to a manufacturing ERP system? Or do you have an ERP system and need to work on optimizing it? We would love to talk with you about how we can work together to make your business run better.
Internal Planning is Key to Forming ERP Search Questions
Let’s face it, many articles have been written about companies “Outgrowing QuickBooks” or “Signs you need an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system”. But what those articles don’t usually talk about is what you can do to prep your team internally for an ERP software system. This is a comprehensive sales, finance, and operations system. As such, planning comes into play. Unfortunately, “planning” is one of those words that tends to make people groan. They know it means more work, lots of discussions, and loss of time. However, asking detailed internal ERP search questions is paramount to a successful ERP evaluation and implementation.
Would a military general or combat veteran go into battle without a plan? There is a reason that ERP implementation rooms are nicknamed “War Rooms.” First, leaders storm through strategy. Then, heavy system testing is done and current company practices come into question.
What are some of the right internal ERP search questions to ask for planning purposes? Questions like system design, usability, industry specific functionality, cost, and implementation assistance are just some aspects to consider when looking for an ERP system. I look around on the web, and I find a lot of system questions written by software vendors, but not a lot of internal company questions to ask or considerations that need to be discussed. Having talked and worked with many, many companies over the years during their ERP searches, I wanted to give some examples of planning areas and questions for companies to prep internally.
10 Internal ERP Search Questions to Get the Project Planning Started
What does my company need and want to accomplish with an ERP System?
Accessibility throughout departments
Financial reporting
Time frame for evaluation purchase, deployment phases/locations, and full usability
What are the challenges of my company’s current business software? Why is it no longer meeting the needs of my company? Look at this from a department level:
Production challenges
Services challenges
Finance challenges
Executive/Owner(s) challenges
Sales & Marketing challenges
Purchasing challenges
the Warehouse(s) challenges
Research & Development challenges (if applicable)
Human Resources challenges (if required as part of an ERP search)
Is my company fully utilizing current systems in place. Is the current software potentially sufficient with added training? (I suggest talking with an expert consultant of that software if it’s an ERP system. Through this view, you can see if the current software works for your needs. Then, you can focus on ERP user training.)
Does my company have specific compliance or auditing conditions? Examples: Medical CFR, Aerospace & DoD DCAA, Medical Records HIPAA, Internal export FCPA, Electronic Underwriters UL, Federal Airlines FAA, Finance SOX etc.
What are the key aspects of the compliance in relation to software? What data needs to be captured?
Why do I need an ERP to do in order for my company to meet the compliance? Reporting?
Do we need a SaaS (cloud-based) solution, on-premise (due to data security concerns), or a hybrid cloud (hosted) system? Hybrid cloud platforms combine the best of on-premise with the best of pure cloud.
How do you plan to care for your ERP system? Do we have IT staff in-house to support an on-premise solution, or is there an outsourced IT firm we can work with to help?
Do we need a system that will work for 3 years, 5 years, or 10 years?
How important is scalability?
What modules would you like to add to your core functions as your company grows?
Do you have multi-company or multi-site requirements?
What are the key functions we need the ERP system to do? Look at this on a department level:
What does production need?
What does services need?
What does finance need?
What do the executives and owners need?
What does sales & marketing need?
What does purchasing need?
What does the warehouse need?
What does research and development need?
What does human resources need, especially for the ERP search?
What are the “nice to have” or “wanted” functions beyond the base needed requirements?
What is a realistic budget and ROI for a new ERP system?
Licensing budget (per month spending for cloud or for fully purchased or financed system)
Implementation budget (research firms say to estimate 1 to 2 times the licensing budget for implementation costs)
Software maintenance, etc. should also be factored into a budget
Hardware system requirement budget (especially important for on-premise software which basically requires a data center in-house)
Additional personnel / staffing requirements to support a new system
Expected ROI?
Is your company looking for an ERP system? Chat with us now!
Epicor ERP is a powerful platform with thousands of manufacturers using it to run their businesses. With power often comes complexity, and that’s been the case with earlier versions of the system. There is no perfect ERP system, and the ever-changing balance between functionality and usability is a constant series of trade-offs. Epicor ERP Version 9 often required multiple servers, performance tuning was critical, it had a Progress data base layer, even when running on SQL, and the user experience was challenging. A personalized Epicor ERP demo is the perfect beginning to your Epicor consulting journey.
Epicor invested $25M in Epicor ERP Version 10, developing a completely new platform. The system was written and optimized for Microsoft .NET Framework and the Microsoft Data Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server. Users will experience a big increase in performance (over Epicor 9) and find the system easier to manage.
What you’ll see in your Epicor ERP demo
According to Epicor, here are the Top 5 user ERP system experience enhancements for Epicor ERP 10.
Responsiveness – Performance has doubled and scalability has quadrupled across virtually all aspects of the system. ERP 10 is much more hardware efficient, which dramatically lowers hardware costs.
Simplicity – ERP 10 services are hosted purely using Microsoft Windows® components, including Internet Information Services (IIS) and Microsoft .NET. An all new management architecture makes deployment and migration much easier.
Mobility – Touch-enabled devices are now supported for a new navigation system and a re-architected Epicor Web Access (EWA) browser client.
Collaboration – Epicor Social Enterprise is included with ERP 10 and is a new way for ERP users to interact with each other and with ERP data.
Choice – ERP 10 can be deployed on premise, hosted, or access via subscription. It is also much easier to create a high-performing virtualized infrastructure.
The current version, Epicor 10.2, introduces some really exciting capabilities that you’ll see in your ERP demo, including Active Home Page and Epicor Data Discovery (EDD). Here are some highlights:
Developed using the latest web standard, which makes the system mobile-friendly and responsive.
Manufacturing role-based KPIs, examples: Percentage of Jobs without Scrap or Non Conformance, Manufacturing Hours and Indirect Hours.
Finance and Supply Chain role-based KPIs, including: Price Variance, Open PO Count and Amount, and Negative Inventory Items/Out of Stock.
Customization capabilities to modify out-of-the-box KPIs or create entirely new ones based on existing or newly created BAQs.
Epicor Consulting: How can we help?
What do you want to see? Our Epicor consultants will show it to you. The best way to get an in-depth look at the new Epicor 10.2 functionality is to experience it firsthand! Our Epicor consulting team can give you a demo of the full system, or one of our ERP specialists can walk you through a specific module. We can help you with project planning, including Epicor budgeting so you experience increased revenue at every step of your ERP upgrade. Your personalized Epicor ERP demo can even show you the newest managed ERP hosting capabilities.
Learn to understand what motivates the people you work with and what they need to be successful. No person is the organization or is indispensable.
10. Be Honest and Dependable!
Take Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.
As a disclaimer, these 10 Principles of Success come from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) newspaper aimed at helping stock market investors understand what good growth stocks to invest in, based on what the current overall market conditions are. EstesGroup believes that a company can apply these 10 Principles of Success to ERP systems; that is selecting, implementing and using them.
How does the 9th Principle of Success apply to:
Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?
Principle # 10: Be Honest and Dependable!
Take Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.
My Dad has always told me, showing up each day, using common sense and being honest is 98% of what makes you successful in life. Honesty and Dependability is the cornerstone in most things that are successful and it’s no different in selecting an ERP system. In selecting the right ERP system for your company, you’ll come across several different individuals that can make or break the system selection process a positive experience for your company. The individuals I’m speaking of are:
Independent ERP consultants
Software Vendor Personnel
Your Own Company Employees
In order for your company to clearly understand whom in this group of people is honest, dependable and is ready to step to the forefront of your ERP selection process to take responsibility of its success, you need to develop a few tracking tools that provides you what I like to call the “ERP Honesty Gage Tool Kit”. I’ll provide you some of the more important items in the “ERP Honesty Gage Tool Kit” in a moment, but I want to make sure you understand the reason why you need one in the first place to ensure your companyselects the right ERP system. I’ve been in the ERP software space for 30 + years and I only know of a few so called “Independent” ERP Consultants. I’m not saying these consultants/consulting firms don’t provide a service, but the majority of the so called “Independent” consultants/consulting firms out there have their favorite ERP systems/vendors they continually recommend to their clients and for this they get an additional “Referral” fee from these vendors for their recommendation after they’ve charged your company for their consulting time. This is a conflict of interest and should not be taken lightly while you’re selecting a system that will touch every area of your company. Knowing up front how to deal with ERP Vendor Personnel when you’re reviewing their ERP systems is ultimately what will make or break you selecting the right ERP system. The most important thing to the ERP vendor is to sell you their software system and implementation services as quickly (on their timeline, not yours) as possible. There are several red flags you should be aware of and be able react to, to avoid these types of vendors. I’ll point that out below. The honesty and dependability of your own company employees, especially the company employees that are on the ERP “Selection Review” team have to be continually monitored through the selection process as well as you have to know up front if any of your these employees are biased for or against a particular system. What are the signs? ERP Honesty Gage Tool Kit Independent Consultants:
Check there website, if they list particular ERP Software Vendor as their partners, there’s could be a conflict of interest with them helping you with your review.
Ask them to sign a document stating they are not associated, nor have they ever received any “Referral Fees” from any ERP software vendors for their recommendations. If they’re hesitant to do this you probably know they aren’t “independent”.
Ask for references. If the majority of references have all chosen the same ERP system, chances are they are not an “independent” consultant.
If the “independent” consultant wants to project manage the implementation of the ERP system once it’s selected, chances are they are not independent. ERP implementation project management needs to be handled by a certified member of the ERP software system.
If the “independent” consultant recommends your company review an ERP system prior to doing a “Business Process Review” or reviewing one you’ve provided them, their “independent” status is questionable.
Software Vendor Personnel:
If the Software Vendor offers to do a software demonstration of their system, prior to understanding your business you are most likely are not dealing with someone that wants to know. Ask them for demo, if they say yes without having a detailed conversation about what you do and how you do it they just want sell you a system.
If the Software vendor offers you a month/quarter end price special before going through the ERP sales process, they are not going to be the partner your company will want over the long haul. (If you want to understand what the ERP Sales Process is, from a software vendor’s point of view, give us a call at EstesGroup, we’ll share it with you, as well why it’s so important to follow it).
Ask the ERP software vendor for references of companies they’ve sold in your industry. If they are reluctant to do so, or they never provide you any names, chances are they have none. This should cause you concern.
The software vendor should put together a demonstration script that follows your business processes. If none is provided they are not equipped to show you how the “Best Practices” in their system can help you improve your company.
Because ERP systems are more complex today, it’s extremely rare for a software vendor to have one person do it all (i.e. software demonstration, infrastructure discussion, implementation overview, etc.). Get to know the software vendors entire team that will be involved in your review of their system. If there’ only one person, chances are the software vendor might be too small for your company to work with.
Company Employees:
Prior to beginning your company ERP review, the project lead should provide the “Review Team” a questionnaire asking them directly if they have any ERP system bias (i.e. for or against a particular ERP system).
If a “Review Team” member consistently only participates in the review of one of the systems your company is reviewing, then they may have bias.
If a “Review Team” member continually criticizes or speaks highly of what they’ve seen/heard of onlyone ERP system Vs the other systems being reviewed, they mostly likely have already formed an opinion on their recommendation. Every ERP system has pros and cons and that should be kept in mind throughout the selection process.
The homework that is assigned by the ERP Review Leader to the Review Team Member is late or consistently not completed it might be an indication that person doesn’t want to embrace the new system.
Embracing change is an important part of selecting, implementing and using an ERP system. If a critical person or group of people in your organization have not provided the ERP Review Leader with any ideas in how a new system can help them or their area function more efficiently and effectively this should be a red flag that needs to be dealt with immediately in the selection process.
If you’d like to learn more about what and how to measure the honesty and dependability of the people you’re counting on to select the right ERP system, prior to buying it, give EstesGroup a call, wecan help! We’ve been providing this type of help to the manufacturing/distribution industry for years.
Pick up the phone and call 1 888 300 2340 and together we will:
Simplify Technology, Improve Operations, and Gain Efficiencies…
Learn From Our Experts: Access Our Epicor 10 Out Of The Box ToolsVideo Series.
Goal #9 in Selecting Your The Best Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System: Communicate and Deal with People Effectively The10 Principles of Success
We continue to review the 10 Principles of Success and how they’re applied to ERP Selection with the 9th Goal for Success: Communicate and Deal with People Effectively!
Take Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.
As a disclaimer, these 10 Principles of Success come from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) newspaper aimed at helping stock market investors understand what good growth stocks to invest in, based on what the current overall market conditions are. EstesGroup believes that a company can apply these 10 Principles of Success to ERP systems; that is selecting, implementing and using them.
How does the 9th Principle of Success apply to:
Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?
Principle #9: Communicate and Deal with People Effectively!
Learn to understand what motivates the people you work with and what they need to be successful. No person is the organization or is indispensable
Communication and Dealing with People Effectively in your organization when selecting an ERP system should be fairly obvious, but you’d be surprised how few companies actually do it properly or even at all. What happens is that most companies start out in their ERP selection process in a disciplined way by creating an ERP review team, with a leader (typically a person from IT or Finance) being in charge of the group and the ERP project. As the review of ERP systems proceeds, more and more of the review team start to lose interest or are not kept apprised by the ERP selection leader of the details of what’s taking place throughout the selection process.
It’s imperative to have weekly written status updates as well as weekly meetings with the entire team to communicate where the group is at with selecting a new ERP system; in relationship to the timeline that was defined at the start of the ERP system selection process. Keep in mind what we discussed with the 8th Principle of not being afraid to innovate and change your company around the new ERP system’s “Best Practices” comes the need to over communicate to your review members what is taking place and the changes the organization is going to need to make when the new system is selected and more importantly why it’s beneficial. Also it’s important to remember in your communication to the review team members most people in your organization will be very apprehensive about change; with the majority feeling that a new ERP system will create more work or eliminate jobs. Therefore it’s very important for the leader of the ERPselection group to choose their words carefully as well as positively, since the review team members will come from all areas of the company and they’ll have a tendency to share what’s taking place in the ERP selection process with other people in the company, prior to management wanting that information known.
So to effectively deal with each ERP system review team member, it’s important to over communicate efforts/results in writing as well as to meet regularly (weekly). Below are some of the communication points that an organization (ERP system review leader) should be doing to ensure they’re effectively engaging its ERP review team members.
Weekly mandatory ERP review meetings; that includes upper management. A “meeting agenda” needs to be included so the ERP system review team knows what to expect.
A written report that includes the list of the potential ERP systems that are candidates for selection. Demonstration dates of each system that your company is considering and the reasons why should be included/updated in this written correspondence to everyone on the review team.
A written Pros/Cons list for each ERP system being considered should be included in the weekly written communication and updated as discovery happens.
Individual review members should have their own weekly written instructions on what they’re specifically tasked with in selecting the right ERP system for the organization. These written instructions should be updated weekly with new tasks that need to be done for each review team member as they are known.
Individual ERP review team members need to respond in writing, weekly, to the ERP selection team leader (copying the group) with what they’ve accomplished to keep the overall ERP system selectionprocess moving along.
Upper management should not be excluded in the written weekly communication by the ERP review leader as well as be assigned/completing tasks/homework for the selection of an ERP system.
Continually communicate the ERP selection timeline and the tasks that have been done as well what needs to be completed and why. This should be updated weekly and emailed to everyone on the review team.
Nicely communicate weekly to team members that have not completed their review tasks/homework they need to have it done by the next weekly meeting or it will be assigned to someone else on the team.
Schedule well in advance the ERP system demonstrations and communicate that weekly to the review team members when the demonstrations are, so no one misses the demonstration. The ERP system demonstration is one of the most important tools available to the review team to select the right ERP system.
Schedule follow-up calls with the ERP software vendors for each team member after the ERP system demonstration to ask questions and communicate the answers back to the other team members in the weekly meetings.
If you’d like to learn more about what and how to effectively communicate to your people while you’re selecting an ERP system, prior to buying it, give EstesGroup a call, we can help! We’ve been providing this type of help to the manufacturing/distribution industry for years.
Pick up the phone and call 1 888 300 2340 and together we will:
Simplify Technology, Improve Operations, and Gain Efficiencies…
Learn From Our Experts: Access Our Epicor 10 Out Of The Box ToolsVideo Series.
Goal #8 in Selecting Your The Best Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System: Don’t be Afraid to Innovate and Change! The10 Principles of Success
We continue to review the 10 Principles of Success and how they’re applied to ERP Selection with the 8th Goal for Success: Don’t be Afraid to Innovate and Change!
Take Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.
As a disclaimer, these 10 Principles of Success come from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) newspaper aimed at helping stock market investors understand what good growth stocks to invest in, based on what the current overall market conditions are. EstesGroup believes that a company can apply these 10 Principles of Success to ERP systems; that is selecting, implementing and using them.
How does the 8th Principle of Success apply to:
Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?
Principle # 8: Don’t be Afraid to Innovate and Change!
Following the way that it’s always been done is a sure way to achieve nothing.
In my opinion the ability to Innovate and Change is the cornerstone of why your business would want an ERP system to begin with. As a business Innovation and Change is the lifeblood of you continuing as a business. If your business is going through the process of trying to Select an ERP system based on what your current system(s) allows you to do today without a close examination of why, what, when and who’s doing it you’re doing your company a big disservice. Selecting a new ERP system or your first ERP system is a great opportunity for your company to innovate/invigorate your business by learning what “Best Practices” the new ERP system has to offer and how it will positively impact your business. As I mentioned in my last blog, a good, tightly integrated ERP system will touch every aspect of your business (i.e. from how you handle a sales lead to how you maintain your facility/equipment as well as everything in between). I’ve been in literally hundreds of manufacturing/distribution companies over the 30+ years I’ve selling/servicing ERP systems and what I feel that’s really missing from the ERP selection process, from a business owner’s perspective, is understanding how and what needs to change in their organization to be better. Business management gets locked into the mindset of “this is how we’ve always done it and we’ve been in business for 50 years, so I guess we know what we’re doing”. That’s true to a certain degree, but if you really are trying to determine how a new ERP system can help you change and innovate your business when selecting an ERP system (instead of when you’re implementing or using the system you purchased) you should be interested to know from the ERP Vendor what they can tell you about how their system will make your business better. If the software vendor knows his system, knows your industry then they should be able to tell you, create a list for you and then show you specifically how their system can make your business better. On top of that, the ERP software vendor should be able to identify gaps in your current business processes Vs “Best Practices” of their system and then be able to clearly show/tell you how to change your current business mode to take advantage of their new innovative ideas. So what are a few ways a manufacturing/distribution business can change and innovative themselves with an ERP system?
Let’s start with Marketing! Are you tracking the marketing dollars you’re spending to specific marketing campaigns that then identify the leads that are generated from those marketing campaign, that turn into sales quotes? That then turn into orders?
At the time your company completes the manufacturing of a part(s) are you able to clearly understand what parts, product lines or customers you’re the most profitable doing work for based on what you initially quoted?
How many times do people in your organization reenter information into your current system(s) in order for you/them to understand where things are at (i.e. quotes, orders, jobs, purchases, receipts, shipments, invoices, etc?)
How often do you experience unplanned machine down time?
Are you scheduling your manufacturing shop with a whiteboard?
Are you still mailing your customers their invoices?
Are you manually reporting labor time on cards and then collecting those labor cards for input the next day?
Do you allow your customers the ability of entering their own orders on your website or do they have to call in to get the status of their business with your company?
How many Excel spreadsheets do you have and use throughout your business to pass information from one department to another?
Are you reentering shipping information into your shipping providers systems or manually filling out Bill of Ladings and Packing Slips?
There are literally hundreds of more examples I can provide you in what changes you should be looking for when you’re company is going through the selection process of choosing an ERP system.
If you’d like to learn more of what and how an ERP system can help you innovate and change your business prior to buying it, give EstesGroup a call, we can help! We’ve been providing this type of help to themanufacturing/distribution industry for years.
We would love to talk with you about HOW an ERP system can Innovate and Change your business to be better. Pick up the phone and call 1 888 300 2340 and together we will:
Simplify Technology, Improve Operations, and Gain Efficiencies…
Learn From Our Experts: Access Our Epicor 10 Out Of The Box ToolsVideo Series.
Internal Planning is Key to Forming ERP Search Questions 
