3 Tips for Finding the Best ERP Manufacturing Software for Your Business
If your manufacturing company is outgrowing your software the search for the right manufacturing ERP software can be very confusing. Finding the best solution for your manufacturing operations that will communicate and work for all other departments is critical for success. This blog will help you find the best fit to take your business to the next level. Once you're ready, be sure to involve a manufacturing software ERP expert like us to guide you through the options. You'll need to find an ERP that's full-featured enough to meet your requirements and one that will also minimize operational complexity while staying within your budget.
3 Tips for Finding the Right ERP Manufacturing Software
In our 30 years of experience helping companies like yours, we compiled some tips to help you get started selecting the right-sized manufacturing ERP solution for you.
1. Identify Specific Success Metrics
One question to ask when setting out to select the right ERP manufacturing software is “What do I want to accomplish?” The more specific your answer, the more likely your new software is going to meet your specific needs. Here are several examples:
- Reduce my inventory holding costs by at least 10%
- Plan my production 3 to 6 months ahead
- Build only as needed
- Avoid critical item shortages
- Ease the burden of performing annual physical inventory
- Coordinate production with Sales
- Avoid late raw material deliveries
- Avoid purchasing material before I need it
- Know which vendors perform best
- Organize my bills of material
- Identify and eliminate obsolete raw materials
- Establish multiple sources for critical components
- Include manufacturing activity in financial statements
The list of objectives will be different for every type of manufacturer. For example, better coordination with Sales will be crucial to Make-To-Order manufacturers, but far less important for Make-To-Stock manufacturers, and completely unnecessary to Job Shops.
No matter your manufacturing process, most objectives will fall into three categories.
- Immediately affect your company’s profitability
- Ultimately produce indirectly measurable financial results
- Have no practical or financial metric, but will improve your company’s efficiency and operations.
2. Immediate Measurable Objectives
It is important that you can justify and can measure return on investment. If your CFO is involved in selecting your new manufacturing system (which is highly recommended) then the inevitable question that will be asked is “How long will it take to pay back a system like this?”
That’s why you’ll see a number of your objectives designed to yield an immediately measurable return on investment (ROI). Systems offering expected ROI in less than 36 months are very attractive. Payback in the first year is unusual, but there are solutions in this price range.
For example, a new manufacturing system can enable a 25% reduction in your inventory holding costs. Using your current lender's interest rate you can easily calculate the potential pay-back period.
3. Indirect Measurable Objectives
Often overlooked are the benefits created with the adoption of a more modern manufacturing system. Most companies set out to reduce costs, but realize cost reductions indirectly as well. For example, how long can you hold off new headcount if many of today’s manual tasks could be automated?
Consider updating the cost of finished goods every time the costs of raw materials changes (known as cost rollup). If you have several levels of sub-assembly, you can see that this task becomes so time-consuming to be nearly impossible at scale. Manufacturing ERP software like MISys Manufacturing can roll up your costs in seconds with the highest accuracy. No more manual entry means no more chances for human error.
The process required to migrate to a new manufacturing control system will require many people to re-examine, re-evaluate, and re-establish processes, policies, and procedures. This activity all by itself leads to more efficiency which can help profitability indirectly.
Impossibly Measurable Objectives
Most manufacturers experienced the stress and the risks of fulfilling orders on time. Those ship dates are promises to customers, so how do you actually quantify the cost of breaking a promise?
It's true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s critical to look for a manufacturing ERP that will help you deliver on your promises. Ideally, you’ll want a solution like MISys Manufacturing which includes features to help you ship on time every time, such as:
- Inventory tracking
- Production management
- Materials requirements planning
- Cycle counting
- Stock transfers tracking
Keep Your Existing Accounting Software
Despite what you may hear, you can actually keep the accounting software you have now and upgrade to manufacturing software that will meet your needs. MySIS is an add-on complete manufacturing software to support your manufacturing operations. If your accounting is pretty simple, you can even continue to use your existing accounting software, like QuickBooks. You will use QuickBooks for example, to manage customer-facing processes such as customer records, sales orders, sales inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, etc. MISys Manufacturing integrates seamlessly with the most popular accounting software - QuickBooks Online or Desktop, Sage 50 US, Sage 50 CA, Sage 300 and Sage Intacct.
You can use MISys Manufacturing software to manage the "back of the house," everything related to manufacturing: bills of material, raw material inventory, production scheduling, purchasing, etc. MISys maintains a subledger of all of the manufacturing costs which automatically syncs with the accounting subledger. These transactions are easily auditable and are done automatically - no double data entry is required.
MISys Manufacturing is a cloud-based and on-premise manufacturing solution designed for small and mid-sized companies. Companies in the electronics, food and beverage, aerospace, defense, chemicals, health and beauty, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and transportation industries use MISys to run their manufacturing processes efficiently.
Why Manufacturing Companies Trust the MISys Experts at Trivium
Trivium Technology, Inc. has over 25 years of experience providing ERP and Managed Services for growing companies across New England, New York, and New Jersey. Our team specializes in accounting and manufacturing software sales, service and support to small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. We are certified value-added resellers (VARs) for MISys® manufacturing and Sage 100 software. We are also Lenovo Premier Partners, Intuit® Solution Providers (QuickBooks® Enterprise), and Managed Services Providers for IT services. When you work with Trivium, you will get a tailored ERP solution for your unique business with the flexibility and functionality to scale up to meet the demands of your clients. We partner with our clients to manage all business system requirements to free up your time and resources to spend working in the business.
Contact us today! Visit our website, call 978-219-2500 or email to find out how MISys manufacturing ERP can help your business.
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