Choosing the Right ERP Solution to Support a Global Business – Part Two

15 MAY 2013

Many organizations are becoming increasingly global. To support these efforts, they have established multiple sites or locations—manufacturing plants, branch and regional sales offices, distribution warehouses and national, regional, and even global headquarters—that may be distributed within a country, a region, or around the world.

As organizations expand into new territories, they face a number of operational challenges. They need to adapt to the business rules of foreign countries, including government regulations, reporting requirements and variations in tax and labor laws. They must accommodate multiple languages, multiple currencies and varying local best practices. And because companies operating in multiple countries are required by law to create separate legal entities, inventory transactions become more complex with intercompany movements being treated as purchases and sales between legal entities.

Cre8tive Technology & Design (www.ctnd.com) will be posting a three-part series on “Choosing the Right ERP Solution to Support a Global Business”

Part One                      Each Business Unit Chooses its Own Solution

Part Two           Consolidating the Entire Business on a Single ERP Solution

Part Three         Using a Combined Solution

Part Two – Consolidating the Entire Business on a Single ERP Solution

Organizations now recognize that internal operations must be integrated on a global scale to achieve global visibility and transactional interoperability, as well as ensure governance, risk management and compliance.  As a result, there is a growing trend among mid-sized to large organizations to consolidate applications, with many organizations attempting to deploy a single ERP worldwide. This strategy promises to provide a single repository for accounting, order processing, manufacturing, human resources and data from other functions as well as including advanced financial management reporting and analysis.  According to Gartner, roughly 70 percent of companies with multiple ERPs stated a desire to operate a single global ERP system.

The primary advantage of consolidating on a single ERP solution is that it integrates resources and eliminates redundancy.  A single database for all accounting, manufacturing and supply chain functions provides consolidated information from the head office down to the most remote subsidiary.  This enables managers and executives to drill down from the consolidated profit and loss statement to the underlying transactions at the point of entry, anywhere in the world.

In addition, when rolling out an ERP to several sites, costs can mount.  By reusing the same skill set, process models, methodologies, and deployment strategies at multiple sites, organizations can keep deployment costs under control.  At the same time, globalization requires standardized business processes whenever possible.  It’s simpler to harmonize and standardize business processes on a smaller number of production systems.

Read more: http://ctnd.com/choosing-the-right-erp-solution-to-support-a-global-business-part-two/#ixzz2TqJnwLJU

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Three Tips for Making the Most Out of ERP Vendor Demonstrations

May 9, 2013 | Panorama Consulting

We’ve all attended ERP vendor demonstrations that are more generic sales pitches than personalized and relevant presentations. Some ERP vendor sales reps are especially skilled at selling their software’s “best practices” as one-size-fits-all functionality. The key to finding the functionality best suited for your particular organization is requesting a scripted vendor demonstration based on its own organizational needs and differentiators.

At the very least, your organization should enter the vendor demo process with its specific requirements already defined and ask vendors on-the-spot how their systems can address those needs. If your organization appreciates ERP vendors that take the time to address ERP software functionality as it relates to specific business needs, The 17^th Vendor Shootout for ERP provides exactly this opportunity.

On June 12-14 in Chicago, Illinois, Panorama Consulting Solutions will moderate this unique event, which includes live, scripted ERP software demonstrations and ERP selection workshops for manufacturing and distribution companies. This event provides the perfect environment for organizations to conduct balanced and accurate comparisons between various ERP systems. The Vendor Shootout is a great opportunity to evaluate ERP vendors based on your organization’s functional requirements and competitive differentiators.

Following are three ways that your organization can improve its ERP software selection process prior to attending The Vendor Shootout next month:

1. Identify which business processes are most important to your organization. Perform some initial work by fleshing out which processes (or functional areas) bring positive differentiation to your organization. While standardization in areas such as financials and warehouse management is usually advisable, processes that have effectively served your customers (or bottom line) should be protected from any form of “best practices,”
2. Keep an open mind. You never know if Tier I or Tier II ERP software would be a better fit for your organization, and immediately ruling out cloud and SaaS ERP may be a bit hasty. Your organization should take advantage of the Vendor Shootout’s unique set-up to perform an “apples-to-apples” comparison of the software options demonstrated to determine total cost of ownership and short-term and long-term ROI.
3. Educate yourself (and your organization) on ERP benchmarks. ERP vendors’ estimated timeframes and budget requirements are often based on optimistic assumptions. In order to arrive at more realistic expectations, your organization should download industry research (such as our 2013 ERP Report or 2012 Clash of the Titans) to compare expectations to actual ERP implementation outcomes.

If your organization makes an effort to know what it needs, keeps an open mind and determines realistic expectations, its experiences at the Vendor Shootout, or any other demos, will be much improved. Your organization will soon arrive at a short-list of ideal vendors offering ERP software that can enhance competitive advantage and offer business benefits for years to come.

To learn more about ERP software selection, download chapter two of An Expert’s Guide to ERP Success. Also, don’t forget to register for The Vendor Shootout for ERP

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Countrywide has a cloud-based software system

Countrywide Tire & Rubber has partnered with SAP to produce the SAP Business ByDesign cloud-based software system.

SAP’s integrated end-to-end business processes have allowed Countrywide to become much more agile and efficient through a hosted web browser.

“Countrywide aimed to invest in an ERP system that would allow us to become more accurate and efficient,” says Countrywide’s president Chad Isaacs. “Through SAP’s capabilities we hope to continue to streamline more of our business processes in order to better serve our customers.”

With SAP’s web-based platform, employees can access secure, real-time companywide information from anywhere with a mobile device.

“Now that our information is centrally stored and available on-demand, Countrywide is much more flexible and functional than ever; our future business plans are limitless,” says Isaacs.

Countrywide Tire & Rubber is one of the nation’s largest international wholesale distributor of specialty tires, inner tubes and wheels. For more information, visit www.countrywidetire.com.

Read more: http://www.moderntiredealer.com/channel/retailing/news/story/2013/05/countrywide-has-a-cloud-based-software-system.aspx?prestitial=1&goback=.gde_4199296_member_239271056#ixzz2THZ0VQFF

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How Carolina Color Chose abas ERP

May 08, 2013

Abas-USA recently announced that Carolina Color Corporation has chosen abas Business Suite for its future planned growth and business. Carolina Color provides accurate matching services and eco-friendly, proprietary colorant solutions for unique customer applications.

Carolina Color reportedly started an enterprise resource planning (ERP) selection process in 2007 to replace a homegrown system. Abas was invited to participate and was shortlisted with two other solutions.

Central to its business is color matching. When customers need a color match, they send in a sample piece of plastic and Caroline Color analyzes it for pigments, additives, resins, etc. The lab collects a great deal of information, creates samples, and documents formulas. Carolina Color has pricing formulas based on quantities, current costs, future costs, and many additional factors. A color match record is created with a product formula.

Abas used one of the additional tables in its database to create this requirement for the prospect in a day. This is an example of the flexibility of the abas system, where a non-standard ERP function can be created or recreated, and integrated with the rest of abas ERP.

Despite the strong impression abas made in 2007, Carolina Color decided at that point, to write its own ERP system. Four years later, after significant expense and the lack of true functionality, the company reconsidered its decision. Abas-USA CEO Alan Salton was contacted by the company’s IT manager, who started the conversation with, “Remember me?” Not only did Salton remember, but he still had the custom table with the calculations in the system after five upgrades, untouched and still functional. He showed it to Carolina Color again, and explained, as a proof of concept, the upgrade capabilities, and the additional functions and features since the last demo.

To continue reading, click here.

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Defining ERP Success for Your Organization

All Articles From Eric Kimberling May 1, 2013

One of the interesting takeaways from our 2013 ERP Report released earlier this year is the apparent confusion between the perceived success and actual results of ERP implementations.  While most ERP projects still take longer than expected, cost more than expected and fail to deliver expected business benefits, our research indicates that most organizations are still generally satisfied with their ERP implementations.

This begs the question: how can companies experience such dismal implementation results yet still feel a sense of success at the end of the day? Our experience with hundreds of ERP implementations over the years suggests that there are a number of reasons for this dichotomy. First and foremost, most organizations don’t have a clear definition of success. Assuming the new ERP system provides at least an incremental improvement to their business operations, chances are that executives and employees are going to feel at least somewhat satisfied with their ERP system once the transition pains have subsided.

Below are three things that will help you and your project team achieve ERP success:

1.    Clearly define success. We hear it all the time: for some organizations, anything is better than the ERP system they currently have in place. However, most organizations also aren’t spending millions of dollars on new ERP software just to realize an incremental improvement. Instead, most are looking for a tangible return on the investment in that software, just as they would expect from an investment in an acquisition or any other major capital investment. The problem is that executives generally don’t clearly articulate to the organization what exactly they expect from the new ERP system and how they will determine whether or not the implementation is ultimately successful. The business case should be an important mechanism to not only justify the investment in the ERP system but also to define what will constitute ERP success.

2.    Articulate expected process improvements. Similarly, expected business process improvements should be clearly defined and articulated to the organization. It’s not enough to simply suggest that the software is going to make business processes better. Those process improvements should be clearly defined and documented for employees so they can enable some of the process improvements. Your people – not the ERP software – will ultimately determine whether or not the process improvements stick, so rather than assume people won’t revert back to their inefficient manual processes and spreadsheets, it is much more effective to define the expected business processes and communicate changes to employees accordingly. This will also make your organizational change management activities much more effective in the long-run.

To continue reading, click here.

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Choosing the Right ERP Solution to Support a Global Business

01 May 2013 | Posted by ACONTINELLI

IntroductionMany organizations are becoming increasingly global. To support these efforts, they have established multiple sites or locations—manufacturing plants, branch and regional sales offices, distribution warehouses and national, regional, and even global headquarters—that may be distributed within a country, a region, or around the world.As organizations expand into new territories, they face a number of operational challenges. They need to adapt to the business rules of foreign countries, including government regulations, reporting requirements and variations in tax and labor laws. They must accommodate multiple languages, multiple currencies and varying local best practices. And because companies operating in multiple countries are required by law to create separate legal entities, inventory transactions become more complex with intercompany movements being treated as purchases and sales between legal entities.

Yet even as they meet local requirements, organizations must also integrate their operations to gain visibility across all operations to support strategic decisions, enhance operational efficiency, and manage governance, regulation, and compliance (GRC) initiatives.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a mission critical component of any business’ globalization strategy. ERP solutions automate the functions necessary to manage a wide range of local operations, from accounting to customer relationship management (CRM) to supply chain management (SCM).

The information held within an ERP system is also the key to gaining visibility into accurate, consolidated information about the business and is the foundation of the key performance indicators (KPIs) necessary to achieve corporate objectives. A well implemented ERP solution can also provide transactional interoperability. Companies that automate and streamline workflows across multiple sites, including suppliers, partners, and manufacturing sites can reduce the total time from order to delivery.

Businesses have a variety of strategies to select from when implementing ERP systems across their global organizations.

• Each business unit or division can choose its own solution
• The entire business can consolidate on a single ERP solution
• The business can use one solution to centralize and standardize key operations while using a second standardized solution for select operations within the business units.

Read more: http://ctnd.com/choosing-the-right-erp-solution-to-support-a-global-business/#ixzz2SWOLoGdA

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Are Emerging Trends in ERP Software Flattening Industry Verticals?

 

All Articles From Eric Kimberling April 24, 2013

One of the most appealing features for purchasers of ERP software is industry best practices. Executives are often more inclined to spend millions of dollars on new enterprise software initiatives when they have the comfort of knowing that others in their industry vertical have spent countless years developing those best practices and navigating related lessons learned. In fact, these repeatable and proven business processes and software capabilities designed for their industries are what executives are really buying when they procure new ERP software.

On the other hand, executives are also likely to leverage ERP trends that transcend their respective industries. Mobility, business intelligence (BI) and SaaS ERP are just a few of the trends of interest to CIOs in industries including manufacturing, government, financial services and health care. In these cases, industry focus doesn’t necessarily matter. In addition, executives are often keen to leverage best practices outside of their respective industries as a way to benchmark to other industries that may have better ways of running their businesses.

Given this contradiction, the consolidation of ERP vendors and growth across multiple verticals begs an important question: how relevant is it for ERP software to focus on a specific industry?

The answer to this question boils down to three key points:

1.   There are too many ERP vendors to not have some sort of industry focus. Ten years ago, there were only a handful of viable ERP software providers, so industry focus wasn’t extremely important. Today, however, there are hundreds of options and ERP vendors need to do something to differentiate in the midst of stiff completion. This leaves most software vendors with two primary strategies: focus on function or focus on industry. Vendors such as Salesforce and Workday have taken the former approach by focusing on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Human Capital Management (HCM) software, respectively, while other vendors have focused on specific industry verticals or niches.

2.   Aside from back office functions, most industries are different. Industry focus may not be important to companies that leverage ERP software primarily to automate back office functions such as accounts payable or general ledger. However, industry distinction and capability is especially important for companies leveraging software to automate their front- and back-end business processes. As different organizations deal with the relatively unique nature of configuring their products, forecasting demand, and fulfilling manufacturing business processes, industry focus becomes increasingly important. Even in cases where buyers choose ERP software tailored for their industry, executives are still likely to find the need to customize the software to accommodate unique competitive advantages that can’t or hasn’t been replicated by others yet.

To continue reading, click here.

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Vendor Shootout™ for ERP | Chicago

As the nation’s leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software evaluation, comparison and selection event, the Vendor Shootout™ for ERP provides a comprehensive guide and framework for enterprise software selection and benefits realization within the manufacturing and distribution industries.

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Four Quick Ways To Unlock Hidden Manufacturing Capacity

 24 Apr 2013 |  Posted by acontinelli |  0 Comment.

Introduction

With the economic upturn, the times of low volume and rationalization are over. Volume is steadily rising for many, and manufacturers are now dealing with a different problem than cost-cutting—how to meet increasing demand after resource cuts and no new investments in productivity improvement in recent years.

With your manufacturing operations already running close to capacity, the traditional ways of gaining new capacity is to make large capital investments, or to outsource some of the new manufacturing demand. These are challenging tactics as getting new resources in line will take time and there’s no guarantee that the numbers will continue to climb.

You do, however, have a third option available to you. You can meet the increased demand by freeing up needed resources within your current operations. The key is identifying areas of improvement within your existing operations by accessing real-time manufacturing information, and utilizing actionable insight for manufacturing improvements.

The Steps

Step 1: Reduce Unplanned & Operational Downtime

In an industry where reliability is key, and unplanned downtime can cost thousands of dollars per minute, reducing unplanned and operational downtime can yield great results. In addition to financial savings, reducing changeover time and operational downtime leads to proportional increases in manufacturing capacity. Best practices implemented on a single line can be easily transferred to other similar lines, multiplying the impact, and resulting in creating even more needed capacity. Efforts to reduce unplanned and operational downtime are routinely have a high probability of success. Sometimes it is possible to eliminate an entire loss category with a simple change in work practice. For example, many companies have discovered that it can be very effective to stagger break and lunch intervals; others have eliminated a specific loss category entirely by replacing small parts, or increasing the frequency of routine maintenance.

Step 2: Reduce Minor Stops

Minor stops are short-duration hesitations and stops, usually less than five minutes— short enough to be “unnoticed” but long enough to disrupt the business and productivity. These can add up to significant loss of manufacturing time, especially if you don’t have visibility into the number of and reasons for minor stops. If you have the necessary tools in place, it is reasonable to expect a high level of success when attacking minor stops: 50-75% reduction. However, remain cautious because minor stops can reappear. To sustain gains, world-class manufacturers use root-cause analysis and continue to make adjustments as necessary.

Step 3: Eliminate Production Variability & Quality Loss

Production consistency translates into a more reliable and predictable supply chain, increasing the rate of first time ‘perfect orders’ while cutting time lost due to rework. Stable lines run at higher production rates consistently, resulting in higher volume.  Quality loss and rejected product has a double impact: material and labor. A standard overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) calculation includes a production reject as a lost opportunity for production which impacts on capacity. Therefore, when calculating OEE, it is important to consider the cost of both material and labor. There is no “typical” operation, and the range of quality variation can be from 1% to 5% or even as much as 10% of total production. Consider this: the cost of material can be four times the cost of labor. From a pure cost perspective, a 1% first-pass reject rate translates to 4% loss. You can vary the analysis to reflect production improvement, cost reduction and probability of success.

Read more: http://ctnd.com/four-quick-ways-to-unlock-hidden-manufacturing-capacity/#ixzz2RrTdzJhy

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10 critical ERP upgrade mistakes

By Kevin R. Herrig and Shawn Scanlon

April 30, 2012, 7:57 AM PDT

Takeaway: If your organization is preparing to upgrade its ERP system, this list will help you steer clear of common project pitfalls.

Major ERP software upgrades are often seen as a long, arduous process. But avoiding certain mistakes can help companies maintain maximum performance when implementing software improvements without disrupting users comfort with their current system. This is especially important for organizations that rely on their ERP software but need updates to keep their systems running at full potential. Here are 10 missteps to avoid when you’re planning and implementing an upgrade.

1: Not explaining what a new system means to users before starting the project

If you want to doom an upgrade project, keep the users in the dark. We have done a lot of upgrades, and the one thing that always separates successful projects from the not-so-successful ones is communication with the users. The companies that explain up front the business case for upgrading, the benefits to the company and employees, and any changes in the end user experience (green screen to Web client, Windows client to Web client, etc.) are the most successful. Why? The software will work, the hardware will work, but it doesn’t matter unless the users buy in. There is nothing more politically powerful than user perception, and if they decide the system doesn’t work, it won’t.

2: Not load testing the system with scripts and end users

Any system can run with a handful of users — but what happens when it is fully loaded with users, batch jobs, and EDI? Most ERP systems today come preset to handle a typical user load, but is your load “typical”? How do you know? The only way to determine for sure is to load test the system. The most accurate way to load test a system is with load testing software and scripts… and with real users. If you just use scripts, you won’t see the effects of user mistakes, and if you just use people, you can’t really simulate the effect of batch jobs and EDI. But if you can’t do both, pick one and run with it. Either one will be 10 times better than doing nothing.

3: Not performing a mock Go Live

A mock Go Live, or dress rehearsal, is the time when you find out whether everything will go as planned ahead of time. It is also the point when you capture timings for all the different Go Live tasks. If you don’t practice under the same conditions you’ll have when you plan to go live (e.g., if Go Live is on a weekend, mock Go Live needs to be on a weekend), you will run into issues that you never planned for, facing questions such as:

• Do I have access to everything on a weekend?
• Will we run into backups or maintenance windows?
• Is the office open and is the AC on?

Some of these may sound trivial, but when you are under pressure and have spent thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars on a new system, the last thing you want is to be delayed because you missed something that was easy to catch. Always eliminate as many variables as possible.

4: Not taking change management and testing seriously

In the old days, we would apply “paper fixes” to address specific “opportunities in the software.” Today, everything is electronically packaged to address as many “similar” issues as possible. This can be a problem because the change you need may be a small part of a much larger fix or Electronic Software Update (ESU). An ESU can touch thousands of objects, as opposed to a paper fix, which would directly address your specific issue. With the advent of ESUs, you must thoroughly understand the impact of the change and regression test every business process, even if it was working properly before the change. You don’t want to introduce additional “opportunities” into your production environment.

To continue reading, click here.

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