Visual South Insights

ERP support is often viewed as a break-fix service: something you use when an error appears or a process stops working. In practice, the most valuable support relationships are much broader than that.

Manufacturers have made the move to cloud-based ERP systems

It seems like just yesterday that the concept of cloud-based ERP for the manufacturing industry was far-fetched. But today’s reality is manufacturers are choosing cloud deployment over on-premise deployment virtually every time. That is a paradigm shift for those of us who have been working with enterprise applications in the manufacturing sector.

This article is part of our CloudSuite Industrial Feature Focus series.

Why ERP projects fail

The vast majority of ERP projects are successful. There are obstacles and challenges associated with any large project, but good teams always succeed. That means you understood the specific steps in the ERP project, built a strong ERP implementation team, and ensured that business objectives drove the primary deliverables for the expected new and improved functionality.

What is an Application Process Review?

What we do in an Application Process Review (APR) is pretty straightforward, and we perform several for our clients over the course of a typical year. In the review, we observe how the ERP processes have been built to manage the business. Then, we make recommendations to streamline and improve the processes and procedures related to the flow of data in the company. For example, how to use the ERP to alert procurement of projected material shortages, as opposed to having them look for shortages in a spreadsheet that was manually updated. In essence, an ERP application process review is a gut check on how things are working, and what can be done to make them better.

Here is a closer look at how the process works from start to finish.

Teamwork in ERP implementation

Implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can be a humbling challenge for any company. Four critical factors will determine the success of your new ERP implementation:

A little background on ERP consulting first

I have been in the ERP business since 1997. The first five years were spent as a consultant before I moved into a sales role in 2002. That time in the field gave me something I still draw on today: a real sense of what our customers are up against when they go through an implementation. At Visual South, we have always believed that the consultant you choose matters just as much as the software. If you want to dig into why that is, this blog covers it in more detail.

If you are here for the basics of ERP consulting, keep reading.

Sign manufacturers have specific business system needs

What sign manufacturers have in common with other types of manufacturers is that they have to plan for material requirements, schedule jobs, and execute the production of those jobs. That being said, sign manufacturers have numerous requirements and needs that are unique to their industry. In this article, we’ll review how those unique requirements can be addressed with sign industry software, or sign manufacturing software.

Most manufacturers already have defined processes inside their ERP system. The problem is that day-to-day operations don’t always follow them. In systems like Infor CloudSuite Industrial (CSI), workflows are carefully designed, but what’s documented isn’t always what happens in practice.