Visual South Insights

How are electronic payments used?

Electronic payment systems are just what they sound like: a way to send or receive funds online. Depending on your business, you can execute financial transactions electronically through a variety of ways:

Working toward a quality product

Manufacturing a quality product is at the top of the list for every manufacturer in order to obtain and keep customers. There are quality control measures that a lot of manufacturers use to control their quality, and a few of them are listed below:

What is ERP?

I have been in the ERP world for over 25 years—primarily in sales, but I’ve implemented ERP software for companies as well. My experience is largely in manufacturing environments, so that is the point of view from which I write this blog.

Why upgrade?

Your ERP is the systematic backbone of your company, and it is important to get the most value you can from your investment. New releases and versions of VISUAL contain enhanced functionality that can make your company run more efficiently. In addition, VISUAL upgrades allow you to take advantage of new versions of underlying technology, like Windows, server operating systems, and database platforms. Having a regular cadence of upgrading keeps you current and up-to-date with all the latest technology, and reduces your risk of falling behind to an unsupported version of your ERP. At Visual South, we have been performing upgrades for over 25 years, and have developed a successful process that our clients can rely on.

Maximizing capacity

For many reasons, you get a direct return on investment when maximizing your current manufacturing capacity. Capacity planning and production scheduling are prime areas where we help our manufacturing customers. Improving the use of available capacity often transcends ERP software, as having the proper infrastructure in place ensures proper measurements can be taken, and accurate data collected—and that there is a mechanism to balance manufacturing throughput in its truest form.

This isn’t just about functionality

If you are in the market for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, don’t just focus on the software’s functionality. Limiting your search criteria to just the ERP is like shopping for a new house and not factoring in the location. Not paying attention to, or discounting the importance of other critical factors can narrow your choices, but increase your chance of being unhappy with what you ultimately choose – whether that’s a nice house in a bad location or new ERP that isn’t working for your company. The good news is this can be avoided. In the case of ERP, it comes down to closely evaluating the ERP implementation consultants you’ll be working with just as much as evaluating the ERP itself.

How do you measure success?

Simply surviving an implementation and going live on your new solution is not enough. A true ERP implementation success means that all objectives originally defined in the scope of the project were met and exceeded.

There aren’t only 3…

Listing all the benefits of VISUAL ERP would be a book, not a blog post. But you didn’t come here to read a book, so I’ve chosen what I think are the most significant benefits that manufacturing companies will get out of using VISUAL ERP.

Some background before we begin

I work with companies that are in all stages of their ERP journey. Some companies are looking to purchase and implement their first ERP system; they are typically trying to understand what ERP can do, how to evaluate vendors, and dreaming of the “to be” state they are trying to attain. On the other end of the spectrum are companies that have been running ERP for 25 years and longer. These clients are always trying to improve what they have and make themselves a better company. Whether your company is at the same stage as the former, the latter, or is somewhere in between, there is one fundamental truth you need to keep in mind: an ERP system is only as good as the data that is put in it. Let’s get a little background on the types of data an ERP needs before we get in to the importance of the data itself.

Video transcript

Hi, I'm Jack Shannon. Are you thinking you're not getting as much out of your ERP as you should be? Perhaps you've even thought about reimplementing. Well, let's talk about that.