Visual South Insights

Power BI consulting is often viewed as simply hiring someone who knows the Power BI. In practice, knowing the tool is only half of what makes an engagement actually work.

Integrating Power BI with an ERP system can sound like a simple technical step: point the tool at the database and start building dashboards. In practice, the setups that actually work well look different from that.

Business intelligence tools have been around for decades. What has changed is the technology inside them, and what people now expect when they sit down with their own data.

Artificial intelligence has moved quickly from something manufacturers were watching to something they are actively evaluating. Tools such as ChatGPT and other general-purpose AI assistants have shown just how useful generative AI can be for writing, summarizing, researching, and analyzing information.

The sign industry runs on a wide range of technology. Some companies use commercial off-the-shelf software. Others have built systems over the years; spreadsheets alongside custom applications written a decade or two ago, often maintained by a single person and quietly approaching end of life. Newer generations taking over family businesses are looking at these setups and asking a reasonable question: is there a better way?

In January 2026, Epicor made it official: all new features for Kinetic, Prophet 21, and BisTrack will be developed exclusively for the cloud going forward. Final on-premises releases are scheduled for 2028, with active support tapering off through 2029. After that, on-prem customers receive only security patches and limited phone support, with no new features or new modules.

If your company does business with the Department of Defense, CMMC compliance is still a requirement. A recent 60-day pause was issued to provide clarity on implementation timelines. The underlying standards remain in place, and the day when companies will need to pass a third-party audit is still coming. The question is whether you are preparing for it.

Many manufacturers invest in a powerful ERP like Infor CloudSuite Industrial (CSI/SyteLine) to improve operations, increase visibility, and support growth. Yet even with a modern ERP, many day-to-day business processes still depend on employees manually entering data, moving information between systems, or completing repetitive administrative tasks.

Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to do more with the resources they already have. Whether it's reducing manual data entry, speeding up approvals, improving visibility into operations, or helping employees focus on higher-value work, the challenge is often the same: How do you improve efficiency without taking on a massive software project?

A company can start a project with a solid plan, the right software, and a capable team and still find itself with slipping timelines. The project is still technically active, but it has lost its momentum. In almost every case, the root cause is the same: nobody was fully dedicated to managing the project. There was a person assigned to oversee it, but that person already had a full-time job. The project became something they got to when they could, which is not the same as someone whose entire job is to make sure it succeeds.