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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Kemp Electric Supply Achieves Integration with xTuple ERP

Founded in 1938m the Kemp Electric Supply team provides wholesale electrical supplies and equipment materials to customers in Western Ohio. After outgrowing their old business management software, the company wanted an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software which could be implemented quickly and cost-effectively but, most importantly, could reliably meet the intricate and unique needs of the electrical wholesale distribution industry.

Kemp selected xTuple PostBooks as it offered an open source ERP with a special focus on industrial distribution. The flexibility and ease of customization inherent with open source technology was immediately apparent, and the Wholesale Distribution add-on package (xWD) offered was a strong selling point.

With xTuple ERP, Kemp Electric is now able to service customers better, faster and easier – with immediate, direct sales access to more products through real-time integration with the Trade Service electronic catalog. Automatic order-processing and invoicing via email allows Kemp Electric to keep customers informed with immediate sales order acknowledgements and to push out invoices immediately, ultimately receiving payments more quickly, improving cash flow. Quoting and billing time at Kemp has been cut in half, the net result of these improvements.

Another crucial requirement was for Kemp's ERP system to fully integrate with their corporate relationship management (CRM). In the world of distribution, relationships with vendors are often as important as customer relationships – and xTuple’s fully-integrated CRM uses the same powerful tools for both.

From selection to implementation, Kemp Electric was running their business with xTuple ERP within 90 days.

Read more about the Kemp Electric implementation and other case studies on the xTuple News blog.

The Brown Smith Wallace Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information about the latest editions.

You can also request these guides, as well as all other materials, via our website: http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx

 
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Acumatica ERP: Solving Common Scaling Issues

When scaling your business, there are many challenges to face, from forecasting resources to figuring out how not to drain your bank account when setting up new branches. Acumatica ERP is designed to help small and mid-sized businesses grow, so it's designed to minimize growing pains.

What are some of the best ways to boost scaling efforts? First, focus on fixing what’s broken. Properly implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, can help an organization to follow the right processes at scale. When many processes are not working efficiently in a company, you simply have to address each part separately before moving on to the next one. Implementing ERP in a sustainable way — fitting it to ideal business processes — forces a business to get the details right. An ERP system's dashboards and reports should unearth data that helps mangers and leaders quickly identify problem areas.

Research shows that making things easy for customers is crucial for maintaining loyalty. One of the key factors to getting customer service right requires you having customer data at your fingertips. An ERP system should have a reliable, easy-to-use customer relationship management (CRM) system that allows you to do just that.​ Scaling up can be tricky, but having the right tools to make the process more efficient will help. Be prepared before you start scaling, and the rewards can be tremendous.

To read more, and learn about Acumatica's ERP systems, visit the Acumatica News blog.

The Brown Smith Wallace Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information about the latest editions.

You can also request these guides, as well as all other materials, via our website: http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx

 
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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Passepartout Philippines Implements Epicor to Enhance Manufacturing

Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of enterprise business solutions for manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services organizations, recently announced that Passepartout Philippines Inc. has chosen the Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite to improve its custom hand-inlaid surface manufacturing business operations.

With over 40 years of experience serving small, midmarket and larger enterprises, Epicor has more than 20,000 customers in over 150 countries. Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP), retail management software, supply chain management (SCM), and human capital management (HCM) enable companies to drive increased efficiency and improve profitability.

Established in 2008, Passepartout specializes in manually producing customized hand-inlaid surfaces that are made from all natural materials by a team of highly-skilled workers, who are all Filipinos. 
All Passepartout products are marketed and sold under the Nature Squared brand. The company offers exclusivity to its clients, as every order is one of a kind and will never be replicated. With its growing clientele, Passepartout needed to improve operations, production efficiency, and business intelligence capabilities to support its continued success and expansion.

To achieve this, Passepartout sought a best-of-breed, yet cost-effective, ERP software solution to rationalize and ease business processes. This would entail enhancing its manufacturing, distribution, and services capabilities to meet the stringent demands of its niche market. Among all the ERP offerings Passepartout evaluated, Epicor stood out as the ideal solution for the company.

Passepartout will soon implement Epicor ERP in its manufacturing facilities in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, with modules covering the entire gamut of operations, including supply chain, production, financials, sales, planning and scheduling, and customer relationship management.

Epicor ERP is designed to be easy to use for all those involved -- from top management to the staff on the production line. Once deployed, Epicor ERP will support Passepartout in expanding its global business, with top executives more focused on strategy and development, instead of process issues.

To learn more, and read additional case studies and news, visit the Epicor Newsroom.

The Brown Smith Wallace Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information about the latest editions.

You can also request these guides, as well as all other materials, via our website: http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx

 
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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Advanced Supply Chain for Sales & Operations Planning

The purpose of the supply chain is to deliver value, in the form of product and services, to the customer. The supply chain has resources – plants, warehouses, people, skills, inventory, etc. – that it employs to achieve this objective. Planning and coordination of the resources to meet the goal takes place in a process known as Sales and Operations Panning or S&OP for short.

A simplified S&OP process works like this:

1. A new forecast update (based on the latest sales data) is reviewed and modified to become a preliminary demand plan.
2. The supply planning team prepares a production plan that will make and distribute enough product to satisfy demand.
3. Supply and demand teams meet to work out a “best” plan that makes effective use of resources to satisfy expected demand.

This likely will involve some compromise in order to reach a decision that is overall best for the company and its customers. Often, the S&OP work is presented to the company’s functional executives – the heads of sales and marketing, production, materials, engineering, finance. The executive S&OP decision makers typically come together to review any updates to the plan, commit their respective departments to the plan, and make the hard decisions that involve compromises, commitments of funds or resources, or strategic matters. This limits the amount of detail involved,  keeps the process manageable, and focuses on volume.

To learn more about the Sales and Operations Panning process and how Advanced Supply Chain software can improve performance and the decision-making process, visit the Advanced Supply Chain blog.


The Brown Smith Wallace Distribution and Manufacturing Software Guides are currently available for download. Please contact snelson@bswllc.com for more information about the latest editions.

You can also request these guides, as well as all other materials, via our website: http://www.software4distributors.com/vendor/resources_index.aspx

 
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