6 Benefits of a Single-Source ERP

The modern manufacturer needs to improve how they work to stay competitive and profitable. When it comes to enterprise systems, keeping all your information in a single system will help you improve your processes, your visibility, and your operations.

As manufacturing evolves into Industry 4.0, it has quickly become obvious that running multiple systems from various vendors is just not the best way to keep your shop humming smoothly. By having an ERP from one vendor, an MES from another, supply chain management, from a third, then HR and Finance from another group or two all you are really doing is multiplying your list of possible problems.

Instead of betting on multiple plug-ins, add-ons, and APIs, you should instead look for an ERP system that offers you an all-in-one solution both in usage and with one central database. A single-source ERP will help your manufactory run faster, make smarter decisions, and improve profitability.

How a Single-Source ERP Improves Your Shop

Here are 6 of the most common benefits that our customers see to their shops after implementing the OnRamp ERP:

Better Financials

A single-source ERP with an integrated Finance/ Accounting module ensures that any changes that are made in your production cycle are automatically received and added to your fiscal calculations. This leads to a more precise view of your expenses and any cost savings. Many of our customers have grown so accustomed to such minute financial tracking that they have begun to run weekly financials with no issue to time taken to prep and review the reports.

That does indeed mean that with OnRamp ERP, the accounting at your firm can run so well that demanding a weekly review of the financial data is easy. And all this with less staff. One of our largest customers found their accounting department cut from 6 full time staff to 1 full time and 1 part-time staff to handle all that financial data more precisely and in less time.

Better Planning

A single-source ERP system gives you immediate access to all the data in your organization. This allows your planning department to get up-to-date information of what you have in stock, what you will need, and where it all is. By improving the available information for your department, they can better plan what they can do and what they need to do.

The benefits are not in planning either, since having knowledge of your capabilities frees up your sales and service teams to understand how much they can promise to customers without having to get the attention of your plant manager. By checking the production schedule, which pulls in information about resources and capacity, your teams can instead answer any questions posed by your customers.

Finally, your maintenance personnel will have access to schedules and machine run times that will improve how well they can anticipate future tool issues, such as replacements or faults.

Faster Solutions

When you have multiple parts to run your business, you have to depend on all the different software packages to communicate well with one another, which is fine until it isn’t. All these integrations and communications can lead to massive delays when there is an issue to troubleshoot which a single-source system will not have.

There is also the problem of tracking data. If your MES, WMS, QMS, and ERP aren’t looking for the same information you could be leaving a lot of valuable data unseen and unprocessed when you need it. And knowing what is going on in real-time and at a glance will improve your decision making and reaction time to any issue that may come your way.

Finally, there is the benefit that comes from having a single look and feel across your business. Your employees can learn and adapt to new roles faster by having one interface with a unified look and one feel to the systems that keep your operation humming.

Smarter Sales and Service

As stated, one of the benefits of a single-source ERP system is that all your data is in one place and accessible to anyone. When it comes to your sales team, this will help them with their customer interactions. By having the data at their disposal, they can quickly check the different data they need to create a proposal instead of manually calling into various departments to get an idea for a quote. Whether they are quoting a new order or updating an existing one, the sales team has a complete view of important information, such as ongoing capacity, resource limitations, or production issues.

With improved communication systems, such as EDI, you can also ensure all your orders are sent to your vendors or received from your customers quickly and accurately. And by avoiding senseless plug-ins or external systems, the orders will immediately update your data in the ERP instead of relying on manual inputs (and their potential for user errors).

Finally, having all your data easily accessible will help your service team build a foundation of trust with your customers by providing them with improved transparency to your pricing decisions, whether you are increasing the price due to increased cost pressure from your suppliers or you are able to pass on savings.

Stronger Growth

In this age of global competition, having a digital partner that can grow with you to accommodate your business decisions is a necessity that cannot be easily fulfilled by having multiple partners with various systems. To take more chances and successfully compete for new business opportunities, you need a single-source management system for your manufactory.

You expansion possibilities can come from diversifying your customer-base to include selling directly to consumers instead of just B2B. Another option for some of our customers has been consolidating via mergers and acquisitions to have a greater product base that can capture more of your current customer business. This can include adding capabilities for nesting, painting and coating, injection molding, metal stamping, or assembly.

To ensure your growth is not stifled by your systems, or to ensure that your systems can grow with you, you should implement a single-source ERP system that was built by manufacturers and for manufacturers with growth in mind. A partner in growth will have experience implementing systems, processes, and devices that will improve how you run your current business and help you grow when you need it.

Bigger Profit

With global competition, you need to have a better understanding of your costs. Having a single-source system for your manufactory allows you to calculate costs more precisely for your parts and prices that you can quote to customers. Any changes to pricing for materials or supplier services can also be automatically adjusted in the costing that ensures you can update your prices to match.

Adding to the smarter costing and pricing, a single-source ERP will have an included Supply Chain Management module that allows you to improve your supply chain and even find cost-effective sub-contractors that can complete some of your processes for less.

Another benefit of a single-source system is the increase automation. As mentioned for Finance, a smarter system helps you improve staffing with less staff able to complete more work.

Conclusion

In today’s global climate, you can no longer rely on multiple separate systems to run your business. Combining all your systems, such as MES, WMS, QMS, Procurement, SCM, ERP, Maintenance, HR, Hardware, and Timekeeping into a single-source ERP system with a central database that can be accessed by all your business units can significantly improve your productivity, efficiency, and decision-making.

When you need an ERP partner for your continued growth, look for a system that was been built from the ground up to be growth-friendly and ready for your upcoming challenges.