What is customer-centric enterprise resource planning? What benefit is it to your business? A new white paper available from the IWI Consulting Group entitled Customer-Centric ERP: Integrated Systems for Satisfied Customers is available at no charge to help demystify the concept of customer-centric enterprise resource planning and to help you consider the many benefits to your business.

Enterprise Resource Planning Explained

Enterprise resource planning is a systematic approach to connect siloed data. Instead of separate and discrete systems for accounting, operations, customer relationship management and so on, these systems feed into one ERP system that provides a comprehensive overview of a company’s business. You can still drill down into each system for details, but the big picture is now available through a companywide dashboard that makes it easier to view and use data.

Why Focus on Customer Satisfaction?

Companies derive many benefits from enterprise resource planning. Customer satisfaction is perhaps the least recognized, yet the most important benefit, among them.

Customers today are empowered with more information than at any time in the past. The internet puts vast resources at their fingertips for instant fact-finding. With so much information so readily available, companies that wish to attract and retain customers must go to greater lengths to offer exceptional service. Such service is facilitated by a good ERP system.

Yet, according to the white paper available from the IWI Consulting Group, only 35% of companies have a unified view of customer data available to all relevant stakeholders. One assumes that the remaining companies still dig into separate databases, with varying levels of access to departments and employees.

Such a siloed approach is time-consuming, and time is money, especially when it comes to customer service. The longer you must make a customer wait for an answer, the more time he has to consider taking his business elsewhere.

Customer data kept in multiple, separate databases can also make it more difficult to offer personalized service to customers. Without that big picture view, it’s easy to focus on one aspect of a customer’s business without understanding how it fits into the big picture of his needs.

Customer-Centric Technology for Best in Class Businesses

“Best in class” businesses, when it comes to ERP systems, distinguish themselves in several areas. All embrace technology to form a customer-centric mindset and operating guidelines for their companies. Business solutions that integrate and streamline data enhance this customer-centric approach.

These best in class companies are more likely to rely upon ERP systems and use those systems to enhance customer service and satisfaction. According to the white paper previously cited, 51% of best in class companies use their enterprise resource planning systems to improve customer satisfaction.

Preventing Common Customer Complaints

Customers are often frustrated by companies who cannot access their complete records. Receiving a call with an offer for an add-on sale when the first sale was returned due to dissatisfaction is both frustrating for the customer and unproductive for the sales team. Customers complain that companies do not care about them, but only seek to get more revenues out of their account.

When ERP systems are used for customer care in a customer-centric way, such complaints can be reduced or completely avoided. A customer-centric approach to ERP can reduce customer care costs by 12% while improving service and satisfaction.

Get the Facts on Customer-Centric ERP

Customer-centric ERP is a new and better way to manage your accounts using enterprise resource planning software.

IWI Consulting offers ERP consulting and systems to help you manage your data efficiently. With the right ERP system, you’ll never feel as if you’re drowning in data. We can help you select the best system for your needs and learn how to use it for maximum benefit. Call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851.

Sage Business Intelligence draws information from Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), tying multiple databases together into one robust system. The result can break down department silos, as the report states, improve productivity and efficiency, and increase your profits.

Why Do Silos Occur in Business?

Business silos are something with which many people are familiar. Departments cling to their data and make others run circles to access it. In other scenarios, the data exists, but only one or two people know how to run the specific system to access it. The resulting information bottlenecks can throw off schedules, decrease productivity, and derail efforts at creating data-driven cultures.

Silos can be a result of poor technology infrastructure as well as people’s emotions and psyches invested in their role as gatekeeper over information. Some people subtly cling to older systems because their ability to access data gives them power in an organization. Others simply don’t know that alternatives exist. If your company has always operated in a specific way, and it does not know that there are better, easier ways of completing the same tasks, it might be difficult to make a change.

New Systems Foster Collaboration

The white paper provided by IWI Consulting emphasizes how new business intelligence systems foster collaboration and break down silos within organizations. Business intelligence data through systems such as Sage Enterprise Intelligence tie multiple data bases together for real-time operations.

Because data is no longer kept separate, it no longer requires separate access to obtain it. Everyone within the organization can find and use the same data.

Data can also be viewed across multiple platforms. This big-picture view fosters collaboration and cohesion among the teams at your workplace, ensuring that everyone is working from the same data source to form conclusions.

Lastly, an important benefit from such systems is the ability for them to alert managers of critical situations. Supply chain management becomes easier when you’re aware of low stock levels. Orders can be fulfilled more rapidly if you know how much you have in the warehouse, and so on. Data that is no longer contained in silos becomes a powerful ally.

Insights Originate from Many Places

It’s rare that insights arise from just one person within an organization. When managers throughout your company can access shared data, they have the information needed to make better decisions. These insights can be shared across teams, fostering collaboration among different groups to solve business challenges and create new plans and ideas.

Delivering True Data Visibility

Business intelligence solutions deliver true data visibility. By merging ERP and other systems, and providing insight into multiple data streams gathered from throughout the organization, it can deliver data visualizations and reports that help you see the big picture or drill down into the details.

The emergence of newer business intelligence solutions, powerful ERP tools, and other accounting, finance, operations, inventory, sales, and marketing databases has the potential to completely transform businesses. Manufacturers can especially benefit from improved visibility into supply chain management, inventory, and sales data.

By using these new tools, your business can remain competitive, utilize resources more effectively, and increase profits. But it all starts with the right business intelligence solutions.

 About IWI Consulting

IWI Consulting offers numerous Sage products to enhance your organization’s data-driven culture. Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Sage Enterprise Intelligence and many other systems can transform how you use data in your organization. Manufacturers will find their productivity increases as data becomes more available throughout their organizations. For more information, call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851.

Many companies seek to become “data-driven” enterprises. Business intelligence solutions can be an integral part of a data-driven culture. Their user-friendliness ensures that even the “non techie” people in your organization can learn how to use them for maximum benefit.

Creating a Data-Driven Culture

Many companies in the manufacturing area are transforming how they make decisions. Changing towards a data-driven culture may not be easy, but business intelligence solutions can make it easier.

The right business intelligence solutions combine accurate data, real-time updates, and simple dashboards that make logical sense for even novices to navigate. Such dashboards enable everyone—at all levels of the organization—to find, use, and understand the data inputted into the system.

To create a data-driven culture, data must not only be freely available to all, but it must be easy to use. Without ease of use, data remains untapped. Priority must be given to installing systems that work well for the majority of users.

Weaning Users Away from Spreadsheets

Many businesses have used spreadsheets to capture, analyze, and manipulate data. Spreadsheets are readily available, easy to use, and inexpensive. However, they lack the power that business intelligence solutions provide, and are open to mistakes.

Most spreadsheets require manual input of data. Manual stock-taking during warehouse inventory, for example, must be keyed into spreadsheets. If the typist makes one error, the error can multiply throughout the spreadsheets. It can then render business data inaccurate and throw off conclusions drawn from the data.

Spreadsheets can also be cumbersome when multiple data streams must be combined to form new conclusions. It can be difficult to get spreadsheets to communicate and share data accurately across worksheets; impossible across files. Time-consuming data manipulation compounds the frustration and renders real-time data impossible.

Business intelligence solutions tackle these tasks for you. Automated warehouses and inventory systems using barcodes can scan and input data quickly and accurately without the typical keying mistakes frequently seen in manual operations. Multiple data streams can be brought together and transformed into actionable insights through business intelligence solutions.

If you are struggling to convince your team that business intelligence solutions are better than spreadsheets, point out to them the amount of time (and frustration) they experience every time they are tasked with data manipulation. A simple demonstration of the power of business intelligence solutions may point out the flaws inherent in spreadsheets and convince even the skeptical that a data-driven culture, supported by a robust BI system, provides better support for decision-making at every level of the organization.

Sage Enterprise Intelligence

Sage Enterprise Intelligence provides powerful insight into your existing data. It merges multiple data sources including Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and other CRM, accounting, finance, and operations data to provide big-picture and drill-down insights. Improved accuracy, access, and timeliness of data enhances your ability to make decisions. Data visualizations also add powerful information to the data so that anyone in the organization can access and use it effectively.

About IWI Consulting

IWI Consulting offers numerous Sage products to enhance your organization’s data-driven culture. Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Sage Enterprise Intelligence, and many other systems can transform how you use data in your organization. Manufacturers will find their productivity increases as data becomes more available throughout their organizations. For more information, call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851.

If you’ve shied away from ERP systems because of rumors that their business intelligence solutions were too complex, it’s time to re-evaluate that concept. Today’s business intelligence solutions easily transform multiple data sources from throughout your company into meaningful information.

A new white paper from IWI Consulting offers additional insights into the application and use of ERP systems for business intelligence.

Embedded Business Intelligence Solutions

Newer systems embed business intelligence solutions within the framework of the system. This makes it much easier to aggregate multiple data sources and run reports specific to your needs. Such reports can take a “big picture” view and report on factors from different areas within the company.

According to the new white paper offered by IWI Consulting, the top applications embedded in business intelligence solutions include:

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Financial and accounting systems
• Supply chain management
• Marketing automation

Among these types of software, BI is most frequently paired with ERP solutions. Studies indicate that businesses who use a combined, integrated ERP and business intelligence solution are on average twice as likely to gain real-time insights into the status of all business processes. This is a boon for business efficiency, productivity, and planning.

Benefits of Integrated ERP and BI

The same report also shares numerous benefits derived from integrated ERP and BI systems. These benefits include:

• Increased accuracy: Financial data improved accuracy so that it became 99% accurate for budgeting, 96% forecasting accuracy, and 94% on-time financial filings.
• Shorter sales cycles: Integrated systems shortened sales cycles and increased quota achievements by 6%.
• Improved operating margins: Manufactures benefited from a 10% year over year improvement in operating margins.
• Increased equipment effectiveness: 87% also increased their equipment effectiveness.
• Supply chain management: Supply chain management also benefited greatly, with on-time inbound orders completed 95% of the time, and a 7.5% decrease in out of stock frequency.

By using a combination of ERP and BI systems, manufacturers especially benefit. Improved equipment and order efficiency, decreases in stock errors, and other incremental improvements lead to overall company benefits by decreasing costs and improving net profits. Such benefits can add up to significant savings.

The improvements throughout the company are impressive, but the improved supply chain management is worth noting. Poorly managed supply chains can bring production to a halt or significantly throw delivery schedules off. When you have the data you need to manage your supply chain more effectively, you can keep productivity high.

Note also the increased equipment effectiveness. Many factories have idle equipment simply because they lack information about orders coming into the pipeline. If they had the information at hand, they could divert orders to idle equipment, thus ensuring that few, if any, equipment remains unused. This enables them to produce more goods in less time than competitors and provides significant advantages.

ERP Consulting in Toronto

Manufacturers seeking business intelligence solutions would be smart to consider ERP consulting. IWI’s ERP consulting offers insights and assistance with determining your company’s overall information needs, then matching needs to available products.

IWI Consulting offers ERP consulting and systems to help you manage your data efficiently. With the right ERP systems, you’ll never feel as if you’re drowning in data. We can help you select the best system for your needs and learn how to use it for maximum benefit. Call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851.

Part of ERP consulting is ensuring that companies have access both to accurate and timely data through their ERP systems. A new report demonstrates that the need continues for data improvements. Such improvements can be made through Sage Enterprise Intelligence, which integrates ERP systems, including Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3). You can download the white paper here.

Many companies find they are drowning in data yet thirsting for information. The Aberdeen Group, quoted in a new white paper available from IWI, reports that 47% of mid-sized companies agree that their employees are making decisions based on poor quality or incomplete data.

The same report indicates that 90% of business leaders feel they lack adequate information to make decisions when they need data. Approximately 27% of the respondents feel that data is too fragmented and distributed to facilitate the development of business plans.

Data, Data Everywhere

“Water, water, everywhere/and not a drop to drink” the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Business can sympathize. Change the words to “data, data everywhere/and not a decision to make” and you understand the common problems faced by many manufacturing companies.

The solution may be found in ERP systems. ERP systems such as Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) provide the following benefits:

Synthesizing multiple data sources into one system: Companies struggling with multiple data sources find a simple solution in Sage ERP products. Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), and similar Sage ERP systems bring together manufacturing, warehouse, accounting, finance, and sales data into one system. The resulting data reports can easily manipulate and amalgamate the information found within the system. Employees no longer have to run multiple reports and rekey the information into spreadsheets to look across departments for data.

Timely information: Companies need up-to-date information on all areas of operations to provide maximum benefit for decision-making. Without updated information, decisions may be based on faulty data. Newer ERP systems can provide real-time information from the manufacturing floor, the warehouse, or the sales team. It can greatly enhance your ability to make accurate decisions.

Accurate information: Automated systems such as Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) provide accurate information. Barcode scanners synchronized to warehouse and manufacturing systems provide highly accurate data on inventory and production. This data is automatically fed into your systems, minimizing clerical errors and counting errors that can lead to erroneous data. It’s a simple, streamlined method that provides accurate information.

Finding the Best System for Your Needs

IWI’s ERP consulting begins with understanding the challenges that your business faces, then matching solutions to those challenges. You may be surprised at how the newer ERP systems such as Sage Enterprise Intelligence, Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) and Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) can solve many common challenges “out of the box” and with minimal customization. Yet if you need such customization, it is available to you.

If you feel as if you are drowning in data without information upon which to base decisions, ERP consulting may be the first step on the path to automating your systems.

IWI Consulting: ERP Consulting in Toronto

IWI Consulting offers ERP consulting and systems to help you manage your data efficiently. With the right ERP systems, you’ll never feel as if you’re drowning in data. We can help you select the best system for your needs and learn how to use it for maximum benefit. Call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851.

Many business owners seek a competitive advantage through better business intelligence. Business intelligence solutions, such as Sage Enterprise Intelligence can provide you with big-picture data of your organization’s performance. Such data enhances your ability to make timely, accurate, and judicious decisions.

These decisions aren’t limited to the big picture, however. Every portion of your business, from the warehouse floor to the manufacturing area, benefits. The more data your managers have, the better they can do their jobs.

There are many surprising benefits to be derived from the implementation of new business intelligence solutions. Sage commissioned Forrester Research to analyze data from a representative sample of companies on their implementation of Sage X3. The resulting analysis showed abundant benefits and cost-savings. Some, however, were surprising.

Three Surprising Benefits from the Implementation of Sage X3 and Enterprise Intelligence

There are dozens of benefits your company gains from implementing business intelligence solutions. But three surprising areas include:

• Automating compliance
• Improving processes
• Enhancing availability of data.

Automating compliance: Many companies have stringent approval processes over items such as discounts, price breaks, returns, and other areas that directly impact the bottom line. Workers, however, find themselves chasing down managers for approvals, sending myriad reminder emails, or making countless telephone calls to get orders and discounts approved in a timely manner. With Sage X3 automated alerts and messages, information alerts can be set up to remind managers that approvals are waiting in the queue. Instead of wasting time chasing down a manager, the system does it for you, speeding up the process and freeing the employee’s time for other tasks.

Improving processes: Business intelligence solutions can also be used to improve existing processes. One company that participated in the Forrester Research study found significant benefits from improving their sales processes using Sage X3. This company offered varying discounts, many of which had to approved locally or specifically when requested by a sales team member. By automating the process and providing a standardized discount structure from which the sales people could choose, the system eliminated the tedious approval process by providing structured, pre-approved choices to choose among for each sale. This process improvement saved considerable time for the sales people and improved customer service throughout the organization by speeding up the entire order process for the customers.

Enhanced data availability: Prior to automation, many companies kept important information such as copies of purchase orders or receipts in a central office. Field staff trying to check on a problem with a customer order or even just looking up the customer’s order history had to call the central office to have someone there look up the information. If the information was kept in hard copy only, that may mean a delay while someone tracked down the location of the documents. Today’s cloud-based business intelligence solutions retain this and other relevant information on the database itself. Because they are cloud-based, the sales team can access them using their mobile devices, tablets or laptops. It’s much easier to communicate, share, and retrieve data through business intelligence solutions.

 Learn More About the Benefits of Sage X3 Implementation

IWI Consulting is now offering the full copy of this important report on the many benefits and cost-savings of sage X3 implementation.

IWI Consulting provides Sage X3 and Enterprise Intelligence software, along with other tools for business insights, management and data. Call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851 today.

ERP for manufacturing, such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), yields many benefits for the manufacturing industry. Some of these benefits are obvious, such as the availability of data, the ease with which you can run reports, and other time-saving benefits. What might not be as readily apparent is the cost-savings that manufacturers can achieve with ERP for manufacturing and distribution.

Sage contracted with the esteemed Forrester Research Group to analyze such savings. Although Forrester did not focus entirely on the manufacturing sector, they did discover among their many interviews with companies using Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) that manufacturers derived significant benefits. Here are just a few.

ERP for Manufacturing Provides Cost-Savings

ERP for manufacturing enables you to add many modules specifically tailored to your industry. One such module from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) helps you standardize purchasing protocols and processes to achieve the best discounts on goods and supplies. The entire purchasing process saw a reduction in the cost of labor, according to the Forrester research. Because Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) saved considerable time and effort, it reduced the cost of labor by approximately 4% annually. Less time was spent on tasks since many were automated.

Inventory Materials and Labor Savings

While it is likely that your purchasing managers seek to obtain the best discounts possible on goods and supplies, without the best planning data, they may not be aware of changes in demand. Inventory management software such as Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) allows you to review past inventory history to predict future trends. You can also see sales figures at a glance so that you can adjust manufacturing needs to accommodate large orders.

Using Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and its inventory module, you have visibility into your entire inventory no matter where it is located. You are able to move inventory to the sites you need it or request shipments from alternate locations. Using this visibility, an average organization experiences a 10% reduction in inventory levels and increased inventory turns. In addition, automated inventory management allowed reduced headcount of one FTE over three years.

Planning is everything in the manufacturing industry. Adequate planning can make a big difference in the profitability in your business, and such planning is facilitated through ERP for manufacturing.

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) Reduces the Cost of Goods

Investing in Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) allows you to automated processes such as recording production transactions and physical inventory. With real-time data, inventory levels and production schedules were more accurate and on-time. With immediate access to inventory scrap rates and the ability to fix resulting manufacturing problems, the average organization can reduce the cost of goods by ½ of 1%.

Across-the-Board Benefits from Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3)

Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) provides numerous benefits throughout your organization. With enterprise software in place, you can get the big picture of all of your business activities from one convenient dashboard. You don’t have to access the dashboard from your office, either. You can access it where you want to, when you want to, thanks to simple, easy cloud computing that provides access to your data through a web-based interface.

ERP for manufacturing benefits your sales department, marketing, operations, finance, and warehouse administration. Because data is kept in one system, it helps to improve communications and breaks down silos. With better data, you can run a better business.

ERP consulting from IWI Consulting can help you choose a system and add modules tailored to your needs. We have helped many Toronto-based businesses choose the best ERP for manufacturing software and implement it throughout the organization for enhanced productivity and profits.

Read the Full Report Now

Learn more about the exceptional discounts found after ERP implementation. With Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), you can achieve cost savings and other key benefits.

IWI Consulting provides Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) software, along with other tools for business insights, management and data. Get more information on our website or call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851 today.

There are many benefits of implementing Sage X3. Sage X3 helps the average business to improve efficiencies, automate workflows and alerts, and much more. Quantifying these benefits yields surprising information. Research shows that a mid-size company in the business of manufacturing, distribution and services can receive a net present value benefit of US $1.7 million and an ROI of 177%.

About the Survey: Forrester Research

Forrester Research conducted a cost-savings analysis at the behest of Sage, the parent company behind Sage X3, to assess the overall savings for businesses after implementing their product in the workforce. The results indicated considerable efficiencies and savings throughout the company.

When ascertaining cost-savings, it is important to identify key areas and winnow out extraneous data to ensure the results are accurate. Forrester’s research included customer interviews and other fact-finding, but was not an exhaustive assessment of the situation. Nevertheless, the benefits derived after implementing Sage X3 were noticeable and found in many areas of the company’s operations.

Labor-Saving Benefits with Sage X3

When Sage X3 financial module was implemented, customers reported labor and time-saving in the area of financial reporting. According to the report, the sample company whose data was analyzed would have had to add one full-time employee to receive the equivalent benefits of Sage X3 financial module. The amount of time and labor spent seeking, collating, organizing and analyzing the data by a person was saved by the use of the module.

Consider what the average salary is at your company for a mid-level financial professional. That is the approximately cost-savings one may assume from the implementation of Sage X3.

Improved Purchasing and Organization of Materials

Another significant benefit derived from the implementation of Sage X3 was in the area of purchasing and organization of materials. Such an area for many manufacturers can be quite challenging, and place within their company that is easy to overlook when seeking money-saving opportunities.

With the implementation of Sage X3, the organization surveyed saved 4% annually on the cost of materials. This was achieved through better management and purchasing foresight on global markets. Better management provided more lead-time to order goods, which resulted in the ability to negotiate discounts with suppliers and seek the most cost-effective shipping method. When activities are no longer on a ‘rush’ timetable, you can obtain many money-saving discounts.

Standardizing Sales Processes

It may seem that the sales department is an unlikely area to benefit from an ERP implementation, but that’s just what companies reported when Forrester interviewed them after their Sage X3 implementation.

Among those companies surveyed, an organization with a complex sales environment benefited the most from the implementation. This company sold numerous products with a complicated discount and bundling structure overlaid on the sales information. With the advent of Sage X3, the company was able to streamline, organize, and systematize their data, so that discounts could be approved globally. Prior to the implementation, discounts were approved locally and as one-offs. Now, discounting structures could be overlaid on the entire organization so that one-offs became an anomaly instead of the norm.

Think of what such a structure could mean to your business. If you are constantly handling single requests from the sales department, perhaps a standard process, implemented through your ERP system, could be the answer. Such a process could standardize and streamline the entire sales discounting structure to avoid losses and significant discounts.

Read More: Contact Us

Learn more about the exceptional discounts found after ERP implementation. With Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), you can achieve cost savings and other key benefits.

IWI Consulting provides Sage X3 and Sage 300 software, along with other tools for business insights, management and data. Get more information on our website or call IWI Consulting at 1-866-916-3851 today. Contact us for a free economic impact analysis for your business.