What do sales orders, inventory, and customers all have in common? They can either make or break your bottom line. Using disparate, specialty software to manage these critical core business operations can lead to decision-making delays, expensive inventory mistakes, and unhappy customers. Connecting these critical processes with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution can save money, improve customer service, and give you a competitive advantage.

Using separate, specialty software systems can create a confusing network of inconsistent processes and can lead to mistakes with customer orders, inventory management, and lead to unsatisfied customers. For example, a customer may call and place an order with a sales representative who then passes along order information to a manager for processing. Manufacturing may be tasked with scheduling operations and procurement may need to count inventory to determine whether to order raw materials. As paper forms are shared via inter-office mail or transcribed into an email and sent throughout the office, data could be lost, misunderstood, or even forgotten. These types of bottlenecks and disconnects can disrupt the ordering process and you can quickly lose customers. Get all your key people on the same page with an integrated ERP solution such as Sage® 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300).

A comprehensive ERP solution, such as Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300), will connect your people and processes and protect critical business data. Customers can place orders online or with sales representatives and data can be automatically shared with procurement, manufacturing, and other key departments. Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) streamlines data sharing so that data, such as a customer order, isn’t lost or inaccurately entered into separate systems. Order forms can also be turned into packing slips, invoices, and shipping labels. These automations will save valuable time and improve productivity. In addition, an integrated ERP solution offers easy access to real time data such as inventory levels. You can analyze data for trends such as such as re-stocking the most popular products or scheduling regular customer replenishment orders. You can then leverage this data to your advantage and maintain appropriate buffer inventory levels without overstocking or risking stock-outs.

Disparate specialty solutions may work for individual departments but they introduce a risk for data errors and delays with common processes. Get your team together with an ERP solution that will streamline operations, improve productivity, and improve customer satisfaction. Contact IWI Consulting Group for more information about using ERP to connect your orders, inventory, and customers.

By IWI Consulting Group, Sage ERP Partner out of Canada

You may be surprised by the many manual operations that occur throughout the office. Data is often entered into one system, then another. Reports are often sent by slow inter-office mail or email, then data needs to be validated before it can be used. Add automation to these time-consuming processes, save time, and improve productivity by using an innovative business management solution.

Using specialized software programs may seem appropriate for your core business areas such as the financial department, inventory and manufacturing, and sales. However, separate systems can also create delays as well as risk to data accuracy. Repeatedly entering the same customer or product data is a drain on productivity and introduces the chance for typos or data errors. Also, each software program will generate reports with different formats and key data summaries. Then managers need to piece these reports together to determine whether operations are productive and profitable, which is also time consuming and fraught with mistakes.

Streamline business operations by introducing automation through one of today’s comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. An integrated ERP solution , such as Sage® EM (formerly known as Sage X3), enables your team to manage finances, inventory, manufacturing operations, sales, and other core business processes from a single software solution. Instead of manually entering data in several separate solutions, you can enter it once in Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) and share it with other departments. Each department can enter specific data and monitor key metrics, making sure that specific activities or goals are being met. In addition, managers can get a ‘big picture’ view of the entire enterprise and watch for how activities from one department can impact another.

Another time-saving automation offered in solutions like Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3) include workflow functionality. Your team can use the built-in workflows for common business process or create their own specific procedures. For example, accounting can input the receipt of an invoice which triggers an email requesting approval from one or more project or financial managers. When the invoice is approved for payment, the accounting department receives an automatic notification to pay the invoice. Instead of sending copies through interoffice mail or emailing managers for approval, the workflow will save time and reduce delays.

The more time that is spent on manual processes, the less time you have for other important business tasks. Harness the efficiency offered in an ERP solution and spend more time using your data than handling it. Contact IWI Consulting Group for more information about the time-saving automations offered by ERP.

By IWI Consulting Group, Sage Authorized Partner in Canada

When we speak to business owners looking for ERP software to keep their competitive edge, their first concern is the transition time from the old to the new. That concern, though, is as dated as the software of old. With the change in the way we do business today, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has also changed. Fast, efficient and intuitive, products like SAGE are testimony to this trend.

SAGE X3 is a popular and powerful ERP solution boasting an intuitive interface that cuts down the time your team requires in learning a new system.

Here is how:

• SAGE X3 comes with hundreds of pre-configured visual processes that make it easy to run tasks.
• SAGE X3 gives your business the adaptability of a custom designed system with pre-set parameters designed for your business, including predefined user role and process flows.
• For SAGE X3, SAGE worked with Business Partners to give you a pre-defined implementation framework that ensures a low risk, quick to deploy ERP solution.

Great as this may sound on paper, nothing beats hearing from satisfied clients.  Alloy Polymers Inc., a market leader in the thermoplastics industry, found SAGE X3 the perfect answer to the challenge of optimizing efficiency while customizing manufacturing needs. Specializing in value-added compounding services and solutions, chemical and plastics processing companies across a broad range of industries trust Alloy Polymers to produce products that meet their unique specifications

“The company wanted a manufacturing and financial application that we could customize, that was quick to implement, and that was both scalable and the right size for our operations,” recalls Anne Robinson, director of IT at Alloy Polymers. “It needed to be cost effective to implement and to maintain. Sage SAGE X3 meets all the requirements.”

Learn more about what Alloy Polymer’s team has to say about their experience with SAGE X3 here

What are your key ERP software concerns? Let us know and we will help you work out how SAGE’s most powerful ERP solution to date can help you grow in today’s competitive market.

Sage ERP wholesale distribution software provides a robust and scalable set of management tools to optimize inventories, reduce costs, and maintain the highest levels of customer service. Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) provides companies with real-time access to information about suppliers, inventory levels, outstanding orders, and shipments that translates to cost control and rapid order turnaround. Sage ERP combines advanced distribution, warehousing, , and accounting functionality with features specifically designed for distribution companies, including:

Sales that enables you to issue customer quotations, book orders and transmit order acknowledgements, manage contracts, display and allocate goods from stock, and manage the dispatch and loan of goods prior to invoicing.

Inventory control helps ensures optimum coherence and is fully user-definable on each site with the application of the multisite, multiwarehouse and multilocation management. The module also incorporates quality control functions and traceability of inventory quantities.

Delivery Scheduling and Receiving provides the ability to schedule an order quantity for
multiple receipt points and delivery dates on one purchase order. Lot numbers and serial numbers can be recorded and subsequently tracked to their final destination, while expiration dates are calculated as required.

Shipping is simplified in Sage ERP. With features like rate-shopping, Web-based shipment tracking, and automated customer e-mail shipment notifications, distributors can better service customers and save money in shipping costs.

Inventory replenishment rules and data are maintained by product and site to help balance customer service and inventory levels, including; lead time, safety stock, reorder formulas, and firm and planning time horizons. Replenishment orders can be generated as part of materials requirement planning (MRP) or to reorder buy-for-stock items separately.

Sage Enterprise Management (formerly known as Sage X3) offers midsized distributors a feature-rich management system for their advanced, industry-specific business processes. Sage ERP solution supports all operations across the distribution channel, within one singular software design, that is affordable, effective and simple to manage.