WBSRocks: Business Growth with Enterprise Software and Digital Transformation

Send us a textAs you grow, you will be getting a lot of offers to get acquired. You might also be acquiring the companies, especially if you might not be able to meet your growth plans through organic channels. Whichever side of the M&A process you might happen to be on, you will only get value from the transaction if it is successfully executed. The most common reasons why acquisitions fail is because of the misunderstanding of the market and focusing solely on the financial models on the spreadsheets than really understanding what has really worked for the company that may be acquired.In today's episode, our guest, Kison Patel, shares his insights into the importance of people-focused M&A transactions and why buyers and sellers must understand the market deeply than simply relying on spreadsheet models. He also describes the success and failure rates of M&A transactions and what works for companies that have successfully executed the transaction. Finally, he shares why integration is the most important step of the M&A transactions.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textThe social proof is becoming real, especially for B2C and FMCG brands with the advancements in social media and influencer marketing concepts. Also, with the increased competition, it's becoming harder to get placed at shelves in high-traffic areas. Even so, there are several newer technologies out there, such as mass customer mobilization, that can help get visibility for your brand inside the store through non-traditional methods. In today's episode, our guest, Ben Searcy, shares his insights into the importance of customer advocacy and mass customer mobilization. He also describes how customer advocacy differs for B2B and B2C brands. Finally, he describes how the mass customer mobilization could increase sales at low-performing stores and how the advocacy could increase the revenue for B2B brands.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textWhat could you do if your business were not able to break through and grow as expected? What would you do if the close rate were extremely low and you couldn't do anything about it as your channel controlled the sales process? While there are several options to help with this issue, including going DTC, the path is extremely risky, especially if you might be taking this path for the first time on such a massive scale. But careful planning and a well-thought-out process beforehand can save you a lot of headaches during the project phase.In today's episode, our guest, Phil Coerper, shares his insights into executing on DTC strategy. He also describes how to determine whether your business should be pure distribution-led, pure DTC, or hybrid. Finally, he shares his journey of building the business case, getting approval from the board, and the challenges he faced to ensure that the project remained on time and on budget.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textTraditional IT required you to stress test programming languages, databases, and server farms based on your expected workload. You designed the system based on the size of your organization. If you are buying an ERP system, you obviously don't have to go through the testing and measurement process as you assume that ERP vendors and salespeople must sell to the right-sized organization. Unfortunately, most ERP salespeople neither have ERP implementation nor an IT background.To be fair with them, their providers never provide them with the technical sheet (or technical education) of the system's limitations. Instead, they only have access to the functional sheets. Would you not expect a technical sheet if you were buying a piece of machinery as the OEMs are legally required to provide for the products that might be life-threatening? Then why not for an ERP? This makes the process for selecting an ERP system fundamentally flawed as just because a corolla may have similar functionality as an SUV or a truck. A corolla is not supposed to be doing the same heavy lifting if your organization has grown to require an SUV. Because of this issue, most companies end up defaulting to the system they already trust, such as SAP, or they might be making extremely unfair comparisons, such as Oracle NetSuite vs GlobalShop. But if you asked them to explain why they chose a specific system, they would rarely have an answer. Each ERP system is designed for a specific stage of a company, and you will be sitting on a financial and legal risk if you don't understand that you will get the real taste of ERP after you have signed a multi-year contract and started loading all of your data. Let's dig under the hood to underhood how to evaluate Desktop apps such as GlobalShop. More importantly, where does GlobalShop stand as of today? And where do they win most?In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to discuss major stories in the ERP and digital transformation space and an objective and independent review of GlobalShop's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including their marketing claims, especially about their transparency to their customers and underlying technical deficiencies that may not be entirely clear to the customers. Finally, we discussed how these technical limitations might drive the admin costs and challenges in running even a decent-sized manufacturing organization with more than 100 SKUs.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textProcurement plays an extremely important role in ensuring that you have the right raw materials at the right place at the right time. They are also responsible for the S&OP planning, which is the hardest to master, and misaligned S&OP functions could significantly impact the top and bottom line. And they are often left behind when it comes to their technology needs. They are also an afterthought in the organization in creating sophisticated procurement processes that will have tangible financial results. But what do procurement professionals need to perform their duties? Is ERP enough? Or do they need more? Where do systems such as P2P, CLM, Spend Analysis, Supplier Discovery, Supplier Information Management, eSourcing, Contract Management, eProcurement, eInvoicing, Supplier Management fit in the architecture? And how to design an architecture that allows companies to create process boundaries between these systems and share information while maintaining a single source of truth.In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss procurement information architecture. We covered many grounds, including stories related to the different systems that procurement function needs and the role of MDM and CLM in the architecture. Finally, we discussed the vendor collaboration required at the various stages of the order lifecycle, starting from the design, procurement, finance, and production.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textIf you are an e-commerce business, you need to have your margins at your fingertips. Understanding your margins for each of your SKUs lets you know if any of the products might be a good fit for marketplaces. They also help you assess if you have enough margin for customs duties on international sales. Finally, they will help you understand if you can offer free shipping, bundle discounts, or cash back options. But sadly, most e-commerce companies very rarely understand their margins as their costing may be off. They might be using standard costing, and because of that, the costs may not be current. They might not be factoring in their labor or machine costs. They might also not be factoring overheads. So what can companies do to measure their margins and track appropriately?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss margins measurement and tracking for e-commerce. We covered many grounds in this episode, including how often the margins need to be tracked, different cost variables that might affect them, and how that would affect decision-making. Finally, we covered the KPIs eCommerce managers need to track to manage their roles and responsibilities effectively.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textMost companies are very rarely effective with their pricing strategies. They might have very simplified pricing strategies such as cost-plus to avoid the analyst overhead and lose money by not charging enough. Or they might have very manual processes to monitor competing SKUs at marketplaces or over the web and might lose their margins with the admin overhead. While monitoring pricing has never been straightforward, the newer tools are making the process easier and helping companies control and update them dynamically as the market condition changes.In today's episode, our guest, Burc Tanir, share his insights into dynamic pricing works and how e-commerce companies can take advantage of it. He also describes how the newer technologies can help monitor the pricing on marketplaces without hiring an army of analysts and increase your admin costs. Finally, he describes the nuances of dynamic pricing, such as SKU segmentation based on price sensitivity and aligning the pricing strategies based on their sensitivity.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textThe automotive industry has always been challenging for manufacturers and distributors serving it. You might have ultra-thin margins with every year the OEMs threatening to reduce the costs further. You also have had traditional demand forecasting issues where the demand forecasted by industry groups may be off by as much as 50%. Also, with COVID and supply chain issues, the job of forecasters has become even more challenging. Now your choice is to overstock or overwork to meet the unpredictable demand. Or figure out how to take advantage of newer technologies such as machine learning platforms that are helping automotive manufacturers become leaner and operationally efficient.In today's episode, our guest, Ryan Knox from Flexfab, Tony Lancione from Lancione Group, and Eamonn Barrett from Remi AI, share their insights into how AI and Machine learning have solved their traditional demand forecasting issues. They also describe why automotive is unique with its demand forecasting needs and why this market has unique challenges to forecast the demand compared to other manufacturing verticals such as Aerospace or consumer goods. Finally, they describe the nuances of the machine learning algorithm and how the traditional approaches might fall short or maybe cost prohibitive to achieve the same forecasting accuracy.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textHow hard could running a store be? Isn't it as simple as keeping a bunch of products, renting a place, and selling? Also, how hard could it be when you have multiple locations where customers expect consistent experience when they visit any of the stores? Well, if e-commerce is hard, running a retail chain that is known for its customer experience like Starbucks or WholeFoods is equally hard. First, you need to make sure the customers can find the right products at the right place. And then, you need to have consistent store experience across locations.In today's episode, our guest, Rachel Williamson, shares her insights on the nuances of retail store transformation. She also discusses how the customer experience starts right from hiring, having a playbook, and the importance of study and observations to handle execution and compliance issues. Finally, she shares several stories of various stores where the most store performance issues were related to problems such as not having a clean fitting room or having the right size that customers expected when they visited the store.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us a textYou can't spell Automotive without the mention of Plex. While not as penetrated as other bigger players such as Infor, Epicor, or SAP, Plex has had a significant impact on the ERP community due to the quality of its product. That's probably the reason Rockwell decided to acquire them. But the bigger reason why Rockwell acquired them is because of their MES and IoT capabilities. In fact, if you look closely, Plex would appear more of the MES than ERP. That's also probably why companies install Plex and Workday together, as they are truly made for each other, especially for manufacturing companies. It's also the only system that takes the perspective of plant managers and shop floor, and that's why Industry 4.0 community is a big fan of Plex. But where does Plex stand as of today? And where do they win most?In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to discuss major stories in the ERP and digital transformation space and an objective and independent review of Plex's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including their positioning in specific micro-verticals and their deeper capabilities than other manufacturing ERP software. Finally, we discussed their product roadmap, history, current capabilities, financial risks, and changes to their strategy because of the Rockwell acquisition.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.