WBSRocks: Business Growth with Enterprise Software and Digital Transformation

Send us a textIf you have been thinking about incorporating robotic processes or industry 4.0 controls into your facility, you will have a choice whether you would like to buy the control systems directly from the vendors or program the robotic arms and control systems until you get the desired results from the manufacturing processes. Therefore, irrespective of whether you are a system integrator or the end consumer of the robotic process, you need to make a key decision whether you want to build the entire process from scratch or buy it out of the box.In today's episode, our guest, Ira Sharp, shares his insights on open automation and why that is important for manufacturers to understand as they increase the industry 4.0 maturity of their companies. He also describes the differences between open, industrial, and process automation. Finally, he discusses why it's important to understand the vendor lock while buying a control system produced by the vendor vs. having control over the processes by designing it from scratch.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 textThere are two ways to grow an ERP company. Either you build products from scratch like SAP, Acumatica, SYSPRO, and NetSuite, etc. Or you acquire several products until you have a solid market share to create a product strategy like Infor, Epicor Software, Sage, and Appian Corporation. While Infor and Epicor were very aggressive with their acquisition strategy in their early days, they have realized how bad having too many product bases could fire back. One of the challenges that ERP companies face is to phase out the products acquired through acquisition and move their customers to a few strategic products. ERP business also requires a long-term commitment by their investors as having a solid technology strategy is expensive and requires aligned product priorities with the target market. ECI Software Solutions is one such company that has taken a unique approach of a franchise model where each company is a separate company with several products with overlapping functionality and codebase. They have had their last investor exit with 4x within four years. And even the new investor seems to be operating with the same mindset. But is this strategy sustainable? Would they have enough investment to modernize 30+ codebases with significantly duplicate functionality?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 ECi's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including their acquisition strategy, investors' experience in building a software company, the specific position of each of their products, and the financial risks for customers. Finally, we discussed why Exact decided to spin off some of their products and what changes customers can expect post-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.

Send us a textIf you ask any manufacturer, they will tell you that the Shop floor is where you make money. You need to make sure you have the right material and the right operator at the right machine. Wasting machine or machinist time is equally expensive. But then your margins may be tight, and you need to make sure you are profitably able to produce the job by optimizing the cycle time. You also need to make sure that you service your equipment at the right time, or you have the risk of disruptions. So how many different systems does the shop floor need? And how to create the system architecture to enable the smart factory?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss shop floor information architecture. We covered many grounds, including the stories related to shop floor information architecture across various manufacturing industries of various sizes. Finally, we discussed what companies need to do to take advantage of Industry 4.0 technology and architectural patterns.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 textGetting a visitor to your site is not easy. Once you get visitors, keeping them engaged on the site is not easy either. But what is worse is if they end up dropping out without buying. Dropouts could happen because of a lot of reasons. It could be the higher price or shipping options. It could also be the checkout experience if the process may take a longer time than expected. So how do you control visitors from dropping out? What are the best practices for reducing the dropout? What are the KPIs that matter in controlling the dropout rate?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss visitor dropout strategies for e-commerce. We covered many grounds in this episode, including the causes of dropouts and strategies to reduce them. Finally, we covered several stories related to dropouts, including overly intrusive pop-ups, autoplay videos, unavailability of inventory, or implications of a dependent system being down.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 textDemand and inventory planning is a dark art that even trained S&OP practitioners struggle to understand. Each company goes through a maturity curve as they scale their operations. They will start with a spreadsheet or a combination of a spreadsheet and an ERP system. They might also do a lot of planning inside the ERP, but the development of those reports could be costly, and your planners may still not like to use it due to the rigidity of the ERP systems. As they grow, they need a sophisticated planning system that can talk to the ERP back and forth.In today's episode, our guest, Russ Graf, shares his insights on the inventory maturity curve for manufacturers and distributors. He also discusses how the inventory and S&OP planning differs for manufacturers and distributors. Finally, he discusses how the ERP systems might not have all the datasets the planners need to compute safety stock.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 textDid you know that plastic could be more sustainable than paper? Wait, what? Well, to understand sustainability, you need to analyze the complete product lifecycle, identify your KPIs for the critical material waste, and find out how much total waste you have in the entire product life cycle. If you did this, you might learn that paper usage resulted in wasting some other key resources as the product moved through the supply chain. This is why sustainability is more challenging than you think, and it requires careful analysis and positioning. Otherwise, these efforts are likely to fire back once influencers and consumers learn that you didn't mean what you stated on your marketing material.In today's episode, our guest, Adam Peek, shares his insights on how sustainability initiatives can help your brand's strategic growth. He also discusses why you can't fake sustainability and why that's likely to fire back more than helping. Finally, he outlines why executing sustainable strategies is more challenging than you would think, as it requires a deep understanding of your materials and the entire product life cycle starting from procuring raw materials to consumers consuming or discarding them.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 textPrototyping business is unique since each order is different. Most people would not be able to imagine standardization for this business. You may be building parts of different materials, shapes, and sizes and may require different machines and tooling to process the parts. You may also struggle with material storage requirements and might produce several WIP items as it might be cheaper than ordering each individual part. Given such constraints, how many people would think of implementing #robotic cell for a prototyping business?In today's episode, our guest, Brian Kippen, shares his insights on Robotic cell technology and how that can be implemented to increase capacity. He also discusses the nuances of the prototyping business, and while it might be counterintuitive to implement robotic cell technology, he could successfully implement it by standardizing the processes. Finally, he shares his insights into his order to cash process and how they segment the materials, assign each job to machines, and share his insights into what would be required to scale the current processes.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 textWhile most ERP systems might feel as if they overlap entirely, there is a clear distinction between desktop apps, single-tenant, multi-tenant, and enterprise solutions. You might also need to pay attention to how many levels of BOMs are supported in the solution to ensure that you find an appropriate solution for your company. For example, most solutions that support industries such as food and beverage and automotive parts may not be suitable for complex manufacturing such as Electric Vehicles or Aerospace due to the lack of depth of their BOMs. Finally, make-to-stock planning is typically very different from make-to-order and engineering-to-order. One such solution is SYSPRO, which used to be a desktop app due to the underlying database. It has come a long way with its SQL server migration and advancement in the underlying technology platform. It may also be one of the best solutions for smaller Food and Beverage manufacturers and distributors.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 SYSPRO's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including their marketing claims, especially about their transparency to their customers and their positioning in the appropriate market verticals. Finally, we discussed how SYSPRO could be a great solution for distribution and light manufacturing companies, but not so much for complex manufacturing as it's designed to be a single tenant and serve in ala-carte mode.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 textRetaining customers is 10x easier than acquiring them. But you will not be able to create the sticky effect with your customers unless you have a solid strategy behind it. Retention requires a loyalty model that makes your customers feel that they are getting preferential treatment for their loyalty. It also requires you to communicate the value of preferential treatment. Unless you communicate, how would they know that you are doing something for them? Without communication, your retention strategies may result in devaluing your products without any tangible advantage. Retention also requires you to have better experience and barriers that help them stick to your brand. Every brand has a different retention strategy. But what are the best practices when it comes to retaining your customers?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss customer retention strategies for e-commerce. We covered many grounds in this episode, including the steps and processes for customer retention and why tracking invisible churn is important. Finally, we also discussed how to measure customer retention and why it is important to right-size the customer for product purchase alignment.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 textWhile the 3PL and companies involved with freight movement may have much stronger needs for logistics and transportation processes, manufacturers and distributors can't be efficient if they treat logistics as their stepchild. In fact, more and more companies are managing their in-house fleets to meet the consumer expectations of faster delivery and issues such as driver shortages. The inhouse fleets are also required if you have regulated business or special requirements to ship your goods, such as Frozen food or if 3PLs might be cost-prohibitive for your business model. Even if you rely entirely on LTL and FTL carriers, you still have to manage the scheduling, timely loading or unloading, and coordination with your 3PL carriers if you want to avoid overages. So what are the needs and best practices to cost-effectively manage the logistics needs for a manufacturer or distributor? And what system and integrations would they require to manage them?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss logistics information architecture. We covered many grounds, including stories related to the different systems that logistics function needs and the role of POD and rate shopping systems in the architecture. Finally, we discussed why manufacturing and distribution companies need to think before bringing capabilities such as last-mile delivery in-house and how the supply chain companies have a very different business model than the traditional manufacturers and distributors.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.