WBSRocks: Business Growth with Enterprise Software and Digital Transformation

Send us a textWhen you start your business, you will do whatever you can in your power to survive. You might sign up any customers that might have any amount of money in their pockets. You might sell an offering that you might not have on your menu. Again, we as entrepreneurs have figured out how to survive. But the same entrepreneurial spirit fires back when you are trying to scale your business. Once you reach an inflection point, you will likely have the most complex product mix, manufacturing, and inventory processes resulting from ad-hoc survival or incomplete customer and vendor data driving unnecessary manual processes. At this point, you have two choices, either live with the processes that might not be relevant anymore for your business. Or, start with a clean slate and draw every process out there and simplify as much as possible.In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss the strategies for business simplification prior to implementation. We covered many grounds, including why simplification matters and which business objects you should prioritize for simplification. Finally, we discussed several stories related to chart of accounts, sub-accounts, work centers, inventory part numbers, paper-driven 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 you may get tons of traffic for your e-commerce website, if your users don't find your content interesting, they might not stay on it for very long. And this is where the KPIs around sessions are critical. It will help you understand what's happening after the users land on your pages. It will also help you understand how long they stay on each page and how many pages they visit per session. The session KPIs are helpful when you might have a lot of traffic but not as many conversions. But how to optimize the content and journeys to improve your KPIs related to sessions?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss session optimization strategies for e-commerce. We covered many grounds in this episode, including why the session matters and the pitfalls associated with reading session KPIs. Finally, we also discussed several stories where the session optimization strategies resulted in tangible results for the business and which platforms have higher accuracy for session data.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 textTransportation management has multiple facets, and it could mean different things to different companies. But the real value of a TMS system will be when multimode legs are involved in shipping goods. And that's why the transportation and 3PL companies have greater needs for a TMS system than manufacturing and distribution companies. But if the manufacturing company manages its own fleet and requires visibility into multi-mode tracking, it might also need a sophisticated TMS system. So whether you simply use a shipping add-on or a full-blown TMS system for your shipping needs, you will need to integrate with your WMS or ERP system.In today's episode, our guest, Fred Cartwright from Haversack, shares his insights into the nuances of transportation management systems from different perspectives of manufacturers, distributors, 3PL facilities, and transportation companies. He also describes the concepts such as mode optimization, consolidation, and spot market. Finally, he shares several stories of TMS implementations and describes several KPIs that companies should aim to get from a TMS system.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 textLogistics planning is hard, and it gets harder as the number of incoming and outgoing truckloads grows for a warehouse or manufacturing facility. While yard management is typically an afterthought as its implications may not impact the core operational and financial transactions, you can't ignore it due to the financial hits caused by unused trailer capacity, detention, and demurrage fee. Unless you have enough data at your fingertips and automated management of your gate etc., your yard operations crew might be spending more time dealing with the shouting match due to the blame game than adding the real value to your bottom line.In today's episode, our guest, Colin Mansfield from Yard Management Solutions, shares his insights into the process nuances of yard management of manufacturing and warehouse facilities. He also describes the lifecycle of yard management and trailers, along with concepts such as drop load, live load, the role of jockey drivers, detention, and demurrage fee. Finally, he discusses the role of YMS in the enterprise architecture, how it interacts with other systems such as WMS, TMS, and ERP, and various KPIs relevant to managing a yard.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 journey of e-commerce could be frightening. In fact, it's kind of confusing because of the blurring line between B2B and B2C. The approach that worked for B2C may not be most appropriate for B2B. There is also a blurring line between whether you want to consider the content-first approach or cart-first. Whatever you consider, you will have significant implications on your business model, and you want to make sure that it's the right fit for your business. If your business is slightly more content first, the cart-first approach may fire back. But how to decide which would be appropriate for you?In today's episode, our guest, Jeffry Graham from Ecommerce MGMT, shares his insights into the classic debate of cart-first and content-first for e-commerce companies. He also shares several stories of companies that went through either cart-first or content-first approaches from point A and B, including describing their outcomes. Finally, he describes when each of these approaches would be appropriate and immediate steps companies can take with their journey of the configurator.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 people might recognize Microsoft for Windows or Office applications. They might also recognize them for their database and Azure. But did you know that Microsoft always had a significant market share in the ERP space? While Microsoft's go-to-market strategy has been very different from other ERP vendors such as Oracle and SAP, they have always had a lead in the market with their products such as GP, SL, NAV, and AX. In the world of the Cloud, Microsoft may even be ahead of its legacy competitors, such as SAP, due to the completeness of their products. Microsoft also has a possible advantage with their #2 CRM products and several other products that they offer as part of Microsoft 365 Suite, such as Office, Power Apps, Azure Data Factory, and Power BI. But like other competitors such as SAP, Sage, Infor, or Epicor, they still have significant legacy code that is not modernized and would not be as fresh as their cloud-native counterparts. Where does Microsoft stand as of today? And where are they winning in the world of the Cloud?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 Microsoft's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including the overview of different product offerings from Microsoft and their positioning in the market. Finally, we discussed which companies would be the appropriate fit for Mircosoft ERP systems and the risk factors they might need to evaluate during their evaluation process.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 textGarbage in garbage out is perhaps the most overused phrase of all during the ERP conversations. Everyone uses it, but very few understand the consequences and implications of this phrase. Also, your data, whether structured poorly or diligently, forms the foundation of your business model. But why? Because many data sets are relevant in the ERP conversations, such as master, configuration, transactional, and historical, they each have their implications on the selection and implementation of ERP. Suppose you implement or select an ERP without going through the phase of data cleansing or aligning your data with the future business model. In that case, you might end up choosing an incorrect ERP, as your poorly structured data may be influencing the decision for your ERP. The data cleansing could mean aligning your BOMs with your production process or your customer structure with how you transact with them. But how to follow the structured data cleaning approach to select the suitable ERP and avoid implementation disaster?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss data cleansing prior to ERP implementation. We covered many grounds, including the difference between what garbage truly is during the implementation and why ERP historical data is hard to migrate compared to CRM. Finally, we discussed the business model implications of bad data and how the master data needs to be planned in different contexts in the multi-system scenario.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 textPricing and discounting are two strategies to incentivize buyers to make a purchase decision. But there is always confusion where each would be appropriate. Also, pricing is often a sensitive area where most companies would rather undercharge in fear of losing market share or customers. Companies could use pricing strategies such as cost-plus, competition-based, value-based, price skimming, loss-leader, penetration, dynamic, bundle, premium, and anchor. But they rarely understand the true potential and their applications. There are a lot of factors to consider when developing an ecommerce pricing strategy. Competition, ever-changing customer expectations, material costs, and shipping all play a role in pricing your products. To stay relevant, brands need to continue to reevaluate their pricing strategy. But what are the best practices of pricing?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss pricing strategies in the e-commerce world. We covered many grounds in this episode, including the difference between pricing and discounting strategies. Finally, we also discussed the nuances of various pricing types loss-leader, cost-plus, and competitor-based along with their pros and cons.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 divide between IT and OT has always been challenging for business executives. But this divide has always existed and still exists among other groups too. For example, sales and marketing teams don't like to deal with IT as they are perceived to slow down things. The supply chain doesn't like them either as they would rather manage their systems independently than dealing with IT. While other groups have realized the importance of IT and created true partnerships, OT teams have yet to figure out how to eat at the same dinner table with IT. In today's episode, our guests, Tom Harrop from Splunk, share his insights into the core reasons for the organizational divide between IT and OT. He also describes why OT cannot catch up with other departments such as sales, marketing, HR, and Supply Chain with IT and what companies can do to remove silos. Finally, he describes the ideal industry 4.0 architecture for companies to converge their IT and OT functions.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 textDue to the proliferation of IoT devices in manufacturing environments, the number of access points prone to attack has increased significantly. And while the OT environments don't have as thicker the code base as the IT environment, OT environments are less secure than IT. The lack of education in how to write production-ready software and a greater push for efficiency have been the reasons why OT devices are more prone to attack with higher safety consequences. In today's episode, our guests, Corey White and David Cundiff from Cyvatar share their insights into how the tradeoffs for greater efficiencies and OEE may be driving cybersecurity issues in the OT environments. They also take a deep dive into a car manufacturer's story where they ended up losing millions of dollars due to a ransomware attack within 8 hrs of attack. Finally, they describe the mechanics of ransomware, how the codebase in OT and IT differ, and why OT devices are harder to secure and more prone to attacks than IT due to the lack of standardization and skillsets of OT operators.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.