WBSRocks: Business Growth with Enterprise Software and Digital Transformation

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.

Send us a textEven though CFOs and Controllers are responsible for driving the transformation inside the company, they often have to put the needs of their peers in operations, sales, and HR before their own needs. Also, technology decisions are always about trade-offs. If you make the life of customer-facing teams easier, it would mean that your backend teams might need to work harder to meet the expectations. What systems do finance leaders need to drive finance transformation? Is ERP enough, or do they need more? How to build the architecture that is going to drive the needs of the finance dept?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss implementing systems for the finance department. We covered many grounds, including several stories of finance transformation, including some horror stories and initiatives that resulted in the growth of the companies purely because of these financial innovations. Finally, we discussed several other concepts such as continuous close, standard vs. actual costing, fixed assets, the chart of account, acquisitions, and finance data warehouse.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 free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you provide some insights into your funnel and customer behavior, you are simply scratching the surface with the amount of analytics you would need to drive marketing results. With multiple systems being used in the e-commerce architecture, including CRM, website, PIM, and marketplaces, you need a centralized analytics platform to determine which products are the right fit for which channel. Which marketplaces are most profitable in which countries? Which paid campaigns are working most effectively for which customer segment? Where would be your next expansion opportunity? Would it make more sense to extend another product line on a specific channel? Or does it make more sense to expand geographically? How can you find customer 360 to get all the activities related to a customer? These are the questions you will have as an e-commerce manager for which you need tons of data to make informed decisions.In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss marketing analytics strategies for e-commerce. We covered many grounds in this episode, including several stories where the analytics platform consisted of several systems and platforms and the challenges associated with multi-system architecture. Finally, we covered how to interpret and read the data, find the right datasets for reconciliations, and what KPIs and dashboards marketers need for day jobs.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 plan to acquire ISO or AS, one of the critical steps for this journey would be to go through the internal audit process. But who is responsible for internal audits? Is it the external consultants who will be providing the certifications? Is it the quality department? Or is it department heads? While it may seem counter-intuitive, the role of external consultants is not to do the internal audits. The internal auditors are selected from one of the internal teams that is curious about quality and have the communication and cross-functional skills to ensure that necessary issues get logged while explaining the importance of each process steps.In today's episode, our guest, Michael Venner, shares the nuances of internal audit and its importance to get certified. He also discusses where internal audit fits in the certification journey and the role of external consultants. Finally, he outlines the process for selecting an internal auditor, their responsibilities, and the traits of a good internal auditor.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 textAs you grow, you will go through several stages of S&OP maturity. Sales always conservatively estimate the inventory as they don't want to miss any opportunities. But finance executives want to reduce the inventory as much as possible as that has carrying costs. While you might be aware of the inventory issues, solving them is hard, as they require cross-functional collaboration and agreements across teams. Inventory turnover is one metric that could help you achieve your goals if you included it as part of the compensation plan for every stakeholder across the company.In today's episode, our guest, Hugo Fuentes, shares the nuances of inventory turnover and how that could help optimize the inventory and cash flow. He also discusses stages of S&OP maturity for various companies and how they must enable cross-functional KPIs tied to compensation plans to solve the S&OP challenges. Finally, he discusses how to perform the SKU segmentation across industries and categories to find the appropriate inventory turnover targets for each SKU.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.