WBSRocks: Business Growth with Enterprise Software and Digital Transformation

Send us a textCreating consumer products that don't have a pre-existing category is much harder to sell and commercialize than you would think. You have to figure out how to go through procurement, who will probably not be very receptive to your product as they might get beat up by their management. You may also not have enough funding for advertising campaigns to create the kind of buzz a new product requires. What can you do? You need to think deeper. You have to find non-traditional ways to find your customers and convert them into champions to create a completely new market that your buyers start finding you as opposed to you finding them.In today's episode, our guest, Kara Goldin, shares her insights into how to develop non-traditional marketing channels for your new products. She also shares how she solved her initial product and supply chain challenges without any experience in the manufacturing or food and beverage industry. Finally, she shares how she prioritized with limited funding as she grew her company through inflection points and at which point she had the confidence that this was the right product category that could scale.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 textCannabis has become a booming industry, with several states legalizing the use of cannabis in their states. And the industry is also becoming complex with the ever-increasing applications of Cannabis products and their by-products. The companies need to comply with the state requirements, but there might also be additional process overheads due to federal limitations. While the Cannabis industry has some similarities with other industries such as manufacturing, food, or tobacco, there are also significant differences due to the unique traceability and processing requirements.In today's episode, our guest, Dave Crysler, shares his insights into the nuances of the cannabis market and value chain. He also discusses the customer groups of each of the players involved in the industry and their licensing structure. Finally, he discusses the manufacturing, warehousing, and inventory processes of the cannabis companies and their compliance requirements.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 textGenerating demand for new products is super challenging. But the challenges would be at a different level if you had to generate the demand for product categories that didn't exist and if you had to go through procurement. Luckily, today's technologies allow you to target specific roles in a given account, so they can relate with your logo and brand before you visit them. The manufacturers who would have wasted millions of dollars in the generic marketing strategies such as trade shows without any tracking can know what is happening with each of the impressions, who is looking at your content, and if you are heading in the right direction with your investments.In today's episode, our guest, Daniel Englebretson, shares his insights into the demand generation strategies for new product development. He also shares several stories about his work where he successfully penetrated the market where there was not even a category for that product. Finally, he shares his challenges working with procurement and how he broke into these accounts through innovative targeting strategies that are only possible through the technologies available in the market.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 textOpen-source is not a term you will hear when it comes to ERP systems. But there are a few open source ERP systems such as Odoo. While their claim of being open-source made them super popular in the development community, are they truly open-source? Well, if you look under the hood, the open-source pitch is really to grab developers' attention as the core component of ERP, such as the accounting module,  is not really open source. But developers still love it. That's probably the reason why Odoo is majorly used by the IT and development community and primarily used by E-commerce companies as they tend to be development heavy. But where does Odoo stand as of today? 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 Odoo's capabilities. We covered several grounds, including the features available in their open-source edition and whether there are any tangible advantages of it being open-source. Finally, we discussed the pros and cons and different cost components that need to be considered while evaluating an open-source software versus a commercial package.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 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.