Are You Measuring Your Company’s Health? 

Your pulse, temperature, blood pressure—these measurements are all critical to determining the state of your physical health. But vital signs aren’t just for people; they’re also for businesses. If you don’t have your finger on the pulse of your company’s performance, you can’t effectively detect and prevent issues. As a result, critical errors and delays could crop up without warning, putting your workplace in a state of panic.  

With enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, the health of your manufacturing or distribution business is never a mystery. ERP centralizes enterprise data and provides deep insights to keep users in the know at all times. Learn how to use your ERP solution to track your corporate vital signs.  

Costs  

As supply chains grow increasingly complex, tracking costs becomes incredibly difficult. When you can’t track the costs of several variables, you risk poor pricing strategies and overpaying for materials and services. With an ERP solution, your data stays in one place, making it easier to keep up with expenses. Enterprise software breaks down the costs of each product’s components, so you can price effectively and maintain healthy profit margins. Additionally, ERP can display cost trends to drive better decision making.  

ERP also provides a variety of financial tools to help users drill down into your company’s fiscal performance. Epicor’s financial management module includes a General Ledger, financial planning tools, AP/AR functionality and more in a single location, giving accountants one source for real-time fiscal information. Flexible reports allow users to easily generate reports at any time in compliance with your company’s unique financial needs. With this level of insight, you can fully monitor your business’s financial performance.  

Downtime 

When production screeches to a halt, your enterprise faces major losses. The reason for unexpected downtime isn’t always so easy to locate or prevent. Fortunately, ERP software provides the visibility necessary to keep your operations up and running.  

The Manufacturing Execution System (MES) in your ERP solution is critical to minimizing downtime. MES automatically tracks and documents your shop floor performance, so you can monitor every step of your production. The Epicor Mattec MES solution offers real-time machine state and job monitoring, allowing you to detect issues before they cause detrimental delays. It also provides critical metrics, such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), scrap, material consumption, run rates and more. By delivering insights across your shop floor, ERP helps you get to the root of manufacturing pain points and avoid downtime.  

Quality Control  

For 92% of manufacturers, product quality defines their success. However, supply chain complexity and stringent regulations make quality control more difficult than ever. ERP is essential for keeping up with these demands. ERP offers high visibility and complete traceability, so you can track products and materials throughout the supply chain. Instant notifications of nonconformance or malfunctions allow users to instantly take care of specific issues without creating downtime. Your ERP solution can also ensure that you’re purchasing quality materials from reliable providers by generating detailed receipts of supplier performance.  

In addition, ERP can drastically reduce the time it takes to maintain compliance. The software can send issue reports to regulatory agencies in minutes rather than hours. Epicor supports a wide array of standards and regulations, such as automotive (TS), FDA, aerospace (AS) and ISO requirements. Comprehensive audit trails and documentation make it easy to uphold compliance and avoid expensive fines. ERP allows businesses to maintain a high level of quality without sacrificing productivity.  

Order Management 

Every manufacturer is in pursuit of perfect order fulfillment. But as products become more configurable, manufacturers have a harder time attaining this goal. They also struggle to minimize their order cycle times, or the time from when an order is placed to when the customer receives it. Order fulfillment delays can severely damage customer relationships, as customers expect products to arrive faster than ever.  

ERP software keeps track of metrics that give you valuable insight into your order management strategies. Users can easily access KPIs that show them average order values, return percentages, refund rates and more. You can also detect the specific issues that impact your order fulfillment, from product defects to shipping methods. A deeper understanding of your order management process can help you improve customer experiences and reduce costs.  

Wrap Up 

There’s a lot to keep up with across your enterprise, but you can gain a full view of your business performance with the power of Epicor ERP. For over 45 years, Epicor has specialized in robust manufacturing and distribution solutions. Epicor includes a comprehensive array of features designed to strengthen your operations. 

An Epicor Gold Partner, Datix will help you take advantage of your ERP solution to track your vital signs. With a diverse spread of services and solutions, you can find what you need to transform your business with software. Jet Analytics, for example, serves as a BI and reporting tool that makes it easy to generate insights from your Epicor instance. Additionally, our Unity integration application seamlessly integrates Epicor with CRM, eCommerce or Marketing Automation software to provide 360-degree visibility. Our certified Epicor consultants work from start to finish to enable our clients to maximize the value of their ERP.  

Make sure you’re effectively measuring your company’s health. Get in touch with one of our ERP experts today!  

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