Business Automation and Software Blog

At one time, the height of warehouse automation was the conveyor belt. In the past several years, automation has improved dramatically with the cost-effective availability of robots. Not only that, robots continue to evolve, now needing fewer restrictions—such as tracks or cables—to move about and complete a task.

Computer viruses are nothing new. In fact, they’re older than you might think. First theorized in the 1940s and published in 1966 by mathematician John von Neumann, the first real computer virus would appear only 5 years later in 1971, the Creeper Virus. Computer users have been dealing with viruses, leaks, and hacks ever since. No matter how cautious you are, there’s always a chance that a virus might infect your system and paralyze your business until IT can patch your system.

Four decades ago, Jimmy Carter was president of the United States, Star Wars episode IV hit theaters, Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 Micro Computer, and enterprise resource planning software was born. In the past 40 years, the ERP industry has transformed into a solution that is discovery led and drives business benefit. As providers publish ERP content online almost daily—even with the intent of providing more information and being helpful—it’s still easy to get overwhelmed, making it difficult to understand what is and isn’t achievable from the solution. You may also find yourself wondering who the best partner is for finding the best solution for your business needs.

Recently a black and white photo of a young woman standing by a towering stack of paper circulated around social media. It doesn’t sound impressive until one learns that the woman is Margaret Hamilton, the year is 1969, and the paper pile that is nearly taller than her is the guidance software she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project. It’s a familiar sight to Baby Boomers who learned to type on typewriters and wrote programs on index cards. It’s a downright perplexing site for millennials who have been able to access the internet on phones that fit in their pockets for most of their lives.

The speed of business continues to increase, and unless your organization is running in front of the competition, you risk being left in the dust. With Amazon Prime 2-day shipping becoming the “norm,” more and more, customers are expecting faster order fulfillment. The only way to meet this increasing demand is to ensure you have an effectively managed warehouse. Optimizing your warehouse management system and operations will benefit your customers, your employees, and your business as a whole.

Cloud services are becoming more and more popular and available as technology continues to improve. Earlier this year, Garner projected that the public cloud services market will grow 21.4 percent in 2018 for a total of $186.4 billion. Software as a service (SaaS) such as ERP platforms is the largest segment of that market, with a projected revenue of $73.6 billion.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it best: “The only constant is change.” In business, companies are on the relentless pursuit of improvement, which usually means change. The systems they work with are no different. In order to grow and change along with the businesses it serves, SYSPRO ERP recently announced the newest version, SYSPRO 8. This latest release continues to add to the existing industry-built capabilities and is adding to the modules that support manufacturing operations management, quality management, and corporate performance management.

Perhaps a business owner’s biggest dream is for business to boom overnight, for unprecedented growth to increase profits, with the back-end power to sustain the improved output.

Unfortunately, for many businesses, the reality of a sudden increase in sales can be overwhelming. The list of challenges ranges from the management of extra resources and the handling of additional data to a bigger customer pool clambering for immediate, excellent service. Being able to efficiently match the scale of operations to the demand of the marketplace is critical for business success and sustainability.

With so many changes in technology that occur every single day—remember when your phone only made phone calls? —you might be surprised to learn that what you thought was a newer software solution in fact had its birth more than 50 years ago. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions may have come from early Material Requirements Planning software developed in the 1960s, but that doesn’t mean the modern ERP is outdated.

One of the biggest dangers a business will face won’t come from its competitors. It won’t come from the economy. It will come from inside, and that’s the danger of doing things the way they’ve always been done. Your organization may have progressed from an all paper operation to a few desktop computers to laptops, but if you’re not keeping track of day-to-day operations at the speed of business, you’re only causing yourself harm. If your systems have not kept pace with the growth of your business, you could be losing both business and money.