Business Automation and Software Blog

There are a lot of theories and techniques surrounding inventory management. Many of them are quite helpful and very good at improving inventory management. But, we encourage you not to overlook the importance of adding an increasingly little-used tactic into your inventory management: common sense.

When you are using CRM in business (or collect customer data in other ways), it is important to stay current on data protection laws. This month sees one of the most significant changes to European Union (EU) privacy law in 20 years go into effect: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This new regulation gives EU citizens greater control over their personal data and how that data is used and protected, both in Europe and abroad. What constitutes “personal data”? More than you might think. According to GDPR, “personal data” refers to everything from name, email, address, date of birth, personal interests, photos, digital footprints, social posts, and more.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software may not be top of mind when one hears the words “hot trend” the way video games and virtual reality might be. But, while ERP might not sound trendy, its developers certainly keep tabs on business and software trends to eventually filter into their products. 

As manufacturing itself continues to transform, manufacturing ERP systems evolve right alongside it, enabling manufacturing to embrace change in ways that business may still be catching up on. As these five developments prove, manufacturing continues to push to the forefront of trendiness.

As technology continues to evolve, companies may find themselves at a crossroads between what they have been using and newer technologies to consider adding. It doesn’t always need to be a choice between one or the other; often there are ways to integrate original technology with new options for the best of both worlds. This has been seen more and more frequently within ERP systems and the on-going debate between using an on-premises system versus the cloud.

Heraclitus of Ephesus said it best: “The only thing that is constant is change.” This seems to ring especially true in the world of business and supply chain management. Our consumer-driven economy continually forces warehouse managers to rethink how they manage inventory and shipping. E-commerce is the driving force behind this constant need to rethink, as it has turned the typical brick-and-mortar system on its head. Every company—from Amazon to Walmart to a smaller internet retailer—is racing to find better ways to get product to end users faster, a different method of thinking from the days when they only had to keep a store’s inventory replenished.

Capacity planning is vital to manufacturing but knowing your organization’s required production capacity to meet ever-changing demands is quite a bit more challenging than it sounds. When you’re running close to capacity already, finding more room for production might seem impossible.

It’s not. You can find all sorts of extra time and space with a little help from SYSPRO in your manufacturing capacity planning. Here are a few things to be on the lookout for when evaluating your capacity.

Successful supply chain cannot exist without warehouses and inventory. For a warehouse to be an equally successful part of the supply chain, it needs to run efficiently. That’s where warehouse inventory management comes into play. Without it, you risk inaccurate quantities, disconnected databases, and poor product identification.

If these roadblocks sound all too familiar, we’ve assembled five tips that can help you improve your inventory management and be on your way to your most successful supply chain management yet.

Supply chain management, the management of the flow of goods and services, is a key part of a business’s forward movement and its warehouse management. It involves everything from design to planning to execution and control, to logistics and performance measurement. All of this is to ensure a business is keeping up with the supply and demand of its customers.

Technology plays a vital role in supply chain management via enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that assist in the required monitoring and controlling of costs, productivity, supplies, and inventory. Cloud-based ERP software adds an extra level of assistance by allowing remote access to information from virtually any mobile device. Now information flows easily between data sources—even disparate ones—allowing shared information and resources to augment the power of supply chain management.

If your customers are the lifeblood of your business, then a customer relationship management (CRM) system is the vascular system bringing all the customer data to the right places. With a CRM, your business can easily collect, analyze, and improve on the data you have on file. When utilized correctly, this data can improve relationships with your customers by allowing you to target the right audiences and cater to customer needs, ultimately driving sales growth.

CRM systems, like CRM for SYSPRO, collect multiple streams of customer information from conversations, communications, and interactions. That’s a lot of data! If not carefully cultivated, that data could actually be a hindrance and not a help. Check out these common data problems and how practicing CRM best practices can alleviate your data woes

It might be difficult to believe, but we’re nearly done with the first quarter of 2018. While some of us are still writing “2017” on our checks, others are already looking at what trends emerged early in 2018 and which ones will have the staying power to impact 2019.

Many of the trends have to do with software and the ability of machines to streamline processes, provide data for future predictions, and handle repetitive, manual tasks so that humans are freed up for more thought-based tasks. Manufacturing ERP systems are going to be at the center of it all in 2018. Here are some of the trends we think are going to stick around.