This blog is part of a three-part series on how cloud ERP enables manufacturers to achieve operational excellence. In this series, we also cover how cloud ERP helps manufacturers improve cash flow by providing accounting visibility and deliver a best-in-class customer experience.

These topics and more are covered in our Achieve Manufacturing Excellence with Cloud ERP: A Practical Guide for Small and Midsize Manufacturers.

So, if you want to understand how cloud ERP promotes digital transformation and creates value creation, let’s dive in.

Leaders at small and midsize manufacturing businesses may be hands-on managers, but they are also responsible for envisioning the future, identifying opportunities, and anticipating what’s next in a competitive marketplace.

When seeking a technology solution, like enterprise resource planning (ERP), executive leaders are less focused on what ERP will do, but they are keenly interested in how ERP will help them grow the business and create long-term value.

How Cloud ERP Drives Value

ERP fulfills leaders’ expectations by delivering the data they need to make informed decisions, improve business performance, and chart the course for future growth.

Cloud ERP drives value creation with its speed, scalability, and superior user experience. At the heart of competitive strategy in the digital age, cloud ERP is the fastest and most sustainable way to inject insight and smarter practices into the manufacturing business.

With cloud ERP, you can see the breakdown of costs. If your dollar cost is going in the wrong direction, you can look deeper to see why, for example, you’re using more power, preventative maintenance is up, you’re using more lubricants, and so on.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.
– John F. Kennedy

Value Creation with ERP

Here are just a few of the ways that ERP for manufacturing improves operations and creates value, enabling businesses to:

• Increase productivity with the automation of core business processes
• Achieve process transparency with operational visibility that is driven by real-time intelligence from a single system of record
• Improve performance and fine-tune decision making with intelligent forecasting that informs future demand by analyzing past behaviors
• Access real-time data to rapidly identify and act upon new opportunities
• Unify and simplify your technology footprint with cloud ERP applications that run on a single database

Be Ready for What’s Next with Cloud ERP as Your Digital Platform

Be ready for what’s next with cloud ERP as the digital backbone of your business, supporting technologies such as AI, IoT, machine learning, data mining, and more, so you can act on new opportunities with speed and confidence.

The value delivered by manufacturing ERP can’t be overstated. It manages core business processes, manufacturing processes, inventory levels, and daily finances and accounting. It delivers higher profit margins, higher revenue growth, new revenue streams, and reduced costs.

Create Value with Accelerated Cloud ERP Adoption

A strategic benefit of manufacturing ERP in the cloud is its ability to deliver a superior user experience. In the past, ERP has been complicated to learn. Modern cloud ERP is delivered to users as a role-based screen with dashboards, analytics, KPIs, and commonly used tools and job-related reports.

Here are just a few of the ways that end-to-end cloud ERP can create value with rapid user adoption.

• Machine learning in manufacturing creates digital assistants and makes user interactions with the system easier based on predictive, contextualized information
• Flexible end-to-end process automation reduces manual data input to streamline process execution
• An intuitive interface continuously improves the way people work with contextual intelligence and collaborative tools for faster problem solving
• Clear structure and standardized processes with easy-to-master activity-based apps that enable employees to work with greater efficiency, productivity, and enjoyment

No matter how you look at it, cloud ERP creates value for your business, your customers, and your employees. With cloud ERP, manufacturers have the right tool for innovation, and the right platform to support it.

Who is cloud ERP for?

Cloud ERP provides new capabilities for everyone in the organization. From executive leadership, finance, IT, and other areas of the business to suppliers and vendors, cloud ERP helps users cut through complexities. This boosts productivity and helps you leverage real-time data.

In a 2019 ERP report, Cloud deployments account for 44% of all implementation for survey respondents in manufacturing and distribution. 

Digital Transformation via a Future-Ready Cloud ERP Platform

Among the many features and functions to consider when reviewing ERP platforms, these three aspects are most important to digital transformation:

• Make sure that your selection is a manufacturing-specific ERP that produces end-to-end business process and manufacturing management
• Look for a digital platform that’s future-ready with automation, standardization, collaboration, complete visibility, and more
• Demand that your ERP leverages real-time insights into every part of your business from sales quote to shipping and delivery

With these three aspects of cloud manufacturing ERP, business leaders will derive value from their digital transformation. Notably, in a recent Forrester study, a full 95 percent of manufacturers surveyed believe that moving business processes to the cloud could improve their ability to digitally transform their whole ecosystem. Business is better in the cloud because of its:

• Lower cost of ownership
• Faster time to value with rapid implementation
• Flexibility to adapt to market changes
• Scalability to accommodate rapid growth without business disruption
• Robust security with state-of-the-art encryption, back-ups, and redundancies

Customer Story

Seattle-based Synesso, Inc.,  manufactures custom-made commercial espresso machines. With rapid growth – a 25 percent increase in just six months – the company needed to automate processes and move away from error-prone manual spreadsheets. Using OptiProERP, it has gained significant visibility into its manufacturing processes, inventory, cycle times, and the full supply chain. Synesso is especially focused on improved inventory visibility and accuracy, better costing, and leaner production processes. Ease of use and scalability of the ERP platform was also strategic functions important to Synesso.

We were looking for an integrated solution that offered complete and real-time data and visibility. It also had to be easy to use. OptiProERP will give us the manufacturing insights and scalability we need to support our rapid growth, OptiProERP meets all of our functionality needs and more at a cost-effective price.
– Rob Rawlings, Purchasing Manager, Synesso, Inc.

Which Questions to Ask When Selection an ERP Solution

Ready to empower your business with the functionality that ERP provides, but aren’t sure which questions to ask in the selection process? Download our Roadmap for ERP Selection in Today’s Digital World: An Advisory for Small and Midsize Manufacturers and Distributors. 

This whitepaper walks you through the process of ERP selection to help you find a system that will elevate your manufacturing or distribution business with modern technology, greater visibility, and a single source of the truth.

Download our Roadmap for ERP Selection in Today’s Digital World: An Advisory for Small and Midsize Manufacturers and Distributors.