You’re probably hearing the term Internet of Things (IoT) more and more in the manufacturing space, but what does it mean? Should you be paying attention? If you want to gain information previously unavailable from the machines you interact with every day—the answer is yes. IoT provides extra data that offers unique insights into your business and allows you to make decisions and take actions to grow. It’s a piece of a larger conversation around digital transformation and can increase efficiency in your business.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Today’s field service organizations are faced with the challenge of transforming decades-old business processes into efficient, cost-effective, and customer-centric practices using the complete set of technological tools available today.

Service organizations’ inability to execute these critical business processes is what we refer to as the field force execution gap. To bridge the gap, businesses must automate these processes with field service management software. When done correctly, this transition to automated processes provides a rapid, significant, and sustainable return on investment to your company

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


The role of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in managing business processes has expanded significantly over the past decade from a focus on specific business areas such as manufacturing, procurement, or human resources, to broader use throughout the company. Although IT has traditionally been responsible for specifying and implementing technology within an organization, successful ERP implementations require involvement from stakeholders at all levels, from executives to end users. For many companies, the transition from existing traditional systems to a new ERP one can consume significant corporate resources, including time, expense, and risk to business operations. However, as we’ll explore below, this need not be the case.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


As companies begin their new ERP implementation projects, they uncover areas of uncertainty that come with moving from one system to another. The purpose of Risk Management Essentials is to establish the framework for your team to effectively manage these risks. By introducing Risk Management at the onset of the project and continuing it throughout the project life cycle, companies have a more predictable outcome for a faster return on investment.

 

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm specializing in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


When it comes to an ERP implementation or ERP upgrade, there are a significant number of factors to consider. Not only will you have to employ essential and proven ERP selection strategies, but getting the job done in a reasonable amount of time can be just as important. For some, it’s more important. Here are just a few ways a rapid implementation can be leveraged for a faster, smoother implementation process.

A customer recently went live in January, about four months after signing their purchase agreement with the ERP Vendor. Encompass had engaged with them in October, days after they completed their initial install. Several factors helped ease the process, and you might want to consider them as you evaluate the potential benefits of rapid implementations.

1) Timing

Trying to time the project to coincide with your slow season will minimize downtime and maximize the utilization of staff during what may be your least productive time. In the case of this example company, January to March is a dead time for one of their companies and about half the volume for their second company. As a result, the choice was made to focus on a minimal go-live event in January. This allowed for extra time in February to wrap up loose threads and address potentially unforeseen issues.

an image of an hourglass, signifying that when time is short an erp rapid implementation may be the best solution.

2) Experience = Wisdom

The company’s core team was comprised of three members that had firsthand experience in other ERP implementations. That perspective made for significantly better decisions and focused efforts to be made throughout the project. It can be difficult imparting a similar perspective to inexperienced customers who do not want or cannot afford to hire a consulting team for their rapid implementation, but it definitely helps when they have it.

3) Embrace The Phase

If the core requirement for your go-live strategy is to sell, ship, invoice customers, buy, and pay suppliers on day 1, a phased, or layered, approach can work exceptionally well. For all the other “wants” out of your ERP system, logging, planning, and working on those components as soon as possible after go-live will deliver the results you are after. With this approach, you can be working on other functionality you need within days of your go-live event.

In the case of our example company, the phased approach can be applied to things like engineering. By making sure they had their top-selling parts and parts on order fully engineered, everything else was pushed out with the understanding they would work through the list over time. In this case, data conversion from their old system wasn’t very clean, and most of their engineering data were bad, to begin with. Trying to have perfection on day 1 would have pushed the project out three months. Instead, they do not lose any operational function while they work within their ERP system to migrate and clean up their company data moving forward.

4) Vanilla Is A Good Choice

While a perfect implementation would be created around a business’ processes and workflows, this can cost a lot of time and money. For our example company, they didn’t have time to customize. Knowing that processes would have to change as a result, they accepted Epicor’s standard workflows and trained them. Rather than bending the system to accommodate their process, they adapted some processes. Staff understood the legacy system was being replaced and that change was inevitable. It was a very realistic approach that delivered ideal results for an imperfect scenario.

a picture of vanilla ice cream,

Interested In An ERP Rapid Implementation?

If you are considering an ERP solution, think a rapid implementation is the best fit for your business, or would like to speak with an Encompass consultant about the topic, don’t hesitate to contact us using the link below. We look forward to connecting you with a business solution that fits your build.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.


Empowering your customers to direct their experience will have a positive effect on their perception of your services. Better visibility, better access, and more relevant data ensure clients are satisfied with every step of the customer journey. Bezlio delivers a superior tie-in with existing Epicor ERP systems to empower customers, reduce resource costs, and improve ROI. Read on for more info on our strategic partner, Bezlio.

 

Self Service Portals

Among the many features Bezlio self-service portals provide, order visibility, shipping, and order detail tools rank among the most critical in the eyes of the customer. Here’s how Bezlio addresses these needs to deliver a superior service portal and customer experience.

Open Order Access

By allowing customers to view their full queue of open orders that are ready for processing they can address those that are more time-sensitive, make better forecasting, and drill down into further details on an as-needed basis.

Order Tracking

With a simple and self-explanatory approach to giving customers further visibility into the ordering process, your customers gain better forecasting and turnaround time on orders. This empowers them to deliver on their obligations with better accuracy. As a result, their trust in your dependability increases.

Order History

Providing full visibility into order history allows customers to recreate previous purchases with ease, download and print the necessary details as needed, and maintain cleaner data regarding invoicing, supply on hand, and spending over given periods.

Shipment Tracking

Shipping visibility gives customers access to the full field of details regarding every order, including invoice numbers, dates, quantities, order numbers, PO numbers, part numbers, and much more. Good for both in-process and historical data, shipping visibility is one component of Bezlio’s services everyone agrees is essential.

Parts And Inventory Lookup

General and custom parts look-up facilitates real-time inventory visibility to ensure your customers can get the parts and products they need to be delivered on time and as expected.

Invoice Archives

Convenience invoice sorting and search allows customers to find their invoices by order number and to share essential invoice details with the click of a mouse button.

Autonomous Order Entry

Going one step further than reviewing important order and inventory details, the ability to place orders on their own, without the tedious set-up associated with complicated e-commerce platforms.

About Bezlio

Bezlio is a US-based company with 15 years of experience in customizing and optimizing ERP (enterprise resource management) systems and manipulating data. Specializing in mobile, cloud-based integrations, Bezlio offers many supplemental tool integrations for existing Epicor systems, such as mobile crystal reports, Amazon Seller integration, Salesforce + ERP, tableau write-back, and the recently added self-service customer portals.

About Encompass Solutions

Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm specializing in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.