How a Mobile ERP Solution Enhances Efficiency—with No Painful IT Migration Necessary
Remember those heady days when manufacturing ERP kiosks became a thing? It was a huge step to integrate enterprise resource planning beyond the central office and put data capture and other capabilities near the production line.
Well, the industry is in the midst of the next great leap forward. Manufacturing is going mobile, and it’s easy to see why.
“Efficiency” is the watchword for companies obsessed with Lean engineering and Six Sigma. And mobile ERP apps deliver kiosk-level efficiency on steroids because they put essential tools in the hands of people wherever the action is, whether that’s…
...On the shop floor
Nothing beats realtime progress monitoring and adjustments for maximizing profitability. But walking over to a shared kiosk to login, enter data and perform analyses isn’t realtime. It’s time-consuming.
In contrast, customized ERP interfaces on employee phones and tablets allow teams to perform functions where they work. For instance, they could scan a badge to track their start time on a client job, enter an inventory count from the storage rack or complete the quality assurance checklist without all the paper.
Data is instantly captured, and managers can continually gauge ROI and intervene to boost performance.
And when everyone is connected, communications improve, too. A supervisor can send a task reminder, or a worker can alert higher-ups to a mechanical problem. No more searching the facility for the right person and hollering over machines to get a message across.
With mobile ERP, teams might see their Fitbit step counts decrease, but their productivity will skyrocket.
...With field service teams on-site with customers
Today’s consumers and businesses demand convenience. So product manufacturers are turning to field service teams to offer on-site and in-home installation, maintenance and even engineering services.
It’s a great differentiation strategy, but it becomes more powerful with a mobile ERP solution to turn the field service team into a roving revenue-generation army.
With mobile ERP, on-the-go field service professionals can access customer data and job requirements, track time and materials costs, and more. Making such functions possible with a few taps on a smartphone helps them use their time with the customer more effectively, reducing appointment duration while enhancing satisfaction.
And realtime information is delivered to managers, schedulers, accounting personnel and others so they can move on with their jobs as well.
...With sales teams in a potential client’s boardroom
Then there’s field sales, who have their own remote demands. Capturing details of client interactions, analyzing accounts or estimating jobs on the spot—all of these capabilities can help accelerate the sales process and get to “yes” with lower upfront investment.
Using a mobile ERP—especially one with built-in CRM or the option to integrate applications like Salesforce—gives your sales team a “one stop shop” for their functionality desires, with no bulky laptop to haul. It eliminates the time-consuming workarounds many sales reps have rigged and provides features like voice-to-text and click-to-call to make everything easier.
And when the sales process feeds directly into production, billing and so on, the entire path from earning the business through banking the profit is smoother.
Now that’s efficiency.
The Barrier to Mobile ERP is the ERP
Manufacturers are striving to integrate these types of improvements. The only thing holding most mid-level manufacturing firms back is their ERP.
Some applications don’t include an ERP mobile app at all, and other mobile apps for manufacturing, such as Epicor mobile, are limited. But swapping out an existing ERP is generally not an option—it’s too expensive and fraught with risk.
This is where Bezlio comes in. A natively mobile solution, Bezlio securely taps into the ERP system and makes any desired functionality available via tablet, smartphone or that Apple Watch your best CNC operator got for her birthday.
And we do mean any functionality. Because Bezlio isn’t a monolithic application that takes ages for developers to update. It’s a flexible platform on which we create new workflows—bezls in our terminology—all the time.
Need to capture job-specific data from the production line or give sales reps some new analytics? Select and customize a bezl, and you’re on your way—no programming required.
Don’t see what you need in our bezl library? We can create it! For instance, we recently developed a touchless timeclock bezl to enable a client to implement a new, safer pre-shift process in response to COVID-19. It’s just one example of how Bezlio increases agility.
With Bezlio, the mobile transformation needn’t be a huge technological undertaking. You can simply shift your mindset toward the future.
Let us show you what’s possible by adding Bezlio to the ERP you already know and love. Just contact us to set up a convenient time for a demo.