Enterprise Resource Planning

Food has always played a highly central and emotional connection in people’s lives. Dating back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, China and India, all were aware of the link between food and health; food and community; and food and life. In today’s fast-paced, modern life that link has not weakened. But, like many other areas in our lives, it’s been through countless iterations and finally transformed into a highly volatile juggling act of ever-changing demands. Issues like health and wellness, shifting lifestyles, changing preferences, food safety, sustainability and technology have all received a heightened amount of visibility.

As anyone who’s shopped for a new car knows, you can’t leave the lot without being asked about add-ons and extras. While these features are convenient (and tempting), a savvy shopper knows to first focus on things like gas mileage, cost of ownership and safety ratings. It’s important to consider a car’s core qualities first before you go broke on custom mud flaps.

For wholesale distributors, careful spending is a top priority. It’s essential that businesses balance the expenses produced by their warehousing operations in order to make sure that they’re offset by monthly revenue. This is no easy task, but wholesale distribution software can simplify the process. It helps to track and optimize key details about inventory and its movements.

Product lifecycle management systems (PLM systems) are powerful enterprise-wide software solutions that manage every aspect of a product’s digital life. These sophisticated systems serve to integrate data, processes, business systems and people in an extended enterprise, facilitating the internal and external collaboration that is demanded by a new manufacturing environment.

Companies today are constantly striving to improve their distribution systems. However, that process can be complicated because of limitations imposed by distribution software.

This is even more common if the software hasn’t been updated for a while.

This is a situation that many companies today find themselves in. Older software is preventing them from implementing new wholesale distribution practices, which makes it hard to keep up with the competition.

The retail industry — perhaps more visibly than many other industries — is perceived as being at a significant crossroads that has and will continue to result in changes to all aspects of the retail landscape. Significantly, the most important market influencer impacting the retail industry is technology innovation and the pace at which it is moving.

Despite globalization and the recent outsourcing trend in manufacturing, some manufacturing sectors have experienced substantial growth over the past five years. Most of them (food and beverage, plastics, and chemicals) have one thing in common: they belong to the process manufacturing sphere. As the name implies, process manufacturing refers to the processing and combination of raw materials and ingredients to create finished products.

As technology becomes more affordable and the manufacturing sector more competitive, manufacturers of all sizes are increasing their efforts to adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology. This is reflected in the growth of the size of the ERP market, which is estimated to reach almost $85 billion in 2021, according to Statista.

It’s always an uphill battle when you’re competing against big businesses. Large budgets and advanced business tools allow large corporations to streamline their operations and provide good quality products at a very competitive price.

In 2018 and beyond, the factors that drive organizations to acquire a new cloud ERP (enterprise resource planning) system often begin with a few strong focuses. In particular, product quality, production and process monitoring, an increased use of analytics and business intelligence (BI) applications and the need for greater mobility are becoming necessities for companies adopting ERP.