ERP in manufacturing

Top business drivers impacting ERP strategies:

– need to be easier to do business with (improve overall customer experience)

– need to manage growth expectations

– must reduce costs

– must improve customer response time

– pressures to innovate (products or services) to deliver more value to the customer

Top strategies that impact ERP:

– streamline and accelerate processes to improve efficiency and productivity

– standardise business processes

– provide visibility to business processes across functions and departments

– optimise the use of current capacity

– link global operations to improve interoperability and collaboration

Process capabilities:

– standardised enterprise-wide procedures for procurement, cash collection, and financial reconciliation

– sales and engineering collaborate to set proper expectations with customers

– ability to do demand planning and forecasting

Organisational capabilities:

– cross-functional continuous improvement teams are responsible for improving operational performance

– new employees are properly trained in using ERP after initial stages of implementation

– ERP strategy is tied to talent plan and strategy

Knowledge management capabilities:

– real time visibility into status of all processes from quote to cash

– ability to automatically and immediately notify decision makers when certain conditions occur

– a fully integrated view of all customer information available to any sales and marketing person

Performance management capabilities:

– measurement of accuracy of demand planning and forecasting

– ability to measure marketing influence on closed sales and pipeline

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:

– establish standardised business processes for the entire organisation

– provide a standard multi-tiered ERP strategy to support the varying needs of different parts of the organisation

– provide visibility and access to business processes through the ERP system, regardless of user role or location

Video employee engagement

Key pressures for enterprise video:

– need to improve corporate communications and time-to-information

– need to differentiate external brand from industry competitors

– excessive corporate travel is not cost or time-effective

Learning and development pressures:

– need to deliver learning programs in a more “on-demand” format

– desire to spread the knowledge of individual subject matter experts throughout the organisation more efficiently

– need to deliver consistent learning programs to a geographically dispersed employee base

Key video-based marketing pressures:

– key products / brands lack audience awareness

– need to improve customer interactions

– audience does not understand value proposition of key products / brands

Components for successful social video:

– live streaming broadcast abilities throughout the organisation

– tools for individuals to share existing video assets

– social networking features integrated with video content

– tools for individuals to create new video assets

Enterprise resource planning

Benefits from ERP implementation:

– reduction of general administrative costs

– better utilisation of resources

– reduction in waste (i.e. scrap, rework)

– reduced time to decision

Aging ERP:

– limits the ability to extend functions through modules and extensions

– slows the access to critical information for decision-makers

– the systems require greater support and staffing levels

– they usually require harder to find and higher cost IT skills

Recommended actions:

– if the system is less than two years old, just keep plugging away but make sure to keep it as current as possible

– between two and seven years old, limit customisation and stay as current as possible

– if system is between 7 to 15 years old, standardise the features the company needs to get current or replace it

– if system is more than 15 years old, replace it

Enterprise mobility management

Top pressures:

– executive and employee demands to leverage mobility’s productivity gains to broader organisation

– need to become more operationally efficient

– increasing capabilities and complexities of new mobile devices

Top actions:

– ensure all mobile devices with enterprise access are compliant with corporate standards

– support a heterogeneous mix of mobile device platforms

– protect device and network access from unauthorised use and malware

Enterprise mobility management (EMM) lifecycle:

– provisioning

– performance management

– operations and support

– compliance and security

– expense management

– decommissioning

1. Provisioning

– application inventory

– application provisioning

– application updates

– backup / restore

– data migration

– device inventory

– device provisioning

2. Performance

– application monitoring

– compliance tracking

– device / network monitoring

– performance tuning

– problem management

– user-level monitoring

3. Operations / support

– help desk support

– incident alerting

– IT operations support

– system recovery automation

– policy documentation

– system troubleshooting

– user self-service support portal

4. Compliance / security

– data encryption

– device / user authentication

– device configuration

– device security

– malware protection

– policy enforcement

– remote lock and wipe

– security updates

5. Expense

– billing dispute resolution

– call and usage accounting

– carrier billing optimisation

– feature procurement / service orders

– rate plan optimisation

– utilisation and activity tracking

– contract management

6. Decommissioning

– compliance tracking

– device disposal / recycling

– device locate

– inventory update

– remote lock

– remote wipe

Process capabilities:

– secure authentication of mobile users and devices established before providing corporate access

– security policy established which incorporates the full lifecycle of all compliant mobile devices

– security policy enforced for enterprise data on employee-owned devices

Organisation capabilities:

– access to company assets by all mobile devices and users is controlled by IT

– in-house mobile help desk support available for compliant mobile devices and applications

– C-level executive support or buy-in of EMM initiative

Knowledge management capabilities:

– internal expertise developed on targeted mobile device platforms

– inventory of employee-liable devices with network access

– mobile collaborative tools utilised

Technology capabilities:

– remote mobile device lock and wipe

– over-the-air mobile software update

– mobile devices centrally managed OTA

– in-house developed mobile SW

– self-service web portal

– enterprise mobile software app store

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:

– bet on EMM

– put IT back in charge

– secure the tablets

Quality control procedures for audit engagement

Quality control procedures applicable to audit engagement:

(i) leadership responsibilities for quality on audits

– engagement partner should ensure overall quality of audit engagement

(ii) ethical requirements

– every team member should comply with ethical requirements

(iii) client relationships

– independence of the audit firm should be safeguarded

(iv) assignment of engagement team

– engagement team should consist of professionals with technical skill

(v) engagement performance

– provide proper direction to team members

– supervise work of engagement team members from time to time

– review work performed by junior audit team members

(vi) consultation

– consult experts to address difficult or contentious matters

(vii) engagement quality control review

– discuss important matters with engagement quality control reviewer

(viii) monitoring

– check deficiencies in quality control system

(ix) documenting

– document every important aspect of quality control measures

Demand management

Top business pressures within demand management:

– increased demand volatility

– growing complexity of global operations

– rising supply chain management costs

– escalating demand for service from customers

– economic and financial volatility

Strategic actions being taken by companies:

– improve customer forecast collaboration

– integrate customer collaboration processes with internal business processes

– develop a more responsive inventory placement strategy

– improve statistical forecasting

– improve data management (including customer / channel data)

Operational challenges faced on sell side:

– consistently inaccurate demand forecasts

– poor or late visibility into channel sell-through to the end customer

– channel inventory is not staged accurately enough to match demand

– poor or late visibility into channel inventories, especially after fulfillment of purchase orders

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:

– create the ability to segment demand forecasts based on key product and customer characteristics

– close the loop with supply and inventory

Business intelligence data

Top pressures driving data management initiatives:

– too much crucial business information is delivered late

– growing data is inaccessible or under-utilised for business analysis

– data is too fragmented / “siloed” to develop a clear picture of the business

– the volume of data is growing too rapidly for current data infrastructure

Top strategic actions to support data management:

– create a long-term strategy roadmap for managing big data

– broaden accessibility of data across functions / departments

– gather and incorporate end-user requirements for data

– identify key data sources required for analysis

Process and organisational capabilities:

– decision-making culture that values the use of supporting data

– ability to assess data needs across multiple departments

Knowledge and performance management capabilities:

– data definitions continuously maintained and updated

– data quality issues are continuously captured and monitored

Best-in-class technology enablers:

– traditional BI platform

– data query / discovery tools

– interactive / drill down reports

– data quality tools (e.g. cleansing, enrichment)

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:

– elevate data management initiatives to the executive level

– improve ability to measure time-to-information

– evaluate data quality technologies

Market lead lifecycle

Pressures to advance leads through the pipeline:

– increasingly competitive business landscape

– inability to move leads forward to a sales cycle

– marketing is producing too few leads for sales

– unable to rate, qualify or score leads for sales

The ultimate value that leads deliver to companies:

– revenue from net-new customers

– lead-to-sales conversion

– lead-to-win ratio

Strategies extend beyond campaign creation:

– ensure improvement in the quality of leads sent to sales

– drive activity and flow from middle of the sales funnel to sales cycle conversion

– integrate marketing and sales activities

Strategic methods to prioritise leads:

– contact information

– purchase history

– email marketing activity

– interaction with online content

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must strive to:

– automate demand generation programs and lead qualification activities to support sales objectives

– measure the number of qualified leads converted to the sales forecasted pipeline

Closed loop quality management

Top pressure driving focus on quality management:

– need to ensure consumer satisfaction

– need to reduce the total “cost of quality”

– quality is a competitive advantage for our organisation

– need to comply with government regulatory requirements

– need to manage risk in operations

Top strategic actions:

– “build in” compliance and risk based controls to business processes

– improve operator effectiveness by delivering critical quality data from across the enterprise

Quality management functionality:

– audit management

– compliance management

– testing automation

– supplier quality management

– risk management

– EHS (environment, health & safety)

– hazard analytics

– predictive analytics

– FMEA (failure mode and effects analysis)

– APQP (advanced product quality planning)

To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:

– create and / or improve the visibility of quality processes across the design, make, and deliver business processes

– implement and interoperate both quality management systems (QMS) and manufacturing operations management (MOM) systems at the enterprise wide level

– establish real-time interoperability between QMS and other enterprise systems, specifically: PLM, ERP, and SCM

Master data management

Top drivers for material master data management (MDM) investment:

– inaccurate decisions due to poor data quality

– searching for information too complicated / time consuming

– ERP upgrade / implementation / consolidation

– current data architecture doesn’t support business processes

– data not ready for distribution to multiple platforms

Laying the business process foundation:

– documented IT roles and responsibilities

– cross function team / line-of-business user participation

– job role / group dedicated to data management

– executive sponsor for database administration

– end-users involved in MDM goals / requirements

Recommendations:

– build a business case for a MDM initiative

– appoint clear leadership for the management of master data

– build the foundation of proper business processes

– strategically invest in technology