9 Manufacturing ERP Modules to Look for in Your Next ERP

Consider you are dating someone. In fact, you are in a process to find out a perfect match for your life. Obviously, you have some expectations, and you are looking forward for some specific qualities in her/him (as per your gender and preference ??). These qualities may seem trivial to others, but for your life and your existence, they are of paramount importance.

An affair of your business and ERP is similar. It is a relationship for a long time; therefore, your manufacturing organisation needs a manufacturing ERP with certain modules on top priority list. This blog will help you identify those manufacturing ERP modules and serve as a checklist before finally changing the status as committed??.

So before finalizing the next ERP for your business, make sure it has following 9 modules, more the merrier:

Inventory management – Inventory is an important part of your business. From raw material to finished good, everything lying in your warehouse comprises inventory. This module of your manufacturing ERP software offers complete picture of not only current but incoming inventory also, through its integration with purchasing module. ?

Unused raw material and unsold finished goods have monetary implications and impacts P/L of the organisation. Thus, inventory management becomes a very crucial module to look for.

This precise management helps manufacturers, especially food manufacturers, to consume perishable items in time.

Purchase - A purchase module helps organisation to procure materials it needs to produce or sell. This module can store various suppliers, analyse their quotes, and suggest the best vendor which can fulfil the demands at a best possible rates, quality, and minimum lead time.?

The whole process is automatic and requires minimal human involvement. Once the vendor is selected, the quote can be converted into a purchase order at some clicks which helps saving a huge time and efforts in doing mundane work.?Once the company receives order, the inventory level is automatically updated.

R&D – Research and development is an integral part of any manufacturer. Growing market always demands product variations. Therefore, product development team or say Research and Development team is always on a toe. They must come up with an innovation which consumers like and their pockets allow.

BatchMaster ERP offers a comprehensive R&D module, consisting of formulation and laboratory as sub modules. This module helps organisation to bring product variations, and innovations faster in the market. The R&D module offers:

• Secure recording of formulas and testing on experimental formulas.
• Creation of formula versions for experiment and keeping the master formula secure.?
• Capability to develop and pilot new formula and experiment to explore its physical, chemical, and nutritional properties.
• Sampling for customer’s approval. With sample management, you can define, design, manufacture, track, cost and approve samples.
• Seamless integration with standard database (like Genesis and USDA) to generate precise and approved formats of nutritional label, ingredient statement, allergen declaration, nutrient content etc.

Production – A manufacturer produces to sell. On customer’s end, a customer also expects to get the order in time. Therefore, it is a prime duty of a manufacturer to produce and deliver the product to the customer as per the committed timeline. ?A production module in ERP helps manufacturer to initiate production and deliver goods.

• Right from creating a batch, to printing batch tickets, allocating and issuing materials, inspecting the process, tracking WIP, applying quality check, maintaining Batch Manufacturing Records for Audit purposes to closing and releasing goods, an ERP helps and streamlines each process.

Order management – Handling order and delivering up to the satisfactory level of customer is very important. In today’ s time when customers have huge range of choices, many buying options and purchasing junctions, handling, managing, and retaining a customer is more difficult.

?This complexity of sales orders and delivery cannot be managed with traditional manual processes and therefore the technological aid – the ERP, must have order management module to manage all orders so effectively that it becomes a cakewalk.

The entire quote-to-invoice cycle of Sales which begins with managing opportunities, converting them to prospects and then customers, maintaining their complete details, creating quote and orders, applying discounts and taxes, managing contract, performing pick and pack, performing delivering and generating invoice is supported in an ERP. Even the associated GLs are fired in real-time, and the inventory status is updated right there.

Keeping order management in view, CRM helps a lot in maintaining communication with customers. It helps organisations to track complaints, and preferences of customer and solve customer query, address grievance, and nurture a lasting relationship with them.

Finance – Everything revolves around finance. The module is quite important to understand the financial status of the company and its outlook. Primary feature of this module is tracking Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR) and General Ledger (GL).?It also stores payment receipts, tax sheets and balance sheets.

Finance module can automate many tasks and perform it with precision, which otherwise are erroneous and time consuming due to manual interference.

Tasks like billing, vendor payment, cash management, account reconciliation, helping accounts departments to close the books and such are handled with elan and performed with ease.

With the help of data given by the finance module, finance planning team can extract reports and suggest recommendations to improve financial status of the organisation.

Costing- Costing of any product is crucial for organisation.?Organisation needs to balance costing keeping in view customer’s buying capability, market trend, and profitability of the organisation.

Costing module in an ERP helps to limit the cost without compromising the quality and hence maintain the balance. It offers numerous capabilities like “What-is analysis”, cost comparisons, evaluating costs on various methods like standard, average, market, etc., rolling-up costs and such, which help manufacturers arrive at a cost that’s both- acceptable to consumer and profitable to the company.

Analytics and reporting – This module can be called as the logical brain of ERP. With the help of various data, it allows to analyse and create various reports. Hence, when sales team shows sales data and trends using analytics, it is this module that fetches the sales data, makes reports, analyse, and makes life happier for salesperson. Without this module making meaningful interpretation of huge data stored in database will be challenging for teams. Basis these analysis and reports, management takes business-oriented decisions.

Quality & Compliance- Quality and compliance of your product is a determining factor. Great quality of product can bring:

• repeat customers
• new customers
• customer satisfaction
• improved brand image
• more revenue

On the contrary, poor quality can deplete everything, but repulsion in the market. Therefore, maintaining good quality is very important.

Along with the quality, the product must follow the regulatory standards. If company neglects compliance norms, it could be penalized which will ruin the reputation. Managing both ends is easy for manufacturers who use ERP software like BatchMaster ERP.???

It helps to put quality checks at every stage of the supply chain. Right from the purchase from supplier to production, to deliveries, ERP can check quality to ensure that it is not compromised.?

With Quality control module you can:

• make inspection plan
• make checklists
• define and perform QC tests
• perform stability test
• capture QC test result in WIP
• do refrain processing if QC fails
• assure high quality product supply
• generate certificate of analysis

Compliance of various laws is equally an important task for the company.?An ERP can also help you with:

• Complying with all regulatory bodies like FDA, EU, FSMA, OSHA, GHS, HACCP, etc
• Staying tax compliant
• Providing secure audit trail & e-signatures
• Printing Standard labels and safety labels
• Tracking non-conformance and CAPA
• Supplier management

These are the 9 must have manufacturing ERP modules you should look for in your next ERP. Talking about process manufacturers especially, their needs can extend up to formulation, and laboratory module as well.

But different manufacturers -process manufacturers or discreet manufacturers- have their business specific needs. For process manufacturers, BatchMaster offers custom solutions.

Besides, BatchMaster being the pioneer in formulation, it offers quick recipe management module to help innovate, store, manage, control and secure formulas.?This formula management offers version controlling, automatic formula sizing, instant rollback capabilities, material substitution and more.

In all the 9 modules discussed above, BatchMaster provides cutting edge innovation to automate and fasten your workflow.?For example, in production module, BatchMaster offers super batch capability, allowing to launch your intermediate and finished goods batches together in a single batch, in the required chronological order.

There are many more innovations BatchMaster offers for process manufacturers. To know them all please visit our website.?