ERP / Digital
Our offering in this sphere covers two areas.
Firstly your product side and awareness of disruptive influences - disrupt yourself. Change product offerings to take advantage of digital means. Consider servitization. Consider manufacturing as a service - everything as a service. Develop your strategy - incubate new ideas.
On the internal side, we operate in the realms of ERP, Industry4 and IIoT - to help you to develop a digital road map of appropriate technology.
When developing digital products - deploy Agile and Lean Start-up thinking and methodologies. Agile comes into its own here; start-up outside the constraints of corporate structure – begin with a relevant outcome - pick just a few key projects and deliver fast - minimum viable products. Fail fast and maintain a funnel of new ideas - kill your darlings – pivot fast but, whatever you do, make a start now.
We also offer advice on the manufacturing classics of ERP system selection and development or, best in class point solutions. End-to-end supply-chain thinking implies that these could be one and the same eco-system, your supply, your operation/ERP, your customers and your customers-customers supply-chain. Here is where AI & blockchain in manufacturing may become reality.
Gartner suggests different lanes for your Digital journey - one for customer focused projects, your eco-system and IoT product - another for internal tech such as ERP.
We support clients in ERP Project Management and advice, providing additional management resource and expertise – a balance of Operations and Manufacturing-IT experience. Creating, supporting and guiding an internal project team and coaching internal project leads – working closely with senior management to align the project to purpose and transformational change.
We remain aware of the causes of ERP success/failure and we strive to keep projects on-track on-time and to scope/budget – timing the skills/knowledge peak to launch and keeping the resource demand window to a minimum. The desired outcome, a fully functioning smooth switch-over with minimum disruption. Also key, keeping a project focus going after go-live into stable process operation and user base development.
Our systems experience includes Infor CSI-SyteLine, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Exel EFACS but, the system type is less important; success factors include management commitment, project team resource, engagement, and empowerment – plus a pragmatic focus on what matters, keeping workstreams on track and being clear on accountabilities and responsibilities. Close collaboration, communication, a clear ethos and mission focus. We promote more training, better static/dynamic/open data preparation and validation, more testing of real scenarios and clarity about legacy system data/access.
We operate in an objective space, free of any internal politics, alongside the project team - and alongside the system vendor but always representing the client; another key success factor is maintaining a cohesive win-win relationship here. We see ERP systems less as IT projects, more as a part of Digital strategy and an excellent vehicle for S&OP/MRP/APS uplifts, lean and continuous improvement thinking, decreasing waste and variability in processes.
Transformational change
