WBSRocks: Scaling Growth with AI, Enterprise Software, and Digital Transformation

Send us Fan MailIdentifying the appropriate production method requires you to have a deep understanding of your finished products and raw materials consumed. An incorrect production method and its KPIs may have implications on the production capacity. Also, if there is a mismatch in your demand and supply, you might need to understand if there might be a way to increase the capacity. If you are lucky, you might be able to duplicate the existing line and increase it. But if you have to install a new line from scratch, there might be a lot more moving pieces and surprises than you would expect.In today's episode, our guest, Vlad Romanov, shares his insights into how the two schools of production, discrete and continuous, differ, including their KPIs. He also shares his insights into optimizing the production lines by analyzing the types of products produced and the types of raw materials consumed. Finally, he discusses how to increase capacity by analyzing the business case of installing a new production line vs. upgrading the existing one.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailTraditionally most systems used on the shop floor were disconnected. Even if you had multiple systems such as ERP and MES, they didn't have real-time connectivity with the machines. And to get data from these systems, manufacturers created data lakes and powered dashboards using the insights gathered from these lakes. While these dashboards provide visibility into operations to some degree, they were deficient in providing the controls that connected systems would offer. With the help of MQTT and a unified namespace, now you can connect all your disparate systems on the shop floor using a gateway or a broker.In today's episode, our guest, David Schultz, shares his insights into how manufacturers can increase the capacity from their existing investments by connecting them in real-time. He also discusses how traditional methods of creating data lakes fall short as they would not allow real-time decision-making and capacity optimization. Finally, he discusses several KPIs that operations managers need to know to optimize the capacity at the plant level.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailEdge computing is powerful. It can help companies monitor and maintain distributed assets that would otherwise require significant capital and manpower to manage. In addition, these technologies allow your technicians to control those devices remotely without having to travel. You can also gather tons of insights that can improve the operational performance of these devices and help them recover for common error conditions. However, due to the Cyber Security issues and data centers' traditional design, adopting these edge technologies has been challenging.In today's episode, our guest, Jason Andersen, shares his insights into edge technologies and how manufacturers and field service companies can take advantage of them. He also discusses how edge networks and their communication requirements differ from traditional and cloud technologies. Finally, he discusses how the conventional airgap between OT and IT has been the barrier for edge adoption and what options companies have for them to take advantage of these technologies fully.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailOracle and SAP are the only two names you will hear in the enterprise accounts while everyone else is trying to claim the third spot, including Microsoft, Infor, and Sage. In fact, you might hear that you are either an SAP shop or an oracle shop in the enterprise community. Oracle also largely dominates the database market, which could be why IT typically champions Oracle applications inside enterprise accounts. But in the cloud market, that's no longer true as now Oracle has two leading cloud products in their portfolio Oracle Fusion and NetSuite, both of which have experienced significant growth, even despite COVID.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to discuss major stories in the ERP and digital transformation space and an objective and independent review of Oracle capabilities. We covered several grounds, including the overview of different product offerings from Oracle and their positioning in the market. Finally, we discussed the correlation between financial perspective available through their financial statements, marketing perspective available through their website and marketing analytics, and users' perspective through the trends from user reviews.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailUtilizing software in a siloed department is super easy. But as your enterprise grows, you will require cross-functional collaboration across departments. You will have systems that share common data, such as inventory or parts, customers, and vendors. Your architecture may contain ERP, E-commerce, WMS, MES, and P2P systems. Each of them is equally important, which may be dictated by the needs of each department. If you don't have a clearly defined source of authority for each master data, you will have significant challenges correlating the datasets. But what exactly is the source of authority, and why it matters for enterprise architecture and to integrate multiple business applications?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss the single source of truth and why it matters. We covered many grounds, including identifying the process and data owners for each dataset and the implications of having multiple and uncontrolled sources of truth. Finally, we discussed the best practices in creating the policies and procedures to develop governance frameworks that will enable the controlled source of truth across applications in your enterprise architecture.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailTraditionally, there were a limited number of channels that a company had to manage. But as the lines keep blurring in the business models, businesses will need to manage more channels. The marketplaces and their ever-evolving business model will fuel the growth of channels even further. These marketplaces also pose some of the newer challenges that didn't exist in the traditional channels, such as the dynamic changes in pricing based on market conditions and consumer behaviors. That makes managing channels even harder as the original assumptions about pricing and discount are likely to change. But what can companies do to have the strategies without any channel conflict?In today's episode, we invited a panel of cross-functional experts for a live interview on LinkedIn who brings significant expertise to discuss overcoming channel conflict. We covered many grounds in this episode, including why channel conflict matters and the benefits of managing channel conflict effectively. Finally, we discussed the types of channel conflict and strategies for preventing channel conflict.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailThe needs of the production floor have always been the most critical for Manufacturing, with scheduling being the most challenging function. The finite scheduling method has been the most accurate and most commonly used so far. It claimed to improve the on-time delivery by scheduling based on the due date and only working on jobs when they were due. But finite scheduling never worked as it didn't accommodate real-life scenarios such as machines going down or some resources not reporting when you were expecting them. Protected flow manufacturing is the new method of scheduling that considers the real-time signals from the production floor and determines the priority of each job without missing the on-time delivery or needing to expedite at the last minute.In today's episode, our guest, Mark Lilly, shares his journey of being involved with several manufacturing ERP software systems and scheduling deficiencies in the Visual manufacturing ERP software. He also discusses how protected flow manufacturing solves the problems with finite scheduling available through the most commonly used manufacturing ERP software such as Visual, Syteline, or Epicor. Finally, he shares the integration and data requirements for the PFM module and how the scheduling needs vary across industries, including some of them having complex scheduling needs such as sequencing.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailPeople often talk about the importance of diversification, especially for cash-intensive businesses such as manufacturing. But what exactly is diversification, and how to plan for it? Is it about having the right balance of customers? Is it about rejecting opportunities even if you might have millions of dollars knocking on your doors? Well, diversification requires the complete change of thinking and redesign of your business model. To be completely diversified, you can't just be revenue-focused. You need to think about possibilities such as, hey, what if your major customer goes bankrupt or gets acquired? Or they end up canceling orders due to a financial or marketing risk at their end.In today's episode, our guest, Aneesa Muthana, shares her journey of transforming her shop after losing all of her key customers because of the consolidation in her customers' industries. She also discusses why diversification is important for manufacturing businesses and how to diversify the business in a methodical manner rather than jumping on to every opportunity that comes your way. Finally, she shares why manufacturers require a complete transformation of their shop and not just one aspect, including understanding modern marketing methods, cutting edge manufacturing practices, and cost-saving strategies to stay afloat in business.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailEvery company manages thousands of contracts. These contracts could belong to procurement, sales, or HR. But in most cases, the contracts management function is part of the procurement team because of the sheer volume of contracts issued and negotiated. If you don't want to spend millions of dollars in back and forth negotiating with lawyers, then you would need a contract playbook that can help define the boilerplate for your contract, along with a system to track contract expiry, legal obligations, and commitments.In today's episode, we have our guest, Karthik Rama, who shares his insights into contract management processes' nuances and best practices. He also discusses how contract processes differ across departments, categories, industries and how a contract playbook can help save with admin efforts. Finally, he discusses different toolsets and frameworks available to streamline contract management processes and where ERP and P2P systems might help.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Send us Fan MailERP conversations can't finish without the mention of Sage. Like SAP, Sage has always been strong in the European market as it's a European company. They have also been very well penetrated in the accounting and CPA community due to their distribution and business model. Sage has many different products in its portfolio, with construction and process manufacturing industries being its strength. While there have been many debates about the 3rd spot in the ERP market among Microsoft, Infor, and Sage, after SAP and Oracle, Sage maintains a clear lead in the SMB segment even above SAP and Oracle.In today's episode, we invited a panel of industry experts for a live discussion on LinkedIn to discuss major stories in the ERP and digital transformation space and an objective and independent review of Sage capabilities. We covered several grounds, including the overview of different product offerings from Sage and their positioning in the market. Finally, we discussed the differences between cloud-migrated and cloud-native products and which Sage products are cloud-native and which ones are not.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.