Getting answers to your business questions doesn’t have to be hard. All you need is good ERP software. It can keep your shop organized and make finding information a breeze. If you’re using spreadsheets or not using software at all, you could make a dramatic difference in your shop just by implementing an ERP; slash the time and effort you need to find information by putting everything at your fingertips.
Reports
Sometimes, your business questions are about how things have changed over time or how one thing in your shop compares to another. Tracking down every data point and charting it yourself can be a hassle. And by the time you’re done making the report, it’s no longer up to date anyway.
With ERP software, making reports is a snap. All the data is already in the system, so all you need to do is tell it what kind of report you want. With just a few clicks, you can see how many jobs went out on time, or how many pieces passed quality control or anything else you may need. Seeing this data laid out can help you make decisions to steer your shop quickly and easily.
Schedule
The schedule is the heart of the job shop, so it’s important to make sure everyone knows what it is and is updated if it changes. Changing schedules are nothing new in job shops but making sure everyone knows what they need to do next has been hard to do with paper schedules or physical whiteboards. Not anymore.
With ERP software, you can quickly change the schedule and show those changes to everyone in the shop. There are a variety of ways to do this, depending on what works best for your shop. Some of the most popular options are having large monitors throughout the shop with the schedules on them, providing shop tablets with access to scheduling information, or giving employees access to the schedule and more on their smartphones. Whichever option your shop chooses, your folks on the floor will never again have to wonder what job they should work on next.
Customer Info
If you’ve ever had a customer call in and want the same job they had before, you know the importance of keeping all past customer jobs. But it can be hard to organize all that information. You’ll have to flip through file cabinets if you keep information on paper. If you keep that information in a spreadsheet, you’ll have to find the exact words you used to describe it last time to have a hope of finding it. If you can’t find the records of their previous job, you might miss out on this one.
ERP software solves this problem for you as well. You can easily pull up past jobs for customers and start a new quote for them with updated prices for materials and labor. This can be especially helpful if customers know what job you did for them before, but they don’t remember the details. If customers want a similar job to a previous one, but with a few changes, it’s a snap to make those changes in the quote, so you’re quoting them for the work they want now and not what they had before.
Questions come up every day in the shop. Answer them efficiently and move on instead of spending hours finding all the data you need. ERP software can answer your business questions quickly, but there’s much more that it can do. Find out what else ERP software can do for your shop.
