by Rich Henning
Doing more with less is the order of the day. Quickly understanding how a business is doing on a daily (even hourly) basis is key to decision making.
A number of ERP (enterprise resource planning) programs are available for shops to help them manage their day-to-day business operations. They often offer a variety of capabilities including estimating, managing sales orders, shop orders, job costing, time tracking, job scheduling, inventory control, purchasing, receiving, shipping, invoicing and other general accounting functions. Thus, they are very good at managing the deatils of running a manufacturing business.
Today, many executives do not have the time to sift through the details in order to quickly grasp the state of their business at any given time. Even though all the transaction data is there, they simply want things organized into a format that is comfortable for them to quickly absorb.
