Are you a “typical” manufacturer?
If you’re a typical manufacturer, you use many DISPARATE business systems. According to Merriam-Webster, DISPARATE means
1: markedly distinct in quality or character
2: containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements.
Some of these “fundamentally different and often incongruous elements” that may make up your business systems are:
ERP
MES
Time & Attendance
Planning & Scheduling
Job Costing
CRM
When you have so many disparate solutions you can choose to operate each in their own data universe or, if you want to increase efficiency, integrate some or all of them.
In past blogs we’ve talked about the more traditional methods of integrating, connecting each component with its own individualized integration, as you see it in the image here.
In this scenario, we see manufacturers reaching out to systems expert for the systems they wish to integrate; then another expert for their next system, then another, then another, and so on.
You now have multiple integrations using many different integrators and none of them with anything in common.
When problems arise with one integration they must always find the company (or worse – the person) that did the integration and get them to sort out the issue, with no real ability to troubleshoot things for themselves using their existing support staff. Meanwhile the problems that arose are compounding, creating bottlenecks – or worse.
But there is a Better Way.
A much better solution would be to bring all of your integration needs into one INTEGRATION TOOL. A single solution that is able to target many different systems: ERP, MES, CRM, time and attendance, payroll, labor data collection, and more. With all integrations handled through a common system, your IT support staff can be trained to handle the vast majority of support issues in-house.
Step out of the Traditional mindset and give The LINK® a look!