Many outside the manufacturing industry picture manufacturing companies as easy to streamline and manage, but the truth is that modern manufacturing processes can be just as hard to schedule and perform as professional services.
Where manufacturers may have an advantage over many service businesses in controlling the chaos is that many have developed ways to leverage their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and data to help them bend rather than break when things don’t go exactly to plan. Service businesses can apply many lessons from manufacturing management using their ERP equivalent: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
The Right Data at the Right Time
What successful manufacturers have learned is the key to keeping processes running smoothly when many variables are at play is making relevant data visible and interactive. When a required material shipment is delayed, or a customer requests a rush order, being able to see all scheduled jobs and the impact a change will have on the required resources and personnel is the difference between managing the situation and simply reacting to it.
Most CRM software solutions are not really set up to manage the variables that impact the efficient delivery of services, especially when the time it actually takes to provide the service can vary significantly from the estimated time. When this happens multiple times in a day, the impact on clients can be significant, yet alerting managers and clients of significant delays usually requires manual phone calls, text messages, or emails, which are often not recorded so that others know that they occurred.
Just as in manufacturing, connecting scheduling, messaging, and customer data can make managing your business easier and the operations more efficient and profitable. Consider the possibilities if your service teams could record when they start and finish jobs and see the next job by priority and/or proximity in real-time, while a manager could be alerted if job completion times are projected to impact the scheduled time for a job with an important client. The key to making this a reality is getting the right data to the right people at the right time.
Replace Manual Processes with Software Automation
While some software solutions can be connected to come close to this prefect service scenario, manual processes are usually put in place to make it work. Manual processes seem the cheapest way to go but become expensive when you consider the cost related to the man-hours required and the potential for mistakes to occur. When you factor in those costs, a custom software solution that uses open-source components can be seen as an affordable way to make that “last mile” connection.
If your processes have had to adapt to your software but performance could be improved if the situation were reversed, then custom software development could be worth the investment of time and money. Besides being the most powerful way to solve difficult business problems, well-planned custom software can deliver a major boost to efficiency and productivity, providing a positive impact to your bottom line.
Triple Helix focuses on delivering software that makes a positive impact on operations and solves business data and process problems. We have helped clients in manufacturing, professional services, and non-profit services and can help your business too. Contact us if you would like to schedule a risk-free consultation to see if your business could benefit from a custom software solution.
