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Great things happen when you take a single Epicor ERP transaction mobile

To say the current environment is uncertain for manufacturers—understatement of the day! Although we all hope the worst is behind us, manufacturing remains under intense pressure from cost volatility, policy shifts and, you know, that pandemic that’s still out there.

This makes shop floor efficiency more important than ever. Any time (and money!) you can save on a process helps boost productivity, profit and budget flexibility.

To spur such positive impacts, Deloitte sees manufacturers building their “digital muscle.” But small and mid-sized companies often find it difficult to dig up the dollars to invest in technology projects.

Don’t despair—we’re finally getting to the good news. Manufacturing operations already invested in an Epicor ERP system have a real opportunity to realize significantly greater efficiency with a very low up-front spend. All it takes is a mobile ERP app.

Epicor vs. Mobile App: A Head-to-Head Test

If you’ve checked out Bezlio before, you probably know that we recommend implementing our Epicor mobile ERP apps—we call them bezls—one at a time. Not all clients need to take it so slow, but it’s a low-risk approach that results in big rewards.

But we wanted to know, exactly how big are the gains from a single bezl? Being of the analytical mindset, we decided to do a test:

• We chose one common manufacturing ERP transaction; in this case, entering purchase order receipts.

• A proficient Epicor manufacturing user was timed processing purchase orders in the Epicor interface.

•  The same user, also proficient with Bezlio, was timed entering the transactions using a smartphone.

THE ERP MOBILE APP WINS: 76% TIME-SAVINGS

I admit, even this technology evangelist was surprised by the added shop floor efficiency with Bezlio:

• The purchase order receipt function in Epicor ERP took a total of 111.4 seconds.

• That transaction in Bezlio took just 26.8 seconds.

• Do the math and you see a difference of 84.6 seconds—or a 76% time-savings for every purchase order receipt the company handles.

Nearly a minute and a half may not sound like much on the surface, but manufacturers recognize how much impact such small process improvements can have at scale.

Consider that we at Bezlio routinely see clients processing 75 or more purchase order receipts each day. These customers are shaving almost two hours (1.76 hours for 75 transactions) off their daily labor. That’s approaching one-quarter of a staff position!

WHAT IT COSTS TO GET THERE

You may be excited about the potential efficiencies with Bezlio but still concerned with the cost and commitment involved.

Don’t be. Bezlio pays for itself (and then some), even in the first year.

Talking turkey (appropriate here in November), the price for an annual Bezlio account for up to 10 users is $4,200. This includes the first bezl of your choice.

How much do you pay just one employee in receiving? If it’s more than about $17,000 (and I’m sure it is), the 76% efficiency boost delivers more in labor savings than Bezlio costs.

Of course, many Bezlio customers do choose to customize their bezls to match their internal processes. The average investment among our clients is 20 hours, or $3,500. This is a one-time cost, after which the customized mobile ERP is available with the regular subscription. Even if you go this route (again, optional), you’re probably still in the black with just one bezl used by one employee in year one (a high bar), with additional gains on the way.

And what about implementation? Well, that takes about two hours. It’s not going to tie up key members of your organization or drag out for weeks. Bezlio really is a turnkey savings option.

MORE THAN 1 MANUFACTURING EMPLOYEE

I hope I’ve got your brain buzzing with questions already—because yeah, you’ve got more than one employee. And you have other types of ERP transactions burning time every week.

What if you took advantage of all 10 of the Bezlio users that come with the base subscription? How would that increase the ROI?

What if you moved labor entry, location transfers, finished goods receipts and other transactions to the Bezlio platform? How much more shop floor efficiency improvement would you enjoy?

And how could you use the new information you’re capturing in Epicor to identify and eradicate more waste, streamline more processes and make other changes that positively affect your bottom line?

These are all good questions deserving full exploration—and that’s exactly what they’ll receive in our upcoming webinar, Unleashing Your ERP: How a Mobile App Digitally Transforms Your Business, on Wednesday, November 11th at 1 PM EST.

We expect to spend about an hour discussing Epicor mobile apps for manufacturing and the positive impacts actual clients have experienced. I’d say that’s a small time investment to discover a solution that could drive substantial efficiency gains now, when you need them most.

The best part, by participating, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions specific to your operations. Why not get insights from experts who have worked with literally thousands of manufacturers over more than a decade? Even one tip could prove invaluable.

So don’t miss out. Register now.

What to look for when taking Epicor ERP mobile—and one place to find it all

Have you confronted the inefficiencies of the standard manufacturing ERP software? Have you decided to go mobile with your ERP so sales, field service and shop floor employees can access, update and enter the data they need from anywhere?

Great! You’re on the right road to greater efficiency and productivity already. Now it’s just a matter of finding a best-fit Epicor manufacturing ERP mobile app platform to meet all of your needs. And fortunately, on that, we have some advice.

What to Look for When Taking Epicor Mobile

As a team who’s spent our careers in the business of applying technology to manufacturing, we’ve steadily developed a list of essentials we suggest seeking in any ERP mobile application. You’re welcome to use this cheat sheet to get you started.

SECURITY

First up, security. Your ERP contains sensitive information and putting it on the internet is never a good idea. Definitely rule out any apps for manufacturing that don’t use a secure interface to keep your ERP locked down but allow for data entry, updating and search. It’s not even worth considering such a risky option.

COMPREHENSIVE DEVICE COMPATIBILITY / BYOD-FRIENDLY

You’ll want to make sure that any mobile ERP apps work natively on every type of device. If some employees prefer Android and others have Apple smartphones, you want the solution to work on both. Same thing goes for tablets. And don’t forget about wearables! These are becoming more important in manufacturing, so make sure the platform you select is flexible enough to leverage smartwatches and other emerging technologies as they become available.

It’s also not a bad idea to keep that retro PC or Apple workstation involved, too, with a web-based interface.

EXTENSIVE FUNCTIONALITY

There are app developers who have focused on only a sliver of the ERP space. They may have only a warehouse app or a timekeeping tool. Many of these are pretty good, but the problem is, where do you go from there? If you’re seeking to maximize efficiency and productivity with mobile technology, you’ll want more options to meet the needs of employees throughout the company.

BROAD INTEGRATION

Depending on your technology ecosystem, it can be helpful to seek out Epicor ERP mobile apps with additional integrations. For example, you may want the platform to be able to pull in data from CRMs like Salesforce or work seamlessly with the eCommerce platforms you already use.

CUSTOMIZABLE TO YOUR PROCESSES

Technology shouldn’t dictate your operations. Any mobile solution should meld seamlessly with the way you do business today, rather than demanding that you overhaul to fit the developers’ preconceptions. That way, employees don’t have to relearn functions they already perform quickly and flawlessly—they just add technology to make them even more efficient.

BUILT-IN MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT AND ADVICE

I would caution against any Epicor mobile app that doesn’t include maintenance and support clearly in the price tag. You don’t want to buy in and then find out there are unexpected costs, as frequently happens with custom development, for example. Bonus points if the provider you select is intimately familiar with manufacturing and can really guide you through adapting the solution to your operations for maximum impact.

INTUITIVE

When evaluating product demos, do so from the perspective of the users you are targeting. Some of them will not have had reason to interact with the ERP in any fashion and you don’t want to set yourself up for a huge training hurdle or even failure to adopt.

The simpler and more focused an app can be on the particular functions needed to perform a job or task, the quicker it is to learn and use effectively. A great UI design that’s easy to read and navigate can’t hurt, either.

GRANULARLY MODULAR

Talking about simple, intuitive functionality brings us to the most controversial recommendation on this list. We always suggest modular ERP mobile app platforms, where you can “plug and play” different apps for different needs.

This goes against the instinct to look for an “all in one” Epicor ERP add-on, but here’s why. There’s just too much going on in Epicor to put it easily on a small screen and ensure that the pick-and-pack team in the warehouse and the harried sales rep responding to 100 questions while on a customer site can quickly access what they need. In our experience, having separate apps for specific roles just works better.

Then there’s implementation. With a modular platform, you can deploy one app to digitize one process, get employees comfortable with the change, evaluate and customize further as necessary  and only then move on. It’s a less risky and time-consuming approach than rolling out another monolithic ERP solution, only this time a mobile one.

AFFORDABLE

For mid-market manufacturers, cost can be a challenge. Epicor ERP itself was probably a large financial undertaking, and getting more from that investment is essential. But there isn’t always a lot of budget to make it happen.

This is where a proven platform with transparent costs can provide financial confidence. Additional advantage is secured with modular implementation, so you can stage the ERP mobile transition in individually priced pieces, easing into it as budget and ROI allows.

Evaluating the Alternatives

You may have noticed that there is some tension in this list. Epicor ERP mobile apps should be comprehensive, applying to functions across the organization and integrating with CRMs and other key software. Yet they should also be simple, offering intuitive functionality specific to individual roles within the company. The mobile ERP solution should be customizable to your needs and processes but it shouldn’t require a risky and time-consuming ground-up development process to move forward.

For a long time, there wasn’t a solution available that could thread the needle in this way (trust us, as manufacturing consultants, we searched far and wide!)—that’s why our team created one.

Our answer is Bezlio, a highly secure, integrated mobile platform, which connects with Epicor ERP and various CRMs, databases, eCommerce solutions, accounting software and more.

This unified platform then supports individual applets we call bezls. We’ve developed a library of stand-alone Epicor mobile apps for manufacturing for such functions as purchase order receipt entry (with barcode scanning!), materials transfers and production labor tracking, to name a few.

These bezls are the starting place for a Bezlio-Epicor manufacturing implementation, but they don’t have to be the end. Any bezl can be quickly customized and we’re continually developing new bezls for clients. Because these “plug in” to our existing platform, even brand new apps can be created in very short timeframes and without the types of bugs and back-end integration and security problems that are common in custom development.

Through it all, clients still get that consulting feel, because our team happily lends our manufacturing technology expertise whenever it can be helpful in planning how and where to apply mobile ERP apps, analyzing processes to reflect them in an interface and so on. We’re consultants without the fees!

In fact, putting our heads together is the first step in the Bezlio process, which we’ve outlined in our implementation guide. Feel free to download that to find out how you could be well on your way to mobile Epicor ERP in just two hours, or contact us to walk through the options and the process. We’re always glad to chat!

How to achieve real-time inventory transparency by taking ERP mobile (and how to do it right)

The best laid plans…we all know how it goes.

An ERP solution represents a large investment and aspirations for these systems run high. In exchange, manufacturers, warehouse managers and others enduring complex ERP implementations expect to gain full transparency into their operations, all the way down to what’s in every bin in every warehouse location.

But do ERP solutions naturally result in such accurate, up-to-date inventory information? Based on almost an entire career advising manufacturers about technology, we can confidently say, “No, they don’t.”

Don’t get us wrong, ERP systems certainly facilitate inventory and warehouse management. But it’s difficult to use a monolithic piece of software to tame inventory processes in action. The sheer bulkiness of most ERP systems is a barrier to up-to-the-minute insight.

If you know us at all, you probably know we’re talking about the dang kiosks.

ERP software typically requires a large screen and powerful workstation, and as a matter of basic physics, those don’t travel well on forklifts or in employees’ pockets. As a result, a lot of materials relocation, pick-and-pack and other activity happens without being simultaneously recorded. The relevant data only enters the ERP system later—sometimes not until a quarterly inventory count is completed.

In the meantime, leaders and planners steer the company based on data that could be days, weeks or months out of date. That wasn’t so bad when the pace of business was slower and supply chains less complex. But in today’s environment, lack of real-time inventory information puts companies at a distinct disadvantage. And do we even need to mention the fast-changing situation that is COVID-19?

However, with ERP apps for manufacturing—to integrate with and take Epicor mobile, for example—companies can finally get that clean window into inventories that they’ve been dreaming of.

Benefits of Inventory Visibility Reach Far and Deep

Manufacturers recognize that it’s vital to have an accurate picture of the company’s stocks of materials, parts, components and finished goods and to feed this information into the larger supply chain management function and the rest of business operations. That way:

• The procurement team can tell what runs out fast and negotiate cheaper, bulk purchasing contracts and avoid those expensive rush order “fire drills.” (Or vice versa, they’ll know what gathers dust, so they can buy smaller quantities and spend less warehousing them.)

• The production management team can see what’s coming off the line, adjust their forecasts and planning and even hunt down waste to trim costs.

• The sales team can determine what finished goods are ready to go so they can make the right fulfillment promises to the customers they deal with each day.

You get the idea. These are among the advantages of real-time inventory management but it all starts with the data—and that means with the warehouse and the shipping/receiving docks.

ERP mobile apps link activities in these locations to the central ERP system. Ideally, mobile ERP uses task-specific, secure, barcode scanner-enabled interfaces for smartphones, tablets, or even wearable devices to enable data entry, updates, and search by employees on the go. For example:

•  A Purchase Order Receipt app can empower receiving teams to quickly track arriving materials being sent to inventory.

•  A Location Transfer app can keep up as stock is moved around the warehouse, while an Issue Materials app can find items and log the transfer to production.

•  A Finished Goods Receipt app can then let warehouse personnel know when products are ready to store prior to sale, and additional apps to track shipped orders, returns and other changes can keep those product inventories up to date.

In addition to opening the ERP to a flood of information directly from the warehouse floor, these tools make handers’ jobs much easier. No more conducting materials searches from a kiosk and forgetting the bin number on the way back. No more tracking inventory on paper forms when a quick barcode scan is enough to enter more information than the manual processes ever allowed. And those weeklong physical inventory counts—the ones literally nobody enjoys—can often go away, too.

The end result is a more efficient and productive warehouse, plus better data to drive decisions at all levels of the organization. Hard to beat that!

Best to Keep It Simple (Seriously)

The old K.I.S.S. mantra is a good one for mobile ERP. Jamming full ERP capabilities into a single mobile app just isn’t the best way to go. A forklift operator, for instance, may only need location search and product scan capabilities; extra tabs and buttons for reporting, analytics and other features essential to a production manager will only confuse matters.

At Bezlio, we recommend a modular approach. We build discrete apps designed for specific functions and customize them to align precisely with a company’s existing processes and information needs. This not only makes the resulting ERP mobile apps more job-focused and easier to train employees on, the phased, task-by-task implementation lowers risk and tends to reduce total cost as well.

We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to a modular ERP mobile roll-out. Check out that link to find out how you can digitize your first warehouse management process in about two hours.

If you can dream it, you can improve your ERP flexibility and real-time data availability. That’s worth finding a couple of hours in your schedule for, right?

How a step-by-step ERP app implementation transformed a large metal fabrication company within months

The manufacturing industry is facing unprecedented challenges. Workplace restrictions necessary to ensure safety through COVID-19 have created operational hurdles, which are making it more difficult to keep up with demand. And current budget uncertainties are presenting their own problems.

In order to survive and thrive, manufacturers are seeking ways to realize efficiencies across their operations, but most have limited time and resources to devote to complex initiatives. Fortunately, as VME Manufacturing discovered, moving to the mobile ERP app, Bezlio, delivers a big productivity punch for very little implementation effort.

THE PROBLEM: A POWERFUL BUT INFLEXIBLE ERP SYSTEM

I met the Director of Information Technologies for VME Manufacturing at a trade show. The team sat in on a Bezlio demonstration, and we reconnected a few months later to discuss the pain points that drove them in search of a mobile ERP solution.

The issues VME was encountering will sound familiar to many a manufacturer. The ERP system they’d invested in was robust and feature-rich, but it wasn’t particularly user friendly. It also lacked the flexibility and portability necessary to facilitate work in today’s increasingly fluid environment. To access information, users had to be on a networked computer, either in the office or connected through a remote VPN. This made it difficult for teams to obtain the information they needed, when and where they needed it.

The question was what to do about these problems. We engaged in several conversations to develop a project plan to implement Bezlio’s mobile ERP app for manufacturing across several departments, with an agreement to focus on shop floor operations.

A FIRST BEZL ACCELERATES PROCESSING OF PURCHASE ORDER RECEIPTS

Bezlio was designed as an integrated and natively mobile platform, ready for a mix-and-match selection of task-specific apps (we call them ‘bezls’). Our pre-built bezls serve as customizable building blocks for a comprehensive, enterprise-wide mobile ERP solution.

The great thing about this architecture is that there’s no need to complete an entire mobile ERP overhaul at once, which many manufacturers worry would require too much orchestration, training, and preparation to handle right now. Instead, we take things one bezl at a time.

After considering their options, VME decided to target purchase order receipts. Getting those details into the company’s ERP system had long been a time sink. Employees needed to take paper to a kiosk across the plant floor and manually key in information, and they were eager to try something better.

Bezlio replaced the paper-based system with a mobile purchase order bezl. This secure, intuitive interface enables users to scan barcodes right at the receiving dock. And they do it using their own smartphone, a device they carry with them anyway. The bezl then automatically sends the information to the ERP, no keying necessary.

The end result—eliminating hundreds of steps and minutes of data entry, every single time.

EXPANDING ON SUCCESS ACROSS THE MANUFACTURING SHOP FLOOR

Once VME decision-makers saw how easy employees found it to use the Bezlio iOS interface, they were ready for more. After a few weeks, we enhanced the first bezl to record specific heat and serial numbers the company’s end customers require. This information can now be tracked more easily as materials move from receiving through production and final shipment.

Bezlio and VME then moved on to implement additional bezls to track real time labor against production jobs, issue materials and perform location transfers. Finally, we sought out opportunities to take advantage of real time information access. For example, VME implemented a Part Tracker bezl to enable team members to instantly view availability and warehouse locations while working with a customer.

Together, these tools significantly increased efficiency, streamlined processes, and empowered team members to manage a variety of client needs. And the productivity gains came with minimal time investment in solution implementation or training.

NEXT STEPS

VME’s Bezlio journey continues. Our next goal is to provide users with custom quality-assurance forms and applications. A brand new bezl we’re building will soon eliminate those paper forms and the frustrating data entry. And users will be able to submit results and track trends in real time, all within an interface they already know and love. After that, we’ll move on to whatever challenge VME identifies.

Have you been looking for ways to steadily reduce inefficiencies on your shop floor? If so, contact us to get on the Bezlio path. We can help you build a mobile ERP implementation plan like we did for VME Manufacturing. Then we’ll assist you every step of the way as you make your operations more streamlined and productive than ever.

Turnkey mobile application implementation and “just ask” customization make rolling out apps for mobile ERP a breeze

So it’s time to take your ERP system mobile. You’ve looked at the options with your ERP (something like Epicor mobile, Infor, SAP or other integrations) but the features and implementation won’t meet your needs…and now you’re looking at Bezlio.

Well, first let me say—great decision! Bezlio can increase the value of your ERP system and make it more accessible all day, every day, for the sales team, field technicians, shopfloor employees—anyone within your organization, from wherever they are.

What’s more, unlike many technology enhancements, implementing Bezlio can be accomplished quickly. And user training is easy, because Bezlio builds on systems your teams already know.

Still, you may be asking—how quick is quickly and how easy is easy? With Bezlio, implementation is almost immediate. Let me walk you through the whole process, it won’t take long.

STEP 1: PICK A BEZLIO STARTING PLACE FOR MOBILE ERP

Perhaps the most difficult stage of a Bezlio roll-out is deciding where to start. The leadership team will want to review the pre-built solutions (we call them ‘bezls’) that are available for your ERP system and determine where you can benefit most from increased mobility.

The great thing about Bezlio is that all of these apps work seamlessly together—but they also perform flawlessly apart. Instead of dealing with monolithic software you must deploy all at once, Bezlio allows you to optimize the highest value target within your business and grow your solution piece by piece.

At first, you might find that the sales team is the “squeaky wheel” internally and the mobile sales app for Infor Visual ERP, for example, will provide the real-time data access they need to manage their accounts. Or it might be field service technicians who are struggling to cost out jobs, track time and deliver effortlessly while on the customer site. Or if you’re a manufacturer, you might find that production labor or materials tracking are the biggest headaches.

But what if you’ve reviewed the bezls listed on our menu and are still not sure how to embark? Just ask! At Bezlio, we understand that each company is different. We’ve worked with hundreds of clients, from manufacturing to transportation to government entities, and we are standing by to discuss your challenges and help you identify the solutions to rapidly achieve your goals.

STEP 2: EXPERIENCE AN ERP MOBILE APP THAT’S UP WITHIN HOURS

Once you pick a bezl, our team will schedule a time to set up initial accounts, install Bezlio and conduct training. This may sound like a lot—and I know, you’ve probably experienced some frustrating technology implementations—but we’ll probably need just an hour or two.

That’s because most of Bezlio lives in the cloud and it’s ready to go. All we need to do there is create user credentials.

Then, to integrate with your ERP software, we simply install the Bezlio Remote Data Broker. This is the system that accesses ERP (and CRM) data, without putting your proprietary information on the internet.

The Bezlio Remote Data Broker isn’t demanding in terms of hardware requirements. Any system with the following will do:

• 8 GB RAM

• 500 MB of available storage space

• Microsoft .net 4.6.2 or above

And don’t worry about .net—it should install automatically via Microsoft Updates. If there are any problems, we’ll assist.

The Bezlio team will handle the entire software installation process. All your IT folks need to do is provide us temporary access.

STEP 3: EXPLORE YOUR 1ST BEZL FOR FREE

Now comes the fun part! You have your first bezl, available to users via iOS, Android, Windows PCs and the web client. It’s time to find out what Bezlio can really do.

The installation process and first 30 days are free—so you’ve spent precisely $0 and you have plenty of opportunity to test out the system and compile your wish list of customizations and enhancements.

We expect your employees will generate all kinds of ideas for using Bezlio to achieve greater efficiency, productivity, cost-savings, sales, customer relationships and…you get the picture.

And you’ll be fully supported during the process and throughout your Bezlio journey. Your account manager will be readily accessible to answer questions and assist in developing a strategy to get the most out of Bezlio.

STEP 4: CUSTOMIZE AND EXPAND

One thing you’ll discover right away when working with your account manager—you’re not “locked in” to anything with Bezlio. If you have feedback or unique requirements, our programming crew is here to help.

We built our platform to meet client needs without the cost or frustration of the typical technology development project. In fact, a bezl, built to your every specification, can be created for a tiny fraction of the price of the usual mobile solution.

So collect ideas, document more of those “problem processes” and bring all of your input straight to us. We’ll help:

• Customize your existing bezl(s) to offer the features and functionality your team needs and match your workflows exactly as they are performed

• Determine if there is another bezl that could serve as the foundation for your next ERP mobile transition, or if we should start from scratch and make a bezl just for you

• Roll out the next stage of your Bezlio implementation with even less fuss than the first—creating credentials for any new users and providing training in the new capabilities. That’s it.

If you’ve been putting off mobile ERP because you thought a mobile application implementation would be long, difficult and risky—well, I hope I’ve convinced you otherwise.

Taking only an hour or two to set up and requiring no initial financial investment, Bezlio is a truly turnkey solution. And once you complete the four brief steps we’ve outlined here, the last one especially welcome—just enjoy the ride.

Ready to go Bezlio? Contact us to begin your mobile ERP journey.