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KEY BUSINESS PROCESS REQUIREMENTS

Boost Your Business with SIMC LLC: Accounting, Tax, Technology & More

Target Audience: Small and medium-sized businesses seeking comprehensive business solutions.

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Accounting Requirements

Accounts Payable. The ERP solution must have an Account Payable feature for managing the organization’s expenditures and help them to raise productivity through a dual-grid entry screen and powerful reporting capabilities.

Accounts Payable Reporting, In an ERP, Accounts Payable must possess efficient forms and reports.

Accounts Receivable

ERP solution must provide an Accounts Receivable module and assist in maintaining customer information, finding a customer, invoice, and generating Accounts Receivable Summary

Fixed-Asset Management

The solution must provide information and tools necessary to manage assets’ financial and tax reporting.

Bank Reconciliation

ERP solution must have a Bank Reconciliation feature to assist the enterprise in reconciling the balance shown on the bank statement with the amount shown in the corresponding General Ledger cash accounts.

Erp-To-Bank Interfaces And Integration

The solution must provide closer ERP-to-bank interfaces and integration.

Cash-Flow Management

The solution’s Cash Flow Management module must enable cash flow forecasting and summarization of cash inflows and outflows.

Cost Management

The solution must provide a cost management system to allocate expenses and costs of processes and products.

Automatic Cost Calculation

The solution must automatically calculate the cost from entered unit prices and quantities to reduce redundant entries and risk of error.

Cost Calculation Method Selection

The solution must be capable of selecting a cost calculation method, automatically applying the unit price, managing production expenses, creating a baseline for production costs, and creating cost reports.

Cost Analysis

The ERP must provide effective methods to predict, monitor, analyze, and manage the multiple costs involved in various activities undertaken by an organization.

Business & Tax Reporting

The solution must be capable of generating detailed business and tax reports

Multiple Depreciation Calculations

The solution must provide flexible depreciation calculations as well as standard depreciation methods such as straight line, declining balance, variable declining balance, ARCS, MACRS, user-defined depreciation methods, and more.

Risk Management

The solution should effectively predict, analyze and manage risks and crisis situations. On the basis of various relevant parameters, it should also suggest Business Continuity Plans (BCP) in cases of emergencies and unforeseen situations

Tax Management

The solution’s Tax Management module must store system taxation settings and provide tax audit and tax reporting functionalities. Taxation settings should be used across the system to provide a consistent collection of sales, use, and VAT taxes.

Human Capital Management Requirement

Human Resource Management (HRM): The solution’s HRM module must streamline all Training, Recruitment, Payroll, and Attendance functionalities.Benefits Administration

The solution must provide a system for organizations to administer and track employee participation in benefits programs. These typically encompass insurance, compensation, profit sharing, and retirement.

Enterprise Compensation Management

The solution must provide a complete solution for enterprise compensation management, budget handling, compensation administration, long-term incentives, job pricing, and reporting.

Standardize Processes Based On Current Configuration

The solution must standardize human resource processes as far as possible based on current configuration and inputs from all the departments in the organization.

Payroll Integration With Rosters And Time-sheets

The solution should fully integrate Payroll, Rosters, and Time-sheets.

Payroll Management

The solution must support an unlimited number of employees, user-defined pay groups, pay types, deductions, and benefits.

Performance Management

The solution’s Performance Management module must track and review the development history of an employee, and share information with employees, management, and the HR department through workflow which made it visible to all the progress of events

Recruitment

The solution must identify and engage new talent, to help in hiring the right people thus reducing the cost of recruiting.

Manufacturing Requirements

BOM (Bill Of Materials) CRP (Capacity Requirements Planning)The solution must be capable of determining a production plan, including labor, materials, systems—basically any resource required for product fulfillment. The ERP module must plan and control the complexities of manufacturing many jobs, each of which is composed of a series of operations using limited resources.

Manufacturing/Production-Cost Analysis

The solution must closely monitor and analyze the costs involved in the production of goods.

Production Control

The solution must allow users to coordinate equipment, facilities, inventory, work-in-process, and manage production for maximum efficiency.

Process Synchronization

The solution must be capable of synchronizing processes so that the enterprise can concentrate on improving product quality and production speed

PDM (Product Data Management)

The ERP solution should serve as a central knowledge repository for process and product history. The PDM module must promote integration and data exchange among all business users who interact with products; including project managers, engineers, salespeople, buyers, and quality assurance teams.

MRP (Material Requirements Planning) Requirements

MRP (Material Requirements Planning)The solution’s MRP module must help the users eliminate purchasing and scheduling problems. The solution should be designed to simplify and speed up the work processes of purchasing, inventory, and production managers, enabling them to plan more effectively.Availability Of Materials & Products

An ERP should ensure materials are available for production and products are available for delivery to customers.

Optimum Store Inventory

An ERP solution should maintain adequate material and product levels in the store and avoid overstocking

Planning

The solution should plan manufacturing activities, delivery schedules, and purchasing activities.

Sales-Order Management Requirement

BOM (Bill Of Materials) ERP module should allow the users to easily create and maintain a detailed bill of the components and miscellaneous charges that make up the finished items and subassembly components.BOM (Bill Of Materials) Reporting

The solution must produce accurate and informative reports detailing bill structures, component requirements, and production history.

Credit-Card Processing

The solution must automatically connect to merchant accounts for credit card authorizations and settlements.

24/7 Online Transaction Reporting

The ERP must provide complete, secure, 24/7 online transaction reporting.

Order Management

The solution’s order management module must be able to fast-track the organization’s order-to-cash process by eliminating manual bottlenecks and errors and establishing a smooth flow from sales quote to approved order, successful order to fulfillment, and timely invoicing to payment.

Supply Chain Management Requirements

Logistics Management. The solution’s logistics module should supply fluid processes, storage plans, redistribution of goods inside a company or delivery of goods to customers.Logistics Planning

The solution should be involved in the planning of existing infrastructure resources in view of their optimal use.

Procurement

ERP must allow the users to automate all or part of their procure-to-pay process. The solution should provide packaged integration to back-office applications, industry-specific capabilities, and the flexibility to meet organization requirements.

Sales-Order Management

The solution must streamline order fulfillment processes and gain effective tracking of sales orders in the system and provide outstanding customer service.

Automatic Pricing Of Invoices

The solution should enable complex customer pricing structures to be established, automating the pricing of invoices, as well as being transparent to the operator

Additional Applications

BI (Business Intelligence)

BI (Business Intelligence)The solution should have BI tools that allow users to share and analyze the data collected across the enterprise and centralized in the ERP database.Business Intelligence Dashboards

The solution should enable the users to retrieve BI in the form of dashboards that contain automated reports and analysis tools used to monitor the organization’s business performance.

Data Warehouse

The solution data warehouse feature must maintain central repositories of integrated data from one or more sources so that information needed for supporting executive decision-making is easily available.

Data Archive

The solution must periodically archive the data which is not in use so as to keep the database size manageable

Past Data Records

The solution must keep records for past information and separately maintain their data warehouse

Customer Relationship Management Requirement

Customer Account Management

The CRM module must allow the users to view customers across products, geographies, account, and status.

Customer Account Dashboard

In a single page, users should be able to see not only account information, but also all associated sales opportunities, contacts, activities, history, cases, and quotes.

Contact Management

The CRM module must consolidate contacts into a single location and associate accounts with sales opportunities.

Automated Marketing

An effective CRM module must help the companies to automate marketing and improve their operational efficiency.

Marketing Resource Management (MRM)

The solution must support marketing operations such as alignment of people, process and technology management to support marketing activities to enhance marketing effectiveness

Pricing And Tracking

The CRM module must track every item bought, sold, expensed, used or manufactured in order to account for all business processes in real-time.

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENT

E-Commerce Requirements

B2C Commerce. The solution should enable users to rapidly create consistent and personalized shopping and service experiences for every customer in-store and on any device.B2B Commerce

The solution should provide a B2C-like experience with advanced functionality designed specifically for B2B selling and buying needs.

Order Management

The solution should help users to centrally manage orders from multiple channels and fulfill them from any source to enable “buy and get anywhere” experiences.

Web Storefront Tool

The eCommerce module must allow customers to browse products, create wishlists, add items to their shopping cart and complete a seamless mobile checkout process. The solution must efficiently facilitate e-commerce tasks such as order processing, product and inventory management, and customer service.

Financial Requirements

Advanced Allocations. The ERP’s advanced allocation feature ramps up the organization’s accounting system to capture the financial intelligence that they need for more insightful analysis and planning.Budgeting

The Financial Module of an ERP must allow the organization to manage financial and analytical budgets
The solution should be able to manage budgets from three different points of views, according to the user role:
Accountant: Work on master or consolidated budget
-Project Manager: Work on analytical budgets for his projects
-Department Manager: Get a consolidated view of budget positions

Expense Management

The solution must provide ease of use, continuity in reporting, and correct G/L account assignment of business-related expenses. The Expense Reporting functionality of an ERP must simplify and expedite the reporting and approval process.

General Ledger

The General Ledger module should be designed to handle the most demanding budgeting and processing needs. The feature should track budget and actual financial data to produce financial statements such as an Income Statement and Balance Sheet, the Trial Balance Report, General Ledger Report, etc.

Invoicing/Billing

The solution must offer automated invoice creation by calculating sales tax, finance charges and discounts based on payment terms, either on a one-time or recurring basis. From quote to order to bill, the solution must manage the entire process with transaction creation and routing capabilities in a single solution.

Multiple Currencies Support

The solution must support multiple currencies so that all transactions processed in foreign currencies should be converted to the base currency, based on the exchange rate effective at the time of the transaction. All transactions should then be posted to General Ledger in the base currency.

Multiple Languages Support

The solution must support multiple languages in order to propel the growth of an organization in multiple geographies.

Regulatory Compliance Support

The solution must support the regulatory compliance framework of various countries and geographies.

Human Capital Management Requirements

Tax Administration: Payroll & Tax Filing. The solution must assist the users in payroll and tax filing.Tax Administration: Personal Income Tax

The solution must support users in Personal Income Tax requisites.

Employee Self Service

The ERP solution should have a secure web-based module that empowers employees to view and make updates to their own personal and benefits information without filling out forms and waiting for the Human Resource department to enter it into the system.

Manager Self Service

The solution must provide managers access to information they need to operate, perform, and decide in a better way. The solution must empower managers to oversee their employees and budgets more efficiently.

Talent Management

The solution’s Talent Management modules must enable managers to have the abilities to review employees, plan for compensation adjustments based on a budget, and distribute learning materials and see their effect.

Time And Labor/Attendance

The solution must automate the time and attendance record-keeping process and provide an intuitive, web-based interface for time entry and approval.

Time-card Management

The solution should offer a simplified way to submit, review, track and approve timecards.

Work-Force Planning

The Workforce Planning module must incorporate a long-term horizon, and aim to construct a broad workforce strategy and specify categories of competencies.

Manufacturing Requirement.

Engineering Change Management. The solution should have an Engineering Change Management module, which contains central logistics functions that can be used to change various aspects of production basic data (for example, BOMs, task lists, materials, and documents) with history (with date effectivity) or depending on specific conditions (with parameter effectively).Forecasting

The solution should enable the organization to make informed business decisions without a background in statistics and forecasting modeling.

Job Costing

The solution should be capable to perform accurate job costing as it is critical to establishing item prices, profitability and business planning. It should support GAAP-compliant costing methods including actual (lot), average, standard, First in First Out (FIFO), and Last In First Out (LIFO).

Master Production Scheduling (MPS)

The solution must provide a master plan for what the organization need to produce, how much and when to produce it. MPS should generate an accurate, detailed schedule of orders across one or more plants, based upon the granular view of supply and demand.

Quality Management/Quality Assurance

The solution must offer an extensive suite of tools and capabilities necessary to cost-effectively manage quality issues while streamlining manufacturing and ERP operations and facilitating collaboration. A powerful and flexible Quality Management System must help manufacturing companies control and comply with the most stringent quality standards.

Quality Monitoring

The solution must have master data quality monitoring systems that identify deficient data before the process can be disturbed, so that fluent business process execution can be assured

Quality Analysis

The solution must analyze the data to ensure that data is of high quality, and reduce diversity in data which critically impacts organizational success.

Resource Planning/Management

The solution should be able to plan the number of resources to be deployed for the execution of any manufacturing process. Apart from planning the number of resources, it is also important to manage them and resolve issues as and when needed. The solution should provide all functions required to manage and control the manufacturing floor, including online routing maintenance, labor reporting, and scheduling.
The shop floor module maintains the data needed to optimize on-time completions, evaluate plant workload, and determine capacity needs. Shop Floor ControlWork-Order Management

The ERP must allow the user to issue work orders, develop schedules, and track costs associated with the manufacturing process. Work Order should provide users with complete control of the manufacturing process and the ability to see up-to-the-minute, work-in-process information.

Manufacturing Execution System

Management Of Resources. ERP should help in registration, exchange and analysis of resource information, aiming to prepare and execute production orders with resources of the right capabilities and availabilityScheduling (Production Processes)

Required to determine the production schedule as a collection of work orders to meet the production requirements, typically received from ERP, making optimal use of local resources.

Dispatching Production Orders

Depending on the type of production processes this is required for further distribution of batches, runs and work orders, issuing these to work centers and adjustment to unanticipated conditions.

Execution Of Production Orders

Although actual execution is done by Process control systems, an MES may be required to perform checks on resources and inform other systems about the progress of production processes

Collection Of Production Data

The solution must support collection, storage and exchange of process data, equipment status, material lot information and production logs in either a data historian or relational database.

Production Performance Analysis

This is required to create useful information out of the raw collected data about the current status of production, like Work In Progress (WIP) overviews, and the production performance of the past period like the Overall Equipment Effectiveness or any other Performance indicator.

Production Track & Trace

Required for registration and retrieval of related information in order to present a complete history of lots, orders or equipment (particularly important in health-related productions, e.g. pharmaceuticals)

Sales-Order Management Requirements

Sales-Order Processing
The solution must make sales order processing simply by handling all orders from one centralized, user-friendly system. An efficient Module should have extensive configuration features that enable the organization to optimize the sale order process to suit their business

Customer Credit Management

Credit Management functionality gives the organization an opportunity to know their customers better in terms of financial facts and payment behavior.

Pricing

A competent module should incorporate a price list, trade policies, price management, price recalculation, changing prices, and commercial adding.

Picking

An ERP should have the ability to efficiently perform picking & delivery operations. This may be with the aid of Bar-Codes, QMR Codes, RFIDs etc.

Product Configurator

Product Configuration module must build new parts by starting with a base item and adding features or options to it. New items can be created on the fly using customized item masks, new long and short item descriptions, and other options.

Quotations

The solution must be able to produce accurate estimates, streamline the organization’s quote-to-cash cycle, calculate reliable estimates, and improve customer service. Quotes and sales orders enable the vital coordination of activities between the organization’s salespeople, warehouses and plants, and shipping and accounting teams. They facilitate efficient management of accounts, shipping, invoicing, and commissions.

Inventory Management Requirement

Available-To-Promise (ATP). An ATP tool is an all-encompassing analysis of operating hours, production and manufacturing time requirements, machine availability, labor capacity, tooling readiness, and materials required. By combining all aspects of what is required to manufacture a product ATP software module gives manufacturers better visibility into completion within seconds through all levels and across the entire supply chain.Capable-To-Promise (CTP) Inventory

The availability of items in the organization’s system is an important piece of information that is necessary for planning future production and making sales commitments. It is therefore important for an ERP to feature a CTP (capable-to-promise) functionality which should enable the organization to understand how much can they promise to a new demand on a particular day, creating and actually planning for that demand

Inventory Management

The solution must provide real-time visibility and control of materials and products.

Inventory Monitoring

An ERP must have the capability to monitor the inventory by managing every stage of the product lifecycle, as well as different lines of business. The user must be able to manage inventory levels and get stronger control of inventory operations

Supply Chain Management Requirement

Distribution Management. The solution must provide real-time measurements of profitability by warehouse, product line, location, and business unit. Distribution Management must handle the complexities of distribution such as purchasing, ordering, tracking inventory, filling orders, and delivering customer support.Event Management

The solution must reduce manual work and allow to easily define, assign and control all events’ activities. An Event Management Solution must allow the user to run the organization’s events and hospitality programs in the easiest and most beneficial way throughout the full event process.

Purchase-Order (PO) Processing

The PO functionality allows companies to maintain consistent stock levels, improve merchandise quality and minimize costs by increasing accuracy and efficiency in their purchasing department.
The functionality allows companies to deal with real-world situations like partial shipments, combined shipments or delayed invoices.

Advanced Planning System (APS)

A competent APS must track costs based on the activities that are responsible for driving costs in the production of manufactured goods. It should allocate raw materials and production capacity optimally to balance demand and plant capacity.

Bin Management

An ERP should have the facility to manage stock movement and inventory transactions for receiving, picking, physical inventory counting, manufacturing material issues, and finished goods processing

Demand Planning

Demand planning is a multi-step operational supply chain management (SCM) process used to create reliable forecasts. Effective demand planning can guide users to improve the accuracy of revenue forecasts, align inventory levels with peaks and troughs in demand, and enhance profitability for a given channel or product.

Store In/Out

An ERP should have the functionality to record Store IN/OUT based upon data entry/barcode-based identification.

Lead-Time Management

An efficient ERP Module must reduce the lead time to the best possible extent. Lead time is the time that elapses between the placing of an order (either a purchase order or a production order issued to the shop or the factory floor) and actually receiving the goods ordered.

Partner Agreement Management

An ERP must provide a centralized channel for defining the enterprise’s business agreements with other business partners and stakeholders.
A comprehensive solution design should be provided to assist the enterprises in managing and coordinating both new and existing collaboration agreements that identify the enterprise’s core business relationships.

Product Variants

Product variants should be configured products with their own product master record, in which the configuration, that is, the characteristic value assignment, is stored.
From a business point of view, product variants represent the configurations that sell best; vendors might want to have them in stock to make them readily available to customers at a favorable price.

Production Scheduling

A production scheduling system must translate a business plan with forecasted demand (sales orders) into a workable production plan (supply orders). A typical production plan would consist of planned orders in a multi-level (Bill of Material – BOM) scheduling environment.

Promotions Management

The solution should allow a promotion to be applied to the sales order transaction automatically, thus relieving the sales team member from remembering the promotions.
Promotions are available for different clients, groups of clients, for specific items or groups of items.

Replenishment

An ERP’s inventory replenishment process analyzes supply and demand across multiple companies and facilities to help manufacturing and distribution organizations improve order and line item fill rates and optimize their overall inventory management performance.

Requisition Management

The Requisition Management module allows the organization to organize and simplify complex distribution processes involving multiple products and suppliers.
It should optimize the way the organization gathers requests, obtain vendor bids, create quotes, approve quotes, manage purchases, and fulfill orders for internal or external clients.

Requisition Self-Service

Requisition Self Service system should enable organizations to reduce management and administrative functions for procurement by providing employees with a self-service program with which they can enter their own requests for items such as office supplies.

Return Materials Authorizations (RMAS)

RMAs should integrate with credit memos, sales orders, purchasing, and work orders to allow a seamless and effortless decision-making process for categorizing and documenting a customer return in accordance with the company’s policies to ensure that its customers receive goods that meet their expectations with minimal delay

Serial/Lot Tracking

The solution must provide traceability by creating a lot number, serial number, or other groupings of a part and automatically tracking each part as it flows from receiving through production and is shipped to the organization’s customers

Contract Management

The solution must offer the option to automatically take framework contracts from ERP system and display them online.
The solution should offer the following benefits:
Improved communication with the suppliers
-No doubled entries thanks to complete ERP integration
-Faster processing end editing directly in the portal
-Improved overview of contract deviations

Subcontract Management

The solution must manage the movement of inventory going out to subcontractors and ensure its returned according to individual job schedules.
The solution must have tight integration between production, purchasing and receiving, to know exactly where subcontract components are, when there is a need to act and what is the work cost.

Supplier/Vendor Self-Service

Supplier Self-Service (SUS) is a solution that reduces the costs of procurement cycles by improving the exchange of business documents and shortening the time it takes to process the content of these documents.

Supplier/Vendor Performance Tracking

With the help of ERP, tracking vendor performance should be an easier task.
That strategy to track vendor/supplier performance should be built on some key performance indicators (KPIs).

Transportation Management

A transportation management solution should enable the organization to proactively manage and execute transportation processes such as invoicing, cost control, and foreign trade.

Warehouse Automation

The solution must include a completely integrated bar-code and label system, receiving, container tracking, shipping, bin-moves, bin-replenishment, cycle counting, warehouse space utilization, materials issues, back-flushing, labor entry, directed put-away, sales order entry, many picking methods and much more.

Warehouse Management

A comprehensive warehouse management system must include:
Total warehouse management, inventory control, finite bin and package definitions, task and load management and inter-active, real-time management of activities and consumption.
-Multi-Channel order processing with automated EDI, kitting and item configuration.
-Inbound and outbound serial tracking, pick planning, consolidated picking, order pack-out, cross-docking, carton packing, RFID, and manifesting interfaces.

Requirements Related To Additional Applications

Business Process Management (BPM)Business Process Management Software resolves these problems by transforming static, user-driven ERP applications into powerful solutions that have the capability to automate virtually any business process.Document Management

Document management and delivery of ERP documents by email or fax can reduce paper consumption, postage costs and storage.
An ERP should provide document management solutions in order to enable the organization to send, receive, store, retrieve, and share ERP business documents.
It should also enable the organization to scan, index and store inbound and outbound documents, and link them to provide significant improvements in productivity and customer service.

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

For enterprises running complex equipment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, asset uptime is critically important. Organizations must always have the right skilled labor and parts available at the right time. The must also account for all financials relating to the inspection and maintenance of assets throughout their lifecycle so that performance can be improved and costs minimized.
Any interruption in asset-intensive industries—due to plant or equipment failure—can result in lost production that may be unrecoverable. The enterprise asset management components of the ERP software are therefore very important for a manufacturing organization.

Field-Service Management

Management of field service operations demands a flexible, integrated software solution capable of tackling a disparate network of users.
An ERP should therefore ease the complications encountered in a traditional or paper-based field service management arrangement. It should remove those complications with an integrated, high-performance software solution that can streamline the organization’s field service management.

Product Development

For nearly every step in the product development process, there is an operations function put in place to better control and manage it. Adjacent functions, such as manufacturing, logistics, distribution, inventory, shipping, and accounting, each play a vital role in getting innovative new products to market—and ultimately to customers—faster than competitors.
To be successful, an ERP must ensure that these functions are performed in sync with product development efforts, a task made more difficult because it requires coordination between disparate departments.

Project Management

An ERP should provide flexible Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) capabilities including multi-level phases within a project. It should be built using a service-oriented architecture (SOA), and should also enable continuous performance initiatives, real-time connectivity and intuitive business intelligence all the way to the organization’s supply-chain partners, thus helping provide greater business agility.

Project Scheduling

An ERP should have a Project Scheduling module that should integrate the project activities and the human resources competencies and should create a master project plan using an advanced planning and scheduling algorithm
The module should work in connection with Project Accounting, Project Billing, and the Human Resources Management modules, and should integrate to the MS Project application and to the MS Outlook scheduler, for quick decentralized time capture and schedule

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)

ERP should help in managing an enterprise’s interactions with the organizations that supply the goods and services it uses. For this purpose, ERP should have an efficient supplier relationship management (SRM) that can streamline the processes between an enterprise and its suppliers, along with making them more effective
– Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) software is integrated with a larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
– Supplier relationship management (SRM) software can also use with customer relationship management (CRM) software to speed order fulfillment

Workflow Management

The ERP solution should:
– shorten the lifecycle of more lengthy manual processes,
– automate workflow tasks for users,
– initiate approvals for workflow steps,
– track individual workflow documents throughout the process and
– assign email notifications for workflow steps

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Requirements

Email Tools. The solution’s CRM module must allow the user to archive email to CRM, send an email directly from CRM, and sync calendars.Email Integration

The solution must have email integration for major systems such as MS Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes to streamline common tasks and promote more effective communication with customers.

Case Management

The solution’s CRM module must provide customers with a focused solution for personalized and high-quality service. It should start from the initial call to resolution and a follow-up. The feature should enable the service team to manage the current case load and respond quickly to customers to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction.

Customer Self-Service

For a CRM module to be competent, it must offer a complete self-service capabilities that enable users to receive customer orders and help them to reach shoppers anytime, anywhere. The solution must allow customers to view order history, order status, back orders, open accounts receivable, and maintain passwords on their schedule.

Marketing-Campaign Management

The CRM module must be capable of closing the loop between marketing and sales. It must create, execute and track campaigns across multiple channels.

Opportunity Management

The CRM module should be capable of carrying out presales opportunity management. The solution must record the potential sales or any other type of revenue-generating opportunity.

Rental Management

An ERP for Real Estate and Property Management must include rental management functionality. For property owners and real estate developers, the solution must include financials, billing, lease and contract management, capital project management, property rentals, and real estate sales.

Sales Management: Quoting

The solution with an efficient and accurate quoting module must be optimizing the organization’s profit margin.

Sales Management: Sales Orders

The solution must automate and optimize all processes in the sales cycle

Sales Management: Electronic Data Interchange

The solution’s EDI module must assist and expedite the exchange of critical order data

Sales Management: Shipping And Distribution Management

The solution must ensure that the organization has all the tools and information to manage their shipments and meet strict shipping requirements on time and under budget.

Sales Literature Creation

The solution should provide the functionality to create sales-related literature. This may be in the form of brochures, slideshows, flyers, etc. This feature would enable the sales team to present the product/service to its prospective clients.

Sales-Process Management

The solution must monitor and analyze the entire Sales Process at all the stages during Business Development, Prospect, Confirmed Sale, Completed Sale, or Terminated Sale

Scripts For Sales And Service Personnel

An ERP system should provide the facility to create scripts for Sales Personnel which they can use during Tele-Sales and Sales Pitches for Face-to-Face and Over-the-Counter Sales

Searchable Knowledge Base

The solution should provide Searchable Knowledge Repositories which should contain Sales/BD-related documents. It should provide the functionality of tagging a particular document to multiple Companies, Customers/Clients, Subjects, Industries, and BD/Client Assignments

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

The CRM module should provide an automatic voice response to customer inquiries or gather information for intelligent routing of inquiries. The solution should also allow customers to respond by touch-tone, obtain or leave information, and, if needed, connect to the appropriate contact center agent.

TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENT

Management Of Resources. ERP should help in the registration, exchange, and analysis of resource information, aiming to prepare and execute production orders with resources of the right capabilities and availabilityScheduling (Production Processes)

Required to determine the production schedule as a collection of work orders to meet the production requirements, typically received from ERP, making optimal use of local resources.

Dispatching Production Orders

Depending on the type of production processes this is required for further distribution of batches, runs and work orders, issuing these to work centers and adjustment to unanticipated conditions.

Execution Of Production Orders

Although actual execution is done by Process control systems, an MES may be required to perform checks on resources and inform other systems about the progress of production processes

Collection Of Production Data

The solution must support the collection, storage, and exchange of process data, equipment status, material lot information and production logs in either a data historian or relational database.

Production Performance Analysis

This is required to create useful information out of the raw collected data about the current status of production, like Work In Progress (WIP) overviews, and the production performance of the past period like the Overall Equipment Effectiveness or any other Performance indicator.

Production Track & Trace

Required for registration and retrieval of related information in order to present a complete history of lots, orders or equipment (particularly important in health-related productions, e.g. pharmaceuticals)

Flexible Network Design. Network design harnesses supply chain optimization concepts to deliver the right service levels at the lowest costs.
It takes a resilient supply chain to keep up with fast-changing market conditions and consumer demands. The smallest failure at any point can cost valuable time and money. Likewise, small, incremental improvements can yield a significant edge. Hence, a flexible network design can increase the efficiency and scalability of a supply chain module.Support For Radio Frequency (RF) Technology

The solution must have the capability to enter data and scan bar-code labels using radio frequency (RF) devices.

Other Important Tools

End-User Training Development Tools. An ERP should possess tools that may be used to develop training materials and other knowledge repositories for its end usersArchiving Tools

ERP packages should provide the functionality to archive the database on a periodic basis in such a way that the archived records are accessible to the end-users in case they are needed

Ad-Hoc Query Tool

ERP should also provide the functionality to retrieve results based on Ad-hoc/keyword-based queries

Integration

Module Integration. The ERP package should integrate between modules so that all of the core business functions are connected. Information should flow across the organization so that BI reports on organization-wide resultsHardware And Other Applications Integration

The ERP should be capable to integrate hardware, applications, networking, supply chain, and other features

Integration With Handheld/Mobile Devices

An ERP should possess the functionality to integrate with handheld and mobile devices. It should provide the key functionalities of ERP on mobile devices.

Integration With Portable Scanners

An ERP should also integrate with portable scanners, barcode/QR Code readers etc.

Integration With Fax Server

ERP packages should integrate with Fax servers in order to directly send/receive faxes directly from/into the package

Integration With Barcode Generator

ERP packages should integrate well with barcode generators in order to create barcodes/QR codes for goods produced by the company

Deployment Environment. ADD REQUIREMENT +

On-Premise Installation. The system should be able to be installed on-premise to provide a privately hosted systemHosted Installation

The system is available as a hosted, Software as a Service (SaaS) offering

Hybrid Installation

The system is able to be configured as a hybrid application, with a mixture of on-premise and cloud components

Mobile

The system provides mobile platform access for iOS, Android, or other mobile devices

Customer Relationship Management Requirements

Mobile Access. An effective CRM Module of an ERP should facilitate users with the ease of access to ERP information to perform their jobs on any device at any time. This requires the CRM solution to handle:
Different mobile devices and applications for different roles/jobs
Ability to be used by staff with limited computer or language skills, in adverse conditions (variable lighting, distractions/interruptions, the potential for the device to be damaged.)Sales Force Automation (SFA)

An effective module must integrate sales processes from opportunity, upsell and quote management to sales forecasting, order management, fulfillment, and sales commission.
The solution must give the sales team unprecedented visibility into every aspect of the customer relationship, including support cases and back-office information such as contracts and inventory.

SUPPORT & SERVICES

Maintenance

Maintenance Contracts. The vendor offers maintenance contracts for supported software to ensure that updates, upgrades, and services are regularly receivedOn-site maintenance

The vendor offers on-site maintenance support so that local admins are not overwhelmed

Consulting & Professional Services

Implementation Services. Does the vendor offer software implementation services including system evaluation and installation to minimize the on-premise expertise required to implement the solution?Training

Does the vendor offer training services, classes, or other instructional services?

User Support

Phone & Email. Does the vendor offer Help Desk support via telephone and email?Chat & Instant Message

Does the vendor offer Help Desk support via instant message/chat for ease of live communication?

24×7

Does the vendor offer 24×7 Help Desk support so that off-hours issues can be addressed?

Forum/Community Support

The product has a community support forum for system users to interact and provide assistance to one another

VENDOR PROFILE

Vendor Information

Financial Stability. Is the vendor financially stable, as evidenced by a Dun & Bradstreet or similar report, indicating that the vendor will not have issues in providing future work?Customer Base

Does the vendor have a broad customer base in the industry, lending credence to the vendor’s overall quality?

Past Performance

Previous Experience With Vendor. Has the vendor been engaged before? If so, what were the experience and overall value?Customer Recommendation

Is the vendor highly recommended by other customers?

Book Appointment

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