Send us Fan Mail Most manufacturers started their businesses as they were good at making parts. They grew primarily because of word of mouth with very little investment in marketing and automation. They might be sitting on a pile of inventory and legacy machines due to their lack of understanding of how to invest in modern technologies and processes. They might also lose on the opportunities if they might not be able to meet the consumer demand due to the limitations in their capabilities. But w...
Jan 17, 2022•49 min•Ep. 228
Send us Fan Mail Among most software, #ERP systems have always traditionally been the most hated. Each new ERP system that comes to the market seems to claim how they can either expedite the implementation time, increase the adoption, or change the ERP industry. Also, most new systems target smaller niches such as job shops. But the deeper your ERP system is in a specific niche, the less friendly and agile it will be as your business model expands. Specifically, the smaller job shops have a hard...
Jan 15, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 227
Send us Fan Mail A warehouse is a critical component to drive operational efficiency, especially if your company moves a lot of goods. The warehouse is also the area, which is typically the start of the automation, and if you operate your warehouse without barcodes, it might take forever to deliver the goods. Also, with ASRS systems and robots, the sky is the limit with what you could do to treat the warehouse the way it deserves. But without the foundational information architecture and connect...
Jan 14, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 226
Send us Fan Mail Retaining customers is easier and cheaper than acquiring customers. But unless you continuously acquire, you might have growth challenges. You can't simply rely on word-of-mouth channels. Customer acquisition is especially critical for e-commerce. For your customer acquisition to work effectively, you need to master your ideal customer profile and the messaging that will work with them. You also need to master strategies that are going to be uniquely applicable to your customers...
Jan 13, 2022•58 min•Ep. 225
Send us Fan Mail As you grow, you will be getting a lot of offers to get acquired. You might also be acquiring the companies, especially if you might not be able to meet your growth plans through organic channels. Whichever side of the M&A process you might happen to be on, you will only get value from the transaction if it is successfully executed. The most common reasons why acquisitions fail is because of the misunderstanding of the market and focusing solely on the financial models on th...
Jan 12, 2022•40 min•Ep. 224
Send us Fan Mail The social proof is becoming real, especially for B2C and FMCG brands with the advancements in social media and influencer marketing concepts. Also, with the increased competition, it's becoming harder to get placed at shelves in high-traffic areas. Even so, there are several newer technologies out there, such as mass customer mobilization, that can help get visibility for your brand inside the store through non-traditional methods. In today's episode, our guest, Ben Searcy, sha...
Jan 11, 2022•41 min•Ep. 223
Send us Fan Mail What could you do if your business were not able to break through and grow as expected? What would you do if the close rate were extremely low and you couldn't do anything about it as your channel controlled the sales process? While there are several options to help with this issue, including going DTC, the path is extremely risky, especially if you might be taking this path for the first time on such a massive scale. But careful planning and a well-thought-out process beforehan...
Jan 10, 2022•45 min•Ep. 222
Send us Fan Mail Traditional IT required you to stress test programming languages, databases, and server farms based on your expected workload. You designed the system based on the size of your organization. If you are buying an ERP system, you obviously don't have to go through the testing and measurement process as you assume that ERP vendors and salespeople must sell to the right-sized organization. Unfortunately, most ERP salespeople neither have ERP implementation nor an IT background. To b...
Dec 18, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 221
Send us Fan Mail Procurement plays an extremely important role in ensuring that you have the right raw materials at the right place at the right time. They are also responsible for the S&OP planning, which is the hardest to master, and misaligned S&OP functions could significantly impact the top and bottom line. And they are often left behind when it comes to their technology needs. They are also an afterthought in the organization in creating sophisticated procurement processes that wil...
Dec 17, 2021•59 min•Ep. 220
Send us Fan Mail If you are an e-commerce business, you need to have your margins at your fingertips. Understanding your margins for each of your SKUs lets you know if any of the products might be a good fit for marketplaces. They also help you assess if you have enough margin for customs duties on international sales. Finally, they will help you understand if you can offer free shipping, bundle discounts, or cash back options. But sadly, most e-commerce companies very rarely understand their ma...
Dec 16, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 219
Send us Fan Mail Most companies are very rarely effective with their pricing strategies. They might have very simplified pricing strategies such as cost-plus to avoid the analyst overhead and lose money by not charging enough. Or they might have very manual processes to monitor competing SKUs at marketplaces or over the web and might lose their margins with the admin overhead. While monitoring pricing has never been straightforward, the newer tools are making the process easier and helping compa...
Dec 15, 2021•45 min•Ep. 218
Send us Fan Mail The automotive industry has always been challenging for manufacturers and distributors serving it. You might have ultra-thin margins with every year the OEMs threatening to reduce the costs further. You also have had traditional demand forecasting issues where the demand forecasted by industry groups may be off by as much as 50%. Also, with COVID and supply chain issues, the job of forecasters has become even more challenging. Now your choice is to overstock or overwork to meet ...
Dec 14, 2021•51 min•Ep. 217
Send us Fan Mail How hard could running a store be? Isn't it as simple as keeping a bunch of products, renting a place, and selling? Also, how hard could it be when you have multiple locations where customers expect consistent experience when they visit any of the stores? Well, if e-commerce is hard, running a retail chain that is known for its customer experience like Starbucks or WholeFoods is equally hard. First, you need to make sure the customers can find the right products at the right pla...
Dec 13, 2021•48 min•Ep. 216
Send us Fan Mail You can't spell Automotive without the mention of Plex. While not as penetrated as other bigger players such as Infor, Epicor, or SAP, Plex has had a significant impact on the ERP community due to the quality of its product. That's probably the reason Rockwell decided to acquire them. But the bigger reason why Rockwell acquired them is because of their MES and IoT capabilities. In fact, if you look closely, Plex would appear more of the MES than ERP. That's also probably why com...
Dec 11, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 215
Send us Fan Mail Even though CFOs and Controllers are responsible for driving the transformation inside the company, they often have to put the needs of their peers in operations, sales, and HR before their own needs. Also, technology decisions are always about trade-offs. If you make the life of customer-facing teams easier, it would mean that your backend teams might need to work harder to meet the expectations. What systems do finance leaders need to drive finance transformation? Is ERP enoug...
Dec 10, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 214
Send us Fan Mail While free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you provide some insights into your funnel and customer behavior, you are simply scratching the surface with the amount of analytics you would need to drive marketing results. With multiple systems being used in the e-commerce architecture, including CRM, website, PIM, and marketplaces, you need a centralized analytics platform to determine which products are the right fit for which channel. Which marke...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 213
Send us Fan Mail If you plan to acquire ISO or AS, one of the critical steps for this journey would be to go through the internal audit process. But who is responsible for internal audits? Is it the external consultants who will be providing the certifications? Is it the quality department? Or is it department heads? While it may seem counter-intuitive, the role of external consultants is not to do the internal audits. The internal auditors are selected from one of the internal teams that is cur...
Dec 08, 2021•41 min•Ep. 212
Send us Fan Mail As you grow, you will go through several stages of S&OP maturity. Sales always conservatively estimate the inventory as they don't want to miss any opportunities. But finance executives want to reduce the inventory as much as possible as that has carrying costs. While you might be aware of the inventory issues, solving them is hard, as they require cross-functional collaboration and agreements across teams. Inventory turnover is one metric that could help you achieve your go...
Dec 07, 2021•41 min•Ep. 211
Send us Fan Mail You might not worry about vendors until one day your production line stops because you didn't realize that you had a single point of failure with your processes. You might also make a strategic choice to simplify your processes by choosing just one vendor for most of your components. But while you might not have issues as of today as you may have had reliable vendors supporting you for a long time, it doesn't mean that you will never face issues because of a single source of sup...
Dec 06, 2021•39 min•Ep. 210
Send us Fan Mail Most large enterprise customers rarely look for an ERP solution outside of SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft as they offer comprehensive global solutions with localizations in most countries. This allows you to use a truly global solution without requiring a country-specific solution for the countries where non-global solutions fall short. When it comes to a truly global solution, some industries have specific supply chain management needs, including global trade management, transporta...
Dec 04, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 209
Send us Fan Mail Building information architecture for e-commerce companies is not easy. Most e-commerce companies serve B2B and B2C, so they need customer-facing websites along with an ERP. But then, with the blurring business models, e-commerce companies, especially those that are DTC, are expected to do a lot more, including managing their complex warehouses and sometimes their fleet for the last-mile delivery if 3PLs may not be as cost-effective or might not be able to meet the lead time req...
Dec 03, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 208
Send us Fan Mail There is so much talk about marketing automation. But, is marketing automation about automating the entire marketing, so you don't have to hire anyone in the marketing department? Or is it about predicting and creating engagements through content at every step of the way as buyers move through the funnel? How much investment does marketing automation require? Are there any best practices on what to automate and what could be overkill? How important is technology to achieve marke...
Dec 02, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 207
Send us Fan Mail While ERP systems have come a long way with their capabilities and faster time-to-value, these investments still take a long time to deliver value to your business, even if you may have gone live within 90 days. Also, you will uncover real issues with the ERP system once you start running your business on the new system due to the lack of interest from most stakeholders during the testing and implementation phase. Finally, the post-implementation phase may cost you more than the...
Dec 01, 2021•44 min•Ep. 206
Send us Fan Mail If you are a warehouse manager, your goal will be to get as many shipments out of the door as fast as possible. You might also be tempted to compare your ratios with other similar warehouses or the warehouses of your competitors. But as each business is different, each warehouse and its ratios will be different as well. So while you need to consider the warehouses and inventory as part of your continuous improvement plan as you learn more about your business and processes, you c...
Nov 30, 2021•39 min•Ep. 205
Send us Fan Mail The larger the organization, the harder it becomes to roll out the implementation and truly reap its benefits. Also, the ERP implementation needs to be treated as a continuous improvement project as the context will change, and as you acquire more data from your ERP implementation, you will have more opportunities to improve your processes. If you don't share your inventory, customer, and vendor data across sites, you will not gain true cost-saving opportunities due to the siloe...
Nov 29, 2021•48 min•Ep. 204
Send us Fan Mail While evaluating ERP systems, one of the critical choices you will have to make is whether to go for ERP systems that are supported directly by the OEM vs. through partners. In the SMB space, most large vendors support their systems through resellers. But some vendors such as IQMS, QAD, and IFS don't have their channels as developed and support their products primarily through their professional services teams. Also, before its acquisition by Dassault systems, IQMS had a very in...
Nov 20, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 203
Send us Fan Mail How would you feel if you noticed the availability of your favorite shirt on a website, but when you walked to the store, it wasn't available there. How would you feel if the coupon provided on purchase from the website would not work on a mobile device because of the disconnected loyalty databases? The channels are increasing at an ever-increasing rate, and with that, the complexity of building omnichannel architecture increases exponentially. Omnichannel experience requires yo...
Nov 19, 2021•57 min•Ep. 202
Send us Fan Mail 48% of customers buy sooner when they have a coupon. And 37% of customers buy more than they normally would. These numbers could be a great tool to drive sales and results. Most people think of coupons as discounts but successfully implementing a good coupon strategy requires far more planning. The coupons require you to identify appropriate distribution channels so they get seen by the customers. The coupon also requires you to identify the right audience and have incentives fo...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 201
Send us Fan Mail Creating consumer products that don't have a pre-existing category is much harder to sell and commercialize than you would think. You have to figure out how to go through procurement, who will probably not be very receptive to your product as they might get beat up by their management. You may also not have enough funding for advertising campaigns to create the kind of buzz a new product requires. What can you do? You need to think deeper. You have to find non-traditional ways t...
Nov 17, 2021•46 min•Ep. 200
Send us Fan Mail Cannabis has become a booming industry, with several states legalizing the use of cannabis in their states. And the industry is also becoming complex with the ever-increasing applications of Cannabis products and their by-products. The companies need to comply with the state requirements, but there might also be additional process overheads due to federal limitations. While the Cannabis industry has some similarities with other industries such as manufacturing, food, or tobacco,...
Nov 16, 2021•48 min•Ep. 199
