We successfully manufacture and sell products and services in the field of machinery. We are looking for a new ERP system for our medium-sized company that can also be expanded to include an online shop.
We are pursuing the following goals with the new ERP system:
Can goals:
- Ideally, complete replacement of the existing ERP system
- Preferably connection to supplier systems
- Manual interfaces should be automated
Required goals:
- User-friendly
- Support for different end devices
- Web shop connection
- The system should include CRM or be connected to CRM
- Support for prototype construction and development
- Personnel scheduling
- Display serial numbers
- Life cycle management
- Display supply chain with multiple material provision
- Import price lists from suppliers
- CAD interface
- Adjustable workflows that guide a process through the various departments
The software solution to be procured should be used in the following areas:
- Financial accounting/controlling
- Sales/rental
- Purchasing
- Warehouse (two storage locations, approx. 300 storage spaces)
- Production (individual production of special machines, series production)
- Development / prototype construction
- Customer service
Excerpt from the planned requirements (ideally):
General requirements
- Individually customizable, user-friendly interface
- User authorization concept
- Standardized interfaces for importing and exporting data
- Office integration (Word, Excel, PPT, Outlook)
- Workflows
- Recognize and avoid duplicate data
- Scheduler and calendar functions with follow-up functions
Accounting
- Financial accounting
- Budget planning, financial planning, liquidity planning
- Manage overdraft facilities and other types of financing
- Chart of accounts in different languages
- Drill-down function from account balance to document level
- Accounts receivable
- Management of invoice items, sorting, invoice layout
- Open items and multi-level dunning process
- Credit notes
- Discounts and interest on arrears
- One-time debtors
- Payment transactions according to national standards
- Foreign currencies
- Pro forma invoices
- Confirmation of arrival for sales in other EU countries
- Accounts payable
- Efficient recording of payment proposals and
- Outgoing payments
- Document entry
- Credit notes
- Multiple bank accounts per vendor
- Contract management, document management, document management
- Bank accounting
- Maintaining bank accounts in foreign currencies
- Data carrier exchange for payment transactions via country-specific cash software
- Importing electronic account statements with open item reconciliation for incoming payments for accounts receivable and accounts payable
- Asset accounting
- Recording of main, sub, and planned assets
- Depreciation according to standard (straight-line, declining balance) or user-defined
- Change of depreciation method for the asset
- Allocation of depreciation to cost centers according to distribution key
- Cost accounting
- Recording and processing of all costs and services incurred
- Functions for calculating cost prices (e.g., material, production, or administrative costs)
- Calculation of offer prices, production costs
- Break-even analyses
- Freely definable cost type plan
- Budget planning
- Operating data collection with various quantity evaluations
- Calculation of product- or customer-related contribution margins
- Analytical and statistical cost planning, plan simulations
Management Information System / Controlling
- Management cockpit, interfaces where management-relevant key figures and reports converge
- Display of business charts, traffic lights, bars, charts, pies, tables, maps, statistical functions, etc.
- Balance sheet analyses
- Sales analyses, ABC analyses
- Liquidity and cash flow analyses, liquidity planning
- Creation of key figures and key figure systems
- Comparative statistics - previous year and current year
- Options for easily requesting the degree of completion of projects
- Customer statistics
Personnel and salaries
- Recording, managing, and evaluating operational working hours and absences
- Vacation planning
- Personnel costs
- Support and setup of various working time models, such as part-time, flexitime, teleworking/home office, working time accounts, modular system, sabbaticals, family care leave
- Posting of working hours to projects, cost centers, or activities
- Real-time recording via digital “time clock” or terminal, trust-based working time, and self-recording via employee self-service
- Mobile time recording with smartphone or tablet
Sales processing
- Order processing
- Order handling
- Pricing and price management functions: discounts, price lists, volume discounts, promotional prices, customer-specific special prices
- Text module management for texts in invoices, delivery notes, order confirmations, etc.
- Inventory alerts from inventory management
- Alerts for payment arrears or credit limit exceedances when entering orders
- Statistics
- Freely combinable header and item discounts, quantity and value discounts
- Customer documents (quotes, invoices) in various customer-specific languages
- Goods and goods group management
- Document management
- Functions for online shops
- Project management
- Management of external projects (customer projects) and internal projects (e.g., trade fairs)
- Scheduling and capacity planning
- Resource management
- Project pre- and post-calculation possible (income and expenditure per project item)
- CRM
- Creation and management of customer data, companies, and addresses with any number of contact persons and contact-related data such as telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, blogs, and websites
- Processing of additional fields that are available in addition to the standard fields for addresses and contact persons (e.g., age, qualifications, position, hobbies)
- Office integration (Excel, Word, Outlook)
- Geographical display of addresses via Maps, Earth, or Street View in conjunction with routes
- Tour planning
- Follow-up function, calendar, appointments
- Log phone calls, correspondence, and visit reports by address
- Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
Purchasing processing
- Order forecast
- Order management, inventory monitoring
- Invoice verification
- Overview (cockpit) for open orders, open invoices, open deliveries, open credit notes
- Processing of direct deliveries (drop shipments) with mapping in the system
- Handling of partial deliveries, partial invoices, and collective invoices
- Complaint management
- Single-stage and multi-stage supply chains
- Shipment tracking, telematics
- Transport management
Production
- Capacity planning
- Production optimization and production planning with a focus on series production, individual production, variety production, or batch production
- Bill of materials processing, e.g., hierarchical breakdown of a product into assemblies, which in turn are further broken down, etc.
- Logistics functions that map the internal material flow
- Machine control and production control
- Operational data collection
- Material requirements planning
- Production control station
- Mapping of material provision with multiple production stages
Development
- Growing parts list
- Preliminary costing, final costing
- Patent management
Customer service
- Recording of complaints
- Mapping consignment goods
- Service requests, overview and traceability
- Service order
- Mobile recording of billing-relevant order data: Time, spare parts, and material recording at the customer's site
- Mobile warehouse, parts inventory management
- Resource planning (for service technicians)
- Serial number recording, batch management
Rental
- Mapping of the rental process
- Disposition of rented equipment, available equipment
- Rental prices
- Interim billing for long-term rentals
- Mapping of possible additional insurance policies
Warehouse and inventory management
- Goods receipt, goods issue
- Storage location management
- Import function (article master data, supplier lists, etc.)
- Labels, storage location labels, barcodes, etc.
- Article reservation system
- Support for various storage strategies (HIFO, LIFO, KANBAN, chaotic storage, etc.)
- Serial and batch number management
- Shipping functions, shipping connection, e.g., to DHL, UPS, DPD, GLS, and Hermes
- Statistics and search
Approximately 20 software workstations are planned.
Note:
Detailed specifications can be requested from SoftGuide.