Supply Chain Management Software for SMEs

Supply Chain Management software is now readily available for small and medium sized businesses. That’s because Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have come a long way in their ability to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve growth through Supply Chain management. To learn more, download the “Expert Guide to Managing Inventory, Demand, and Uncertainty with Modern ERP Solutions” to understand how ERP software can help your small or medium sized business.

ERP software allows companies in the SME marketplace to optimize and manage all levels of planning and execution in the supply chain — strategic, operational and tactical.

Whether a company is a manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler, ERP has the software tools to help with all aspects of the supply chain management, such as:

SALES

  • Pricing, quotes & contracts
  • Order entry
  • Product configuration
  • Inventory allocations
  • Delivery scheduling & shipping
  • Invoicing
  • Customer returns
  • Sales commissions 
PURCHASING

  • Purchase requests
  • Encumbrance accounting
  • Requests for proposals
  • Purchase orders
  • Outsourcing/Sub-contracting
  • Multi-level approval processing
  • Contracts
  • Invoice tracking 

 

INVENTORY

  • Multi-level warehousing and location management
  • Movements and transactions
  • RF data collection
  • Quality control
  • Costing
  • Acquisition price tracing
  • Inventory control
  • Procurement
MANUFACTURING

  • Routings
  • Discrete or process batch flow
  • BOM/Formula management
  • MPS/MRP
  • Technical data configurator
  • Costing
  • Quality control
  • Forward/backward traceability
  • Shop floor control
  • Capacity planning 

Companies face two different aspects of supply chain management (SCM), both of which are readily handled by comprehensive ERP systems. The first is management of their own supply chain, ensuring that goods are moving from their own suppliers for resale to their customers.

Two Aspects of Supply Chain Management

For many companies, specific goods may never enter their warehouse and instead be shipped directly from supplier to customer. Again, ERP systems designed or customized to suit wholesale distributors should be able to accommodate new business models and flexible sales with and through partners, while still maintaining appropriate transparency for the distributor and customer.

The other aspect of SCM with which many companies now find themselves tasked is actually managing the supply chain as a service for their customers. This approach is newer but is catching on as manufacturers look to focus on their core competencies and reduce time to market with new products while outsourcing details like SCM to trusted partners.

Here too, modern ERP systems are both comprehensive and flexible enough to manage SCM more broadly and open new revenue streams for companies.

What to Look for in ERP for Supply Chain Management

So what should supply management modules look for in an ERP solution with manufacturing, distribution, and wholesale modules?

  • Flexibility across business lines to quickly accommodate a variety of customer needs
  • Macro and micro views of supply chain information, quality data, customer interaction information, sales pipelines,
  • Business intelligence components like dashboards, statistical analysis, predictive analytics and workflow automation.
Sage ERP X3 for Managing The Supply Chain of Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Small and Midsized enterprises need software systems that will help it grow. They need an Enterprise Resource Planning system that gives them the freedom to succeed.

Sage ERP X3 is designed specifically for midsized companies, delivering all the benefits of robust ERP solutions while remaining simple, flexible and scalable. The latest version of this cost-effective end-to-end ERP, Version 7, brings together all of the organization’s operations under one software solution and database, easily accessed and utilized from numerous locations and multiple nations.

As the only Sage partner in North America with implementation experience of V7, we were honoured to present our Early Adopter Implementation experience at the recent Sage ERP X3 Global Convention and the Insider’s Perspective Blog gives an overview of the major developments in the new version.