How a production company can track all production costs in real time using an ERP.
Most of you may not be familiar with an ERP unless you are really into business and tech. ERP simply means Enterprise Resource Planning. ERPs are widely used in business that mainly need to track production, distribution, sales and returns, accounting, finance and to manage inventory.
An ERP is a set of business software tools designed to facilitate the flow of information among departments within a business. These systems greatly makes business easier to run and manage. ERPs have become widely popular with the ever widening and fast evolving technology. Now almost 90% of most businesses are using an ERP at some point in their daily business.
So how can a production company track all its production costs in real time using an ERP?
Reports and finance tracking
With a well-designed and perfectly implemented ERP solution can offer the business un imaginable benefits. It doesn?t matter the company size, big or small. The ability to instantly process reports at any point of production greatly helps in tracking the production process. Such reports include finance and accounting reports which helps the management and the finance department in knowing how much of resources have been used up to a particular period of time and how many units have been produced with the input of the resources.
Production and Reconciling payroll.
Failing to integrate time and attendance and payroll with an ERP system results in separate maintenance of two or more separate systems in the same business. With an integrated time and attendance system, the ERP is able to track the employs work time hence the management is also able to estimate labor costs and the time a particular unit of production has or will take to complete. Detailed information about time on tasks completed by employs, can help to better manage the workforce and increase their efficiency accordingly.
Generally a well implemented ERP will – when it comes to production ? help with minimizing and estimating production cost, planning and scheduling.
Managing workflows.
Production workflows are different across different industries and the expected outcome is different as well. Items on production may be repaired or modified, produced from raw materials received, from purchased component or put together form the available stocks or externally manufactured. All processes are required to be tracked individually and assessed separately. An ERP helps in managing all these processes at the same time making it easier to maintain and track workflows.
Work in Progress (WIP) I captured in real time and with also tracked with the integration of other services such as hand held devices. Also most ERPs are integrated with POSs (Point of sale) devices, which help in tracking sales of the items in inventory. This makes it easier for the company to know how their items are doing in the market, how much sales have been made, how much has been made in terms of profits, the level of inventories and this determines the level of production directly.
ERPs are a good way for a company to track all its production processes from financing to sales and report generating which all help in critical decision making for companies, there are no limits to what a well-developed, maintained and implemented ERP can accomplish.