MPV
Systems Inc specializes in Optimizing
Productivity for Infor
Visual ERP. MPV software will lift productivity in your enterprise to
levels found only in corporate environments.
Productivity
improvement is the key reason many SMBs invest in an ERP system like Infor
Visual ERP; however, after a system has been implemented it must be optimized
to realize the return on investment. Implementation projects alone typically
generate only a small percentage of the potential ROI; productivity
optimization initiatives deliver most of the return. For example, a project
that saves
one hour of time per week for an employee that costs $25/hr gross is worth
$6,375 over the standard five year life-cycle of a software product; if you run the
software for seven years that return increases to $8,925. Often SMBs do not
consider this and are disappointed with the modest gains accrued from the
initial implementation. The good news is that optimizations, unlike
implementations, are small easy to manage projects that can be done
incrementally over time; they generate excellent returns.
While
many software developers have solid technical knowledge they rarely possess the
essential
business management skills and experience that MPV Systems brings to every Productivity Optimization project. With
over 10 years of experience implementing, supporting and customizing Infor
Visual ERP; management experience in the manufacturing sector; and as a retail
business owner, I have the in-depth understanding of business operations that
is essential for building successful Productivity Solutions. A developer must
be able to see beyond immediate issues and elucidate the underlying opportunity
in order to deliver a solution that truly optimizes productivity. When an
opportunity has been identified it must evaluated correctly to determine a
budget for its solution because a Solution that costs more than the value of
the opportunity is no solution at all.
I
use the sole-practitioner business model to deliver well-formed and
cost-effective solutions because history teaches that the most elegant and economical
designs flow from the mind of a single individual. This approach has key
advantages over a “team/committee” model for smaller scale projects: it
strengthens the collaboration between the client and developer; saves valuable
time otherwise expended on non-productive communications among team members and
re-works that result from miscommunication; ensures the customer always has
direct contact with the developer; and minimizes project administrative costs.
If additional skills or expertise is required other professionals are consulted
as required.
The
following is a listing of the activities that are common to MPV Systems
Productivity Optimization projects.
Productivity
Optimization Initiatives:
Business
Analysis
The
starting point of every well-founded solution is a thorough analysis of its
challenge. The opportunity must be first understood in both financial and
technical terms. Too many SMBs and developers gloss over this essential step in
their urgency to get to a Solution with the conviction that they have no
choice; others merely lack the skills and experience to properly evaluate an
opportunity. Without proper analysis, there is no reliable way to set a project
budget, measure progress or evaluate the ROI of a project upon completion. MPV
Systems will simply not agree to develop a solution unless and until a proper analysis
has been performed.
Business
Process Automation (BPA)
BPA
offers an enterprise maximum ROI. In a pure BPA project one or more manual
processes are replaced by an automated routine so that 100% of the user’s
labour is recovered. In most ERP systems, tasks such as scheduling and MRP are good
examples of BPA. There are other common opportunities for BPA involving
inventory transactions that can save significant cost. In identifying and
evaluating processes that may be candidates for automation, the aim to find
those which are fairly rigid, are repeated frequently and have a lot of steps.
Business
Process Streamlining (BPS)
The
two biggest shortcomings of commercial enterprise software products is their lack of configurability and missing features. With the smaller
packages instead of an enterprise being able to configure the software around
its business processes, the enterprise is forced to reconfigure its processes
around the inflexible configuration of the software. This limitation can add significant
cost to implementation and bloat operational workflows. But the good news is
that it doesn’t have to be this way. With a handful of BPS initiatives an enterprise can
transform an inflexible commercial ERP system into a first tier product and recover virtually
thousands of hours of lost productivity per year. BPS uses a CDM to bring all of the features, functions
and logic required to complete a enterprise-specific process together into one
window; they minimize the need to surf between windows; they reduce mouse
clicking to an absolute minimum; they automatically search for and provide the
right information required to make decisions; and they obviate the need for
‘workarounds’ by providing any new features that may also be required to
complete a task.
System
Integration Extensions
Commercial
information systems integrate common business systems up to a point.
Inevitably, individual enterprises must add the necessary extensions to ensure
that their systems are fully integrated. MPV integration applications can
wire-up virtually any database application within the client’s information
domain and ensure that data moves properly between the ERP and other systems.
Diagnostic
and Management Reporting
Diagnostic
reporting is an often overlooked area with the potential to generate considerable
cost savings. Many higher level functions in ERP systems such as MRP do not
perform pre-execution checks to validate the raw data that they will be
processing. Typically when they encounter invalid data they simply raise an
exception message and quit. While this may be acceptable when processing times
are relatively short, it is not an acceptable strategy for longer running
processes especially those that are resource intensive and run autonomously
after hours. By adding diagnostic data checking routines, the success rates of
long running processes can be increased significantly.
Utilities
and Scripts
Most
of the commercial ERP systems do not provide a comprehensive suite of built-in
utilities so MPV Systems provides custom utilities and scripts to meet the
client’s specific business needs. These artifacts are very useful and cost
effective for handling common data maintenance and batch operations.