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.