More and more American manufacturers are considering (or have already started) reshoring and onshoring their operations. In fact, Bloomberg reports that in transcripts of US companies’ earnings calls and presentations, onshoring buzzwords were mentioned frequently in 2022 as companies worked to realign their supply chains for success.
Put simply, domestic manufacturing is experiencing a resurgence that’s largely being driven by companies’ desire to shorten and control their global supply chains.
With the national unemployment rate hovering at 53-year lows, hiring more people to fill new positions opened up by reshoring isn’t a viable or affordable option for manufacturers. Not only is skilled labor hard to find, but higher wages mean that even if you do find new people to fill the empty seats, the payroll expenses may be higher than expected.
Optimizing Procedures and Improving Operational Efficiency
At a broader level, manufacturing itself is in the midst of a digital transformation as companies across all sectors seek out new ways to apply technology in their operations. For many of these manufacturers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms serve as a central command center for managing all aspects of their businesses.
Specifically, ERP systems are used to manage, plan and organize tasks that support the operations of manufacturing businesses. These tools integrate with the other software systems a manufacturer may use, thus providing the organization with full visibility and management capabilities for their manufacturing operations. “Manufacturing ERP solutions enable a company to optimize its procedures and improve its operational efficiency,” CIO Insight reports.
For manufacturers, ERP also offers:
- Automation for streamlining work processes
- Insights for strategic decision making and inventory optimization
- Greater visibility across all areas of operation
- Third-party integrations that allow for more advanced management capabilities within one centralized system.
According to CIO Insight, the top features to look for in a manufacturing ERP system include material requirements planning, quality control, inventory management and batch/lot tracking. NetSuite offers these and other capabilities on a unified, cloud-based platform that both onsite and offsite team members can use to track, collaborate and contribute.
Best ERP for Manufacturers: NetSuite Checks All of the Boxes
A scalable foundation for growing manufacturing firms, NetSuite offers a complete solution that benefits the end-to-end organization.
Here are seven powerful features that NetSuite offers manufacturers, and features that you should expect your own ERP to deliver:
- Financials: NetSuite’s financial management solution is used by thousands of organizations to manage their accounting needs. This software accelerates your financial close, provides strong expense management, offers streamlined and auditable revenue management and ensures complete real-time visibility into the financial performance of the business.
- NetSuite Advanced Order Management: Capture the omnichannel experience quickly and profitably, delivering the perfect order every time with minimal effort. NetSuite enables you to fulfill orders from anywhere in a timely manner so you can delight your customers and keep them coming back for more.
- Supply Chain Management. NetSuite’s Supply Chain Control Tower gives your business unparalleled control and visibility over its global supply chain and the related suppliers, contract manufacturers and vendors.
- Global Business Management: NetSuite’s OneWorld solution addresses the complex multinational and multi-company needs of organizations. It enables businesses to adjust for currency, taxation and legal compliance differences at the local level, with regional and global business consolidation and roll-up. Multi-country third party tax offerings integrate easily for scalability.
- Omnichannel: A sales, marketing and customer service approach that give buyers a unified, seamless experience regardless of which channel they use, omnichannel requires tight integration between a company’s core business systems and its e-commerce, point of sale (POS) and/or EDI platforms. NetSuite can handle omnichannel on its own, and it also integrates directly with ecommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM): NetSuite’s native CRM drives the complete customer lifecycle and strengthens customer relationships all without the need to integrate – it comes with every NetSuite ERP offering. NetSuite CRM provides a seamless flow of information across the entire customer lifecycle from lead through to opportunity, sales order, fulfillment, renewal, upsell, cross-sell and support.
- Marketing: Regardless of how you focus your marketing efforts, NetSuite has the core capabilities you need to manage the entire marketing process including the creation, execution and measurement of email campaigns.
Once in place, NetSuite provides the foundation that manufacturing companies need to be able to simplify and automate important business processes. It also helps organizations eliminate the use of error-prone spreadsheets, reduce time to market of new products, improve order processing efficiency and more closely monitor and control costing.
An Implementation Partner that Understands You
With extensive experience working with traditional and contract manufacturing firms, ScaleNorth provides manufacturers with NetSuite implementations and ongoing consultative services that manufacturers need to optimize their NetSuite investments. We also build out the customizations and integrations that manufacturers require as they reposition operations closer to home and adopt technology solutions that help them achieve their reshoring and onshoring goals.
ScaleNorth has deep experience implementing NetSuite for manufacturing firms. Collectively, our team members have 1,000+ years of experience helping organizations successfully connect their systems, data and people; replace their legacy solutions; and operate more efficiently and cost-effectively. Contact us today to learn how we can help your company advance its digital transformation goals using an ERP that’s tailor-made for growing manufacturing firms.