Aerospace and defense customers need ERP with industry-specific functional attributes to help them comply with mandatory regulations. For that reason, ERP for the aerospace industry includes the standard functionality provided in general manufacturing systems, plus additional tools. In this article, I focus on one of the most important functional areas for those who are evaluating or seeking to improve their aerospace ERP software.
We’ve written many articles about the benefits of ERP, but also wanted to poll the industry to hear what others had to say. Below is a compilation of the answers we received to our survey question, “What is the best benefit you or your company has experienced from using an ERP system?”
The team at Visual South often discusses that question, both internally and with our customers, and the answer varies. The fact is, you need a reason to switch. A real business reason (or reasons). Otherwise, it will be difficult for “to order” manufacturers to justify the ROI to replace a highly functional ERP application like Infor VISUAL.
If VISUAL is working fine for you, there may be no reason to move. If you think you can better utilize VISUAL ERP, our team can help. But if you have maximized VISUAL’s functionality and scalability, it might be worth switching to CloudSuite Industrial SyteLine. But let’s validate that case together.
Infor VISUAL ERP is a solution built for small to mid-market manufacturing companies. The primary customer for VISUAL ERP is organizations that use a work order to produce their product, as opposed to those in a highly repetitive or process manufacturing environment. These work-order-based companies could be make-to-order, configure-to-order, make-to-stock, engineer-to-order, or a combination of all of these.
A recurring theme we’ve seen with companies over the past 25 years is they want to know their total manufacturing costs. Not only do they want to know these costs, but they want to trust the numbers are accurate, and be able to make important business decisions with that knowledge.
I have been in the ERP industry for over 21 years and have worked with companies of all sizes and industries, but primarily have experience with small to medium-sized manufacturing businesses. I am currently in a sales role, so I frequently talk with companies that are interested in one of our Infor ERP products. One of the questions I always ask is “What are you using today?” A lot of times the answer to my question is QuickBooks.
Whether you are working with an Infor Channel Partner or Infor Direct, you’re using the same pricing data. There are no dealer markups or first-line support charges like those that value-added resellers (VARs) typically pass on to their customers.
Infor VISUAL 10 was released in December 2020, and quite a few features were added. There are many resources that go into great detail about the new functionality, including release notes, but here are the highlights we think are most important to know. If you want more details, go to the Visual South VISUAL upgrade page here.
Infor SyteLine has been around for over 30 years and has operated under a few different names and brands during that time. The product has been called Symix, Frontstep, and SyteLine. Most recently, Infor rebranded to CloudSuite Industrial, but the SyteLine name really never went away, so you will hear these terms used interchangeably among people who work with the product.
Overwhelmingly, project-based manufacturers have a requirement for a physical project plan to execute against, where costs can be captured at many levels. That is why Infor CloudSuite Industrial/SyteLine ERP provides a good solution for traditional build/engineer/configure-to-order manufacturers who need to manage a more complex series of events to manufacture finished goods.
