Say goodbye to generic dashboards and data overload. Role-based ERP for manufacturers brings clarity and focus to every job function.
Today’s manufacturers face growing complexity — from volatile supply chains to rapid shifts in labor and technology. You shouldn’t have to worry about ERP complexity too. That’s where role-based ERP comes in. Instead of forcing your employees to sift through mountains of data or navigate through a labyrinth of irrelevant screens to do their jobs, role-based ERP for manufacturers puts the right insights and functions in front of the right people at the right time.
Role-based ERP rethinks the concept of how an ERP presents information to its various users. Instead of requiring you to allow specific functions or features for individual users based on their particular needs, it intelligently delivers relevant data, tools, and permissions to users based on their role — usually with far less manual setup than traditional ERP systems.
As a manufacturer, you already know that your R&D team needs different access to data and functions within your ERP than your sales team or your shop floor employees and supervisors. Role-based ERP simplifies the process of setting up that data and removes distractions and clutter from each role’s interface, enabling them to focus on their work tasks.
Get the eBook and learn the details about role-based ERP for a manufacturing company.
What Different Roles Really Need from Your ERP
As we all know by now, “data is the new oil.” But for your manufacturing company to leverage data effectively, the right data must be accessible to the right users. To understand this, think about the different data that a production manager and a procurement specialist at your company would need to perform their jobs effectively.
Your production manager’s focus will be on keeping jobs on schedule, on budget, and up to quality standards. She needs access to:
- Real-time production schedules
- Material and labor availability
- Historical performance metrics
- Equipment maintenance forecasts
Meanwhile, your procurement specialist needs visibility into:
- Inventory levels (allocated and non-allocated)
- Supplier timelines, contracts, and pricing
- Yield and waste metrics
- Maintenance and production schedules
Dashboards would be a great way to provide quick, easy visibility into each role’s necessary insights, but in many legacy ERPs, customizing dashboards for individual users is time-consuming. Without significant IT involvement, both your production manager and your procurement specialist would see the same home screen when they start the ERP on their computer, and each would then have to navigate through multiple system screens to find the information relevant to their needs.
With a role-based ERP, your production manager and procurement specialist can each view their own home screen, featuring dashboards, alerts, and reports tailored to their specific roles. Each would also have drill-down capabilities that help them quickly investigate additional information.
Examples of two different dashboards in a role-based ERP for manufacturers like Acumatica Cloud ERP:
Faster Decisions, Smarter Collaboration
This kind of role-based visibility not only increases productivity for each role, it also enhances collaboration across the company and promotes greater corporate efficiency. In our example, each role examines relevant data that helps them perform their job, but they also have overlapping data, including production schedules, equipment maintenance requirements, and material availability.
If the production manager adjusts her job schedule and sees that material availability will be impacted, or, conversely, if the procurement specialist learns about a supplier delay, each can quickly and easily communicate with the other to brainstorm potential solutions together and avoid production delays.
Seamless access to shared, relevant data doesn’t just boost individual productivity — it gives your team members the power to work in sync, so they can make smarter decisions faster.
Worried About Complexity? Role-Based ERP for Manufacturers Makes Life Easier
Some manufacturing leaders worry that transitioning to a role-based ERP will require more work from them to configure and maintain each role, but many find that a role-based ERP ultimately reduces the burden on IT and streamlines security, as well as smooths the process of hiring new people or promoting within the company.
Here is how role-based ERP can help with:
- Security
Role-based visibility in your ERP corresponds with role-based security permissions. Your IT team or ERP consultant will be able to clearly define what data each role should (and should not) have access to, and those settings will also determine what each role can see and access to perform their job duties.
- Promotions & new hires
Instead of setting up a new, individualized profile for each new employee, your manufacturing company can rely on standardized roles that you have already set up. You can think of them as templates that speed up the onboarding process in any role, as they provide relevant data access, along with the workflows, approvals, permissions, and capabilities that each role requires.
And if you’re concerned that a role-based ERP will hinder any of your employees’ abilities, don’t be. Today’s cutting-edge solutions give you the flexibility to tailor access, insights, and functionality to fit most role-specific needs — without requiring extensive customization or coding. With a modern ERP, you have the power to give each user the exact access, tools, and insights they need to do their job effectively.
Plan Carefully to Maximize Your Benefits
But let’s think big picture. Looking ahead, role-based ERP can be a powerful enabler of long-term strategic growth for your manufacturing company. Often, manufacturing leaders view role-based ERP as a catalyst for achieving their growth goals because they can see how classifying data visibility by role can help them scale operations with faster, more efficient hiring and promotions, as well as boost their agility through increased insight and enhanced cross-functional collaboration.
As you can see, role-based ERP delivers quite a few benefits to modern manufacturers — but to take advantage of all the benefits available to you, you’ll have to plan carefully. You will want to understand the roles within your manufacturing company and their corresponding responsibilities. You will want to carefully document the types of data and permissions each role requires. You will want to know how best to present this necessary data so that it is easily accessible to each role, without distracting them from their work duties with irrelevant information.
Luckily, you don’t have to do all this planning on your own. Today’s leading role-based ERP solutions for manufacturers, such as Acumatica Cloud ERP, ease the process of setting up and maintaining manufacturing-specific roles. And when you work with a knowledgeable ERP partner like PeopleSense, you can leverage your partner’s experience to help you dive deeply into your company’s unique needs and individual job functions, so you can tailor your ERP to your precise requirements.
Ready to explore how a role-based ERP for manufacturers can help your company drive significant improvements across every area of your production and back-office operations?
Download the eBook: Acumatica Role-Based ERP Software for Manufacturers
Since 2003, PeopleSense has established itself as the definitive ERP and single source workforce management solution provider for businesses of all sizes throughout the U.S. and Canada, offering consulting for M2M® and Intuitive®, Sage HRMS, time and attendance solutions, Acumatica, and related services and products. PeopleSense provides clients with the peace of mind that comes from working with experienced consultants dedicated to customer service, who are affordably priced with no annual contracts. Reach out to get your business software questions answered.