How can smaller manufacturers leverage data to react faster?

We've all heard that data is the new oil. Big data is even more powerful as it allows organizations to use tools like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to derive insight that is not immediately evident, and which the human brain may have a hard time identifying.

But for smaller manufacturing companies, is data really helpful? Is it even accessible?

What kind of data can help manufacturers make smarter decisions?

In this article, we'll dive into this topic and try to make sense of what it really means.

It is very common for new organizations to be driven by the experience and gut-feelings of their founders and managers. After all, the business was likely started because the founder identified a need and believe they know how they can make a difference.

But while human intuition tends to work great in certain scenarios, it is also fundamentally flawed. We tend to let emotions control our actions - excitement, fear, and even hubris, can easily skew our perspective and cause us to make bad decisions.

Further, the human brain can only maintain so much information at the same time, causing us to miss important bits of information that can make a big difference in our decision making process.

We want to make better, and more well-informed decisions when it comes to running our businesses. We want to know that we base our decision on facts, and not on gut feelings.

The way to accomplish this, is to rely on cold data. Information that can tell us very clearly what is, and what isn't.

But when a business is run on Excel files, Google Sheets, multiple separate systems, or an archaic old ERP - getting meaningful data compiled can be an arduous task. To make things worse, if you have to spend a lot of time collating data from multiple systems, you may be acting on outdated information by the time you get the final report.

In 2008 I was handed ownership or an Oracle E-Business Suite ERP system. I was familiar with other ERP systems such as Sage MAS90, ManMan, and others, and I knew that creating new reports was never an easy task. When I asked one of my developers to create a report that the business requested, I was shocked when they responded it will take about a week of work to prepare the report.

This is one of the reasons that when I was handed ownership of our Salesforce implementation in early 2010 - I immediately fell in-love with it. Creating reports and dashboards in Salesforce is a task that takes minutes - not hours, not days, and not weeks.

When we finally decided it was time to say goodbye to our Oracle EBS ERP, the business evaluated other on-premise options such as SAP, as well as Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX. I was at Dreamforce when I met the folks at Rootstock ERP. I was blown away by the implications of having an ERP built on the Salesforce Platform.

It took me almost 2 years to convince our executives that Rootstock and Salesforce are more than just a viable option - they are the best option for us - both in terms of capabilities and flexibility, but also in terms of cost.

One of the biggest benefits that Rootstock and Salesforce provided us once we went live is that we now had reports that showed in real-time how the business was operating. Dashboards gave our directors and c-suite execs high-level visibility into how the business was performing at any given moment in time.

It allowed our Operations team to respond extremely quickly when a supply-chain issue arose, communicating with the Sales Team and arranging for alternative supplies faster than it would have taken us to even discover there was an issue in the past. We had instantly begun practicing data-driven manufacturing and selling.

When you use intuitive and flexible systems like Salesforce and Rootstock to perform your day-to-day activities, you generate data. Data about inventory, Sales, your manufacturing processes, procurement, accounting, and so much more.

With a tool like Rootstock you can then create reports that allow you to connect activities across multiple departments and gain invaluable insight.

Salesforce Reports allow us to look at data at the 1000 foot scale - looking at trends and exceptions across multiple records. It is also easy to add Graphs and Charts to visualize this data into meaningful insight.

Salesforce Dashboards provide the 10,000 foot view - a collection of multiple reports, allowing us to glean information across many different aspects of the business and provide a very high-level visual representation of how the business is doing.

We typically use Dashboards to provide real-time visibility to managers and c-level execs.

Dashboards can also have conditional formatting, allowing the creation of score-cards that

quickly allow you to see how the business performs with regards to very specific metrics.

The bottom line is that managers can no longer afford to operate blind, without access to the metrics and data that their business generates on a daily basis. Selecting systems and tools that collect the data in an effective and intuitive way is critical to ensure the business can then report and act on changes to its performance or changes in the market as quickly as possible.

Do you use data in making business decisions?

• I know my business like the back of my hand. I trust my gut
• While I use some reports, experience is more important
• I use data to make decisions, but wish I had access to more
• Data, combined with my experience is how I make decisions