To address the challenges in today's business market, medium and large manufacturers often look to their enterprise resource planning system, the proper functioning of which affects all aspects of the business. These companies need a robust ERP system that can handle complex operations across departments, the exponential growth of data, etc., optimally integrating all aspects of the business into one coherent system to facilitate the entire manufacturing process.
Technology Evaluation Center's 2011 ERP Buyer's Guide for Medium and Large Manufacturers is now available for download.
Medium and large manufacturing companies face many challenges that threaten to disrupt the operations, processes and growth of their business. These challenges relate to the use of legacy systems, ensuring legal and regulatory compliance, re-engineering of business processes, the impact of mergers and acquisitions, offshoring and re-shoring initiatives, limitations of information technology infrastructure, and the advent of social media and collaboration.
In addition, these manufacturers must continuously respond to changes to the supply and demand of consumer products - brought about in part by disturbances to the economy, presence of competing products, and changes in the attitudes and needs of consumers - all the while aiming to reduce costs, increase profits, and remain competitive. They must find ways to alleviate redundancy within and quicken the pace of their production cycles, improve visibility throughout the product lifecycle process, and reduce their time to market to maintain a competitive advantage.
