Your supply chain is the backbone of your business. To run your company efficiently, you need to have complete control over your supply chain. This means constantly monitoring everything that’s going on. Unfortunately, over 69% of companies don’t have a prominent supply chain. Having good supply chain visibility requires that you move beyond just analytical data. It would be best if you also focused on predictive analytics. An ERP system can help. An ERP or enterprise resource planning system consolidates purchase management, demand management, inventory management, shipping and receiving, warehouse management, advanced material management, supplier relationship management, and supplier connection into one platform. This gives you more control over every element in your supply chain, which allows you to collect more accurate data. The best choice is Epicor® Kinetic ERP software. Epicor provides flexible implementation and a user-friendly interface. If you want to know how Epicor ERP software can give you more control over your supply chain, then read our guide.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is the process of sourcing, ordering, and storing your company’s inventory. This process involves everything from ordering raw materials to tracing final product shipments. Epicor ERP provides tools to automate managing your business’ inventory. Epicor offers features that give you more control of your inventory. These include serial tracking, lot tracking, supplier-managed inventory, and customer-managed inventory. One of the best tools Epicor offers is lot tracking. Lot tracking improves supply chain visibility. It allows you to monitor different batches or manufacture lots of products. Epicor’s supply chain management system provides you with automatically generated lot numbers. You can use these numbers to record items you’ve received, track available things, monitor your usage of different parts. You also have the option of storing attributes for other parts. These attributes can include:

• Firmware version
• Expiration date
• Date manufactured
• Heat number

Serial tracing lets you track all of the movements of a part and its components. It assigns a serial number to parts as they move through the facility. This feature is fully customizable and allows for as much or as little part tracking as you want. This system also allows you to record serial numbers in the outbound phase. This will enable you to trace what serial number has been sent to which location. This tool helps company’s save money on overhead costs.

Purchase Management

Purchase management helps you get raw materials to your warehouse faster. Epicor ERP software offers automated purchasing tools. These tools help write purchase orders and track supplier performance. There are also tools available to automate the process of purchasing inventory on a recurring basis. This feature lets you assign contract line items to purchase orders. These purchase management tools help you increase profit and cash flow. As well as decreasing inventory levels, and increasing on-time deliveries.

Warehouse Management

One of the most major supply chain problems that large companies face is how to efficiently manage their warehouse. This is especially true in food supply chain management. Epicor Warehouse Management System (WMS) provides a simple solution to this problem. They provide tools like Epicor® Kinetic mobile warehouse application that allows you to track activities going on in your warehouse while on the go. This allows you to connect your warehouse with your business’s ordering and manufacturing process. It contains several trackers that allow you to categorize all the data in your company. These trackers include transaction trackers, bin trackers, and job trackers.

Demand Management

Epicor® Kinetic ERP allows you to manage long and short-term client contracts. Epicor-ERP provides forecasting tools that give you more control of your inventory levels. This tool works by collecting data and then using the data to make predictions about your companies demand. You can manage the amount of inventory that you have and need with statistical forecasting. You can use this information to make more informed decisions about what inventory is most popular with your clients.

Shipping and Receiving

Epicor Kinetic ERP has modules that allow you to closely track all shipping and receiving activities performed by your company. These tools automate many of the processes needed for successful shipping for small and midsized companies like DHL supply chain. The modules for shipping and receiving enables you to monitor and automate all your shipment activity in one place. After a customer places an order you can set up automatic invoices in Accounts Receivable. You can also print a customizable bill of lading for your shipment. Epicor also provides the option of tracking your shipments. As well as modifying the due dates of your purchase orders as you get new information. An example of one of these tools is Epicor® Kinetic Quick Ship which streamlines the entire shipping process. Quick ship automates shipping processes like rate shopping, hazardous material paperwork, and emails. This helps decrease labor costs. Quick Ship also has a user-friendly interface. It uses only one screen for communicating with carriers and suppliers, calculating fees, and printing labels. Quick Ship also has other capabilities. It allows drop shipping without requiring you to disclose third-party information.

Advanced Material Management

Tracking materials is essential to running an efficient supply chain. If you need more control over the materials in your warehouse Epicor ERP Advanced Material Management is the perfect tool. Especially important when dealing with Epicor® Kinetic ERP Advanced Material Management allows you to track materials in real-time. It also provides immediate updates on all materials in your business. Using a variety of physical tools like mobile devices, and barcode scanners to maintain control of your inventory. Using these tools you can monitor multiple items that are in different locations. You can collect data on different items using identifiers and track those items through different sites.

Supplier Relationships Management

Epicor Kinetic ERP provides specialized tools that help you stay in contact with your suppliers and purchasing agents. Supplier relationship management helps you reduce costs and improve your negotiation skills. It does this by letting you streamline the process of comparing supplier prices. It allows you to create RFQs or Requests for quotes charts with multiple lines. This allows you to compare and contrast different companies to see which is providing you with the best deal. It does this through automated workflows. When a supplier updates pricing information or responds to an RFQ the information in the table is automatically updated.

Supplier Connect

If you act as a supplier to other companies Epicor Kinetic ERP software also provides tools to help you run your company efficiently. These tools help you stay in contact with your clients. Supplier Connect is a small part of Epicor® Kinetic Commerce Connect. It is designed so that suppliers have their own supplier portal where they can update information. They can also use this tool to answer questions and confirm changes to purchase orders. Supplier connect gives you a competitive advantage. It makes you available to clients when they need you and allowing them to interact with your brand. This tool also reduces costs by allowing you to decrease the time you spend answering emails, faxes, or phone calls. This tool also helps you collaborate with your clients. With Supplier Connect you can offer access information about previous invoices, and payments.

Successfully Switching Your Supply Chain

Improving supply chain visibility with an ERP often requires overhauling your current system. Although Epicor Kinetic ERP software has a user-friendly interface your team will need extensive training. Tomerlin ERP provides specialized training for everyone in your company. Tomerlin offers live on-site training and web-based training. With live training, we will send a consultant to your campus to provide training in ERP best practices. All our consultants are certified in tools, production, distribution, and financials. We also provide role-based training. This allows your employees to get an appropriate amount of training depending on their position and how much they will use the software. At Tomerlin-ERP we offer planning for each step in the implementation process. We provide a project manager to help keep your implementation on schedule. A project manager will work with your company’s system administrator to oversee the process and manage any problems that come up.

Take Control of Your Supply Chain

Supply chain visibility helps make your company as efficient as possible. Epicor ERP improves supply chain visibility by combining a variety of business features into a single platform. These features include:

• Purchase management
• Demand management
• Inventory management
• Shipping and receiving
• Warehouse management
• Advanced material management
• Supplier relationship management
• Supplier connection

Using an ERP lets take monitor every element of your supply chain. But switching over has its own challenges. Successfully making the change requires careful planning and training. Luckily Tomerlin-ERP helps guide you through every step of implementation. If you want your company to have more control over its supply chain then contact us today