Road to recovery

By Andrew Kinder, Director Solutions Marketing, Infor

Given the difficult conditions that have prevailed in manufacturing throughout the economic downturn, you may think that the only good course of action is to stay hunkered down and wait for it all blow over for good. Thankfully, however, there are plenty of sings that recovery is underway across Europe and there are a number of actions that manufacturers can take to accelerate their own recovery.

Given the difficult conditions that have prevailed in manufacturing throughout the economic downturn, you may think that the only good course of action is to stay hunkered down and wait for it all blow over for good. Thankfully, however, there are plenty of signs that recovery is underway across Europe and there are a number of actions that manufacturers can take to accelerate their own recovery.

Infor offer five strategic actions that organisations can undertake today. These actions are not only cost effective, but can help manufacturers immediately, putting them in a better position to take advantage of the recovery.

Smart Move #1 - Protect cash. Businesses recognise the critical importance of cash management, particularly at times when capital and credit are difficult to come by. One way in which manufacturers can release cash is through reducing inventory and work-in-process levels. Infor has observed an uptake in technology solutions around demand and inventory optimisation in the past year and resurgence in interest in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP).

Smart Move #2 - Pursuit of productivity. One measure that is consistent among manufacturing leaders is their relentless focus on productivity, whether this be their production assets, people, warehousing or transport. It makes sense to make the optimum use of existing resources before investing in new products, especially in current times. Technology solutions that help you achieve this are in vogue. An example of this is production scheduling which, through intelligent sequencing through a plant, can reduce time lost due to changeovers by 30% and reduce costs through the reduction of overtime or other shift premiums.

Smart Move #3 - Go green. Whatever your beliefs on the causes of climate change, it is certain that over the next decade manufacturers will need to adapt to operating in an increasingly carbon constrained economy. Government legislation will demand it, important customers will select their suppliers based on it, and having a sustainability strategy for manufacturers is not just good environmental stewardship, it makes good business sense too. Reducing energy use, reducing waste and re-cycling materials saves money. One way in which manufacturers can profit from this is through Infor's EAM Asset Sustainability solution. Since 80 percent of the total cost of operating an asset can be in the energy it consumes over its lifecycle, it makes sense to monitor this intently. By maintaining equipment at its peak performance energy bills can be cut by eight to 20 percent.

Smart Move #4 - Rent instead of buying. You may want to adopt new technology to help you to a stronger, faster recovery but huge upfront costs are a tough sell in a tight-money environment, no matter how big the future payoff might be. An alternative might be to subscribe to business software rather than buy it outright. This preserves cash and without the upfront payment associated with purchased software, has the financial effect of shortening the time to benefit. Software as a Service (SaaS) or Application Managed Services (AMS) are both alternative deployment options offered by Infor to help companies address cost or resource concerns.

Smart Move #5 - Upgrade your business software. Almost all manufacturers have some form of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the normal agreement includes an annual maintenance and support fee entitling customers to the latest versions. Research across the industry, however, shows that the majority of organisations are not on the latest release of their software, with many on versions several years old and facing an uphill effort and high cost to update to the latest version. In effect, this means companies are not getting the full value of their software investment and are missing out on newer capabilities that could help improve efficiencies and innovate processes. Infor has tackled this problem with Infor Flex.

Biography

Andrew Kinder is the Director of Solutions Marketing at Infor. He is responsible for setting the strategy, determining focus industries, aligning forward development direction and driving global execution through marketing and sales enablement and has a background and particular interest in enterprise resource planning.