Cloud-based ERP vendor Kenandy has bagged a trio of new manufacturing and distribution customers, with each citing the agility, flexibility and the use of the Salesforce Platform as key drivers behind their decision to go with the company.
The companies are Service Pump & Supply (SPS), a provider of and services pumps, motors, and accessories in the industrial and energy sectors, tent and flag manufacturer TentCraft, and industrial sewing machine manufacturer Merrow Sewing Machine Company.
Primed for success
West Virginia-based SPS is a classic example of a legacy style. It found itself in the situation of rigid IT systems holding it back and cited an inability to easily connect its enterprise for reporting purposes, which needed to facilitate a wide array of customer transactions. This resulted in reporting that was slow, manual and inaccurate.
Patrick Farrell, owner and president of SPS explains that the complexity of his business meant no one system really met all of his company’s business needs. He also stated that the relationship needed to be just as flexible as the platform.
“Nobody satisfied all our requirements,” added Farrell. “Kenandy won the day by committing to develop the rental platforms we needed. Plus, with the Salesforce platform we knew we’d be able to expand.”
Looking to the future of the company and its systems, SPS sees the interconnected use of IP-enabled pumps and motors which will effectively monitor themselves and see them placing service calls without the need for human interaction. Farrell expounds, “We could anticipate needs and solve problems in a way that takes less time and money. And if we can help others lower their costs, we add value to the supply chain as opposed to just being a middle man.”
To summarise, SPS says that every aspect of its business is better since implementing Kenandy because it has better visibility into customer data. Simple as that.
Pitching a solution
Michigan-based TentCraft found itself with an aging ERP system which it defined as an ‘ad-hoc’ system cobbled together from Salesforce components. It was concerned that the ‘home-brew’ systems would not be able to support the firm’s need for improved customer-centric focus.
Its business model required a fast turnaround of customer orders, with those orders in turn processed and turned into cash quickly. But being unable to quickly access stock information and manufacturing capacity was of concern to TentCraft CTO Tony Higham. “You just don’t know how much product is in the system,” explains Higham. “You don’t know if you need people to work a couple hours of overtime or you need to push some jobs out or anything like that.”
Agility was key to Higham and his team. This led them away from what they describe as the ‘larger ERP marketplace’. Instead they looked more towards the perceived nimbler cloud-based ERP world. “We have a really, really aggressive culture of continuous improvement, really super aggressive, all the time, every day,” says Higham. “With a traditional ERP, you’re just not going to be able to update and make changes every day the way we can on Salesforce.”
The Kenandy ERP solution was rolled out in less than six months and the company states its go-live process took less than a year. The firm explains that it is the financials side of its business which has most rapidly seen the biggest improvements. With its accounting and inventory systems seeing the biggest benefits.
A stich in time… saves on ERP!
When you make a fundamental change to your business model, no matter what the size of your company flexibility of your IT systems is critical. Additionally, when you are a small company that finds itself operating in a multi-national space making best use of your resources and staff is essential.
Step forward Massachusetts-based Merrow Sewing Machine Company which, due to the success of its ground-breaking ActiveSeam technology in the textile and clothing industry, found itself shopping for a more agile ERP solution.
Merrow CEO Charlie Merrow has this to say about their new ERP platform: “It’s been an unbelievable change for us—a game change. We’ve been able to improve performance with a small staff, which simply wasn’t possible with our prior ERP systems.”
Merrow candidly admits that: “we get things wrong all the time, and that’s just fine. The amazing change with Kenandy is that it lets us iterate through the failure points.”
As an example, Merrow offers up the anecdote of a repair program the company built on top of the Salesforce Platform and integrated with Kenandy. “It was a disaster in the beginning, but one of our smart guys, who doesn’t have a programming bone in his body, easily made adjustments and it’s now turned into an enormous asset for the company.”
What does this mean
The overriding benefit of the Kenandy solution appears to be the thing that most companies aim for: visibility of business-critical data. Merrow defines it as: “Kenandy enables us to focus on the business challenges that allow us to grow and make money rather than on the problems of dealing with software.”
This is something that many businesses aspire to.
