The pandemic and the current war in Ukraine continue to affect the supply chains of Manufacturers in the UK.
Supply Chain Management in 2022
This Gartner article provides a global overview, but in summary this Gartner author concludes:
One thing is certain: 2022 will bring unexpected twists and turns that will require continued agility, resilience, and adaptability in supply chains. While the two-year journey to get to this point has been exhausting, further diligence is required. Business leaders are telling us that their boards and executive committees have supply chain disruption fatigue and want to know when the pain will end. As a community, we’ll need to navigate our own soft landing as markets move back toward equilibrium.
Three Key Effects of the current climate on Supply Chain for Manufacturers
- Severe disruptions to supply chains
- Labour costs and recruitment/retainment
- Rising energy costs
- Increasing costs of raw materials
- It is estimated that some 46% of manufacturers in the UK still rely on processes that are manually driven.
Three Key Drawbacks of Manual Processing & Supply Chain
- The lack of clear, cross departmental, real-time data reduces the efficiency of key decision making.
- Order accuracy is reduced by over 20%
- Financial processing costs are 15% higher
- Individual workflows and disparate systems take valuable time to piece together for reporting purposes. Reports therefore are often based on out of date information.
- Reliance on staff to complete repetitive and remedial tasks increases labour costs and protracts processing times.
ERP for Supply Chain Agility
In 2022 so far, it could be said that management teams are focussing on the day to day of running a business which is understandable. Plans to digitally transform are often being put on the ‘back burner,’ often to manage the demands of an increasingly erratic supply chain.
Supply Chain disruptions are likely to be longer term
However, in a classic ‘Catch 22’, supply chains cannot become more resilient and flexible whilst relying on manual processes. Increasing labour costs, the additional material and energy costs of order errors and unideal works planning plus the risks of ‘sketchy’ forward materials purchasing can make businesses vulnerable over time.
Supply chain management must be sustainable for the long term and management teams are reporting experiencing ‘burn out’ endeavouring to overcome the current delays and costs of and in materials so they can keep the shop floor running.
Non-automated supply chains and operations take many management man hours to oversee.
So, is there available resource to take on a ‘new project’?
In short – can businesses afford NOT to find the resource to digitise processes using Cloud ERP?
A single system provides cohesive information across a business.
Good data enables management teams to make the right decisions based on the current situation rather than retrospectively which in the current climate is often too late.
Forty-five percent of Financial Controllers reported that their key concern was having a real time view of invoices and payables.
Deploy a Microsoft Cloud ERP system in 4 weeks to support your Supply Chain Management
An ERP Cloud deployment should not take multiple months, it should take only weeks.
Meticulous and accurate migration of customer current data, coupled with empathetic, flexible, and effective training has allowed Qi to complete a large number of projects since March 2020 in 4 weeks, from project planning to going live.
Not just one or two projects – 86% of our migrations from Sage, QuickBooks, Xero, and Factory Master (for example) to Microsoft Business Central, were completed in 4 weeks!
The remaining 14% of projects had an extended timeline, at the customer’s request. (Qi is not dogmatically prescriptive. We work as your partner and take on board your specific needs.)
Thought for the Day
If you feel you can’t see the wood for the trees and want to assess whether your business and your team would benefit from a concise, successful project which resulted in a move to a modern ERP in just 4 weeks – call Qi for some advice.