Getting Your Back-Office Operations in Order

When it comes to your back-office solutions, manufacturing companies have a lot to consider for managing all the various aspects of your business. However, before we dive into that topic – let’s clarify what we mean when we say, “back-office.”   

Even as manufacturing has rapidly evolved over the past decade, back-office still refers to processes, platforms, and applications that don’t directly interface with customers yet are key departments within an organization like Production, Scheduling, Costing, Order Processing, Human Resources, Payroll, IT, Accounting, and Inventory. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software encompasses most back-office functions. 

Many manufacturing professionals, even executives, and managers, still equate ERP systems with accounting functions and the creation of financial statements. However, the reality is that ERP systems do for the office what new machinery and equipment does on the shop floor. It automates, streamlines, accelerates, and more accurately performs the daily business functions than what could have been achieved in the past. Those benefits result in more timely internal operations performed easier, better, and more cost-effectively than ever before.

While supply chain managers are currently squeezing as much as they can from vendors and new equipment — along with incorporating lean techniques on the shop floor to make the workforce more efficient, cost-effective, and push quality to an all-time high; there seem to be little more manufacturers can do. However, we are here to prove that you can still do a lot without spending more time or money and using your existing resources! 

A significant portion of the company’s internal operations or overhead is where we recommend starting. This area is the laser focus of back-office automation. Those in the back office have more to do with how much money your company has in raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods inventory than people who work out on the shop floor. They control how well manufacturing is planned to get products to the customer on time. They are tasked with managing jobs on the shop floor and getting them done as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. We have consistently witnessed operations managers effectively automate their shop floor and have far more capacity than their office can help them take advantage of. With faster and more accurate back-office processes and operations, your entire organization’s shipments, inventory levels, billing, and record-keeping will also be more timely, accurate, and optimized, leading to a more profitable company and happier customers.

Too many facilities are still operating using a rag-tag bunch of incompatible back-office software systems and applications. Accounting will be using one system, the warehouse on another, payroll keeping its own labor-force software, and human resources and sales are operating on different systems too. We refer to this as “duct-tape” software. It means the software and technology aren’t integrated, rather inefficiently tied together via reports, redundant information, spreadsheets, and a lot of wasted manual effort.

A duct-tape software approach drives overhead costs up and slows down their ability to support the shop floor. Businesses should look for one uniform software system to allow everyone to work harmoniously together, especially as they grow. All departments should work together and share their responsibility to propel the company forward. This can be accomplished with a solution like Infor’s SyteLine ERP (CloudSuite Industrial/CSI). Software modules that work with SyteLine can also enhance management’s abilities and operations, like The Lake Companies’:

• Shop-Trak – Creates automation and visibility between your manufacturing shop floor and the rest of your company
• Doc-Trak – Eliminates mountains of paperwork, significantly improving record-keeping and live document access from the sales to the shop floor to payroll and all the points in-between
• Fact-Trak – Solves the problem of management saying they have years and years of data but no information. Fact-Trak responsively supports management’s ability to interpret valuable ERP data and gives you the tools to measure and improve your internal operations, so you can move your company forward

There is no better time to plan for your company’s future. As technology and manufacturing continues to evolve at a rapid pace, you have to have the right people, technology, and best practices in place. At The Lake Companies, we have nearly 40 years of experience helping manufacturers optimize their existing resources to drive business growth.

If you are interested in learning more about how we can work together to implement the best practices and technology for your organization, contact us now here.