Manufacturing Ebook

This e-book offers recommendations for an interconnected management approach using best practices in four key areas:

customers, employees, insights, and processes.

Success in the New Economy: A guide to becoming an interconnected business

Discover how connecting the dots across your midsize business will help you succeed in the new economy.

This e-book offers recommendations for an interconnected management approach using best practices in four key areas: customers, employees, insights, and processes.

The manufacturing industry is being reshaped by a number of major trends that will impact the way midsize businesses operate.

For example, due to recent widespread disruption, global growth projections for the industry are being scaled back to pre-financial crisis levels, and issues such as tariff increases, fluctuating trade policies that impact supply chains rising manufacturing costs, and rapidly shrinking talent pool are creating a difficult operating landscape for even the largest, most resilient of industrial manufacturers.

On top of that, midsize organizations across all industries face their own challenges. Their relative size, while in some cases affording them more agility than larger rivals, can leave them vulnerable. Limited cash reserves mean there is little margin for error. Relying on inputs from other manufacturers in complex supply chains can leave them without the materials they need to maintain operations. There are little to no redundant resources while employees work to full capacity and often fulfill different roles.

Attracting top talent is a perennial problem. This made the events of 2020 particularly trying for midsize manufacturers. Firms scrambled to set up IT infrastructure to support remote working; demand for goods collapsed or supply dried up; logistics across borders became radically more complex, and millions of businesses were shuttered worldwide.

Yet, many midsize businesses have successfully weathered this storm. The most successful organizations were those that valued collaboration, cross-business insights, data-driven decision making, and agility, both in terms of processes and employees.

By marrying these traits, they became “interconnected businesses.”

In doing so, they are able to offer outstanding customer and employee experiences, build resilience, and navigate rapid market fluctuations – capabilities that are essential for the future. Interconnected businesses are also in a stronger position to seize new opportunities and pursue growth when the economy stabilizes.

This e-book is designed to help you become an interconnected business using best practices in four key areas: Customers, Employees, Insights, and Processes. 

What Our Customers Say

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner, Baronet Coffee

Bruce Goldsmith, Family Owner

“Anyone you tell that you’re going to a new ERP system, they all give you that ‘pained look.’ To think that we’re on a year from when we did discovery to now three months into our live implementation, and all we’re working on is some fine-tuning. Some of these fine-tuning tasks are those little things that make our life so much easier, but this wasn’t what I expected when we went live because people told me so many horror stories. I was thankful for the effort on both Softengine and Baronet teams.”

Denise Ost, Chief Operating Officer, Goodwill Industries, San Joaquin Valley

The good news is that SAP Business One's Sales Analysis capabilities enabled us to evaluate the results of that campaign and then make adjustments for future promotions. Specifically, we can check the number of transactions, discount levels and net gain or loss per promotion and per location. We have to be very careful with how we spend our precious marketing dollars and the new system gives us the tools to optimize our investment in that area.

Jason Dugan, CFO, Trudeau Distributing Company

Softengine has been a key contributor to our rollout of SAP Business One. The company's consultants were excellent and helped ensure that we had a successful implementation.

Leonard Kang, Operations Manager, Christopher Lena

We decided to find a partner we could put our trust in. Softengine is very experienced and systemized in its approach. We were very confident we’d made the right choice. Small businesses might be intimidated by SAP software. What they don’t realize is that SAP offers solutions designed specifically for small to midsize companies like ours.

Ray Lacorte, VP of Operations, Choice Organic Teas

We feel like we are in great hands with Softengine and the SAP Business One system they installed. It’s nice to finally put all those unreliable ERP systems and redundant procedures in the rear-view mirror.

Justin Ku, Administration & Operations Coordinator, Swabplus

The Softengine team was able to tailor SAP Business One to deliver all the traceability Swabplus needed, including all the applicable reports. Softengine enhanced the core system to enable creation of new batch numbers if components don’t already have them and the option of batch-costing. They also added fields for escalation dates, expiration dates and additional inspection data (e.g., who inspected and when), which could be incorporated into each Certificate of Analysis.

Virginia J. Gregorian, COO, Turbo Wholesale Tires

Our experience with Softengine has been extremely positive. Any time we call for assistance, they always assign someone who’s highly professional and gets the job done quickly. Interestingly enough, I’ve become so much more educated about IT-related matters since working with the Softengine team on this project. Every time we need to upgrade the system, they walk me though all the steps to make sure that I completely understand what’s happening, which contributes to the overall success of the upgrade. It’s been a pleasure to work with them.