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38 MMS April 2017 mmsonline.com DECIDING FACTORS A Focus on Data-Driven Manufacturing • Calculating productivity before and af ter implementation. • Documenting inventory improvements. • Counting up savings to customers and whether lifetime value has increased. Also consider the advantages between in-house and cloud-based ERP. The latter is often the most user-friendly option. It will probably require fewer members of the in-house team to maintain it. Speak to fellow ERP users. You may find it difficult to speak to direct competitors about their experiences with ERP, but you could communicate with a shop reference who has goals similar to yours and can answer questions from experience. Likewise, you could post questions to online manufacturing groups to gage their opinions. These are good questions to ask: • Were any promises not kept by your vendor? • Does the product do what you expected? • Were any deadlines missed? • Are you paying for product extensions that you do not need? • W e r e h i d d e n c o s t s d i s c o v e r e d a f t e r installation? Scrutinize the demo. We recommend provid- ing the vendor with a demo script that outlines specific functions and features that you will expect to see. Approaching the demo with an open but critical mind will save valuable time and help deter- mine whether the software meets your goals. Calculate the real cost. It is essential to know the true cost of ERP by calculating expenses at each stage. These include: • Upfront cost • Maintenance • User adoption and training • Support • Recurring costs. With the intense interest in data-driven manu- facturing these days, it is all the more urgent for manufacturing companies to re-evaluate the impor- tance of a capable ERP system. www.techsolve.org