For a purchased item, you can link an electronic copy of the supplier's certificate of conformance to the relevant lot numbers (batches) for the item, using SYSPRO's multimedia capabilities. You can then view the certificate against a lot when querying the lot and processing transactions, such as job issues, sales or transfers.

Constant innovation is one of the key factors to remaining competitive and on-going research and development to design new and better products is integral to the industry. Your ability to design new products and modify existing designs, as well as improve time-to-market is critical to remaining competitive and profitable.

SYSPRO provides tools to streamline and track the introduction of new product designs and amendments to existing designs, along with relevant costings. SYSPRO's Engineering Change Control (ECC) enables you to apply strict control over your design-to-market processes by providing an integrated rules-based electronic workflow system with full version control, security and auditable history.

ECC gives you the tools to record and track new and modified product design and process changes, assess the impact of these changes on costs and associated data, and control the change routing and approval processes. ECC's queries, audit trail, history and archive facilities, give you quick on-line access to details of prior product versions, as well as the option of reverting to the production of a prior product version if required. In addition, the facility to attach copies of product design drawings to version and release levels provides access to visual details of revisions.

The Where-used Query facility enables you to identify all items affected by the raising of an Engineering Change order for all routes identified as being under Engineering Change Control. In addition, SYSPRO provides a 'replace component where-used' facility that enables the quick replacement of one item with a valid substitute item, thereby streamlining design changes.

SYSPRO's ECC, Bill of Materials, Work-in-Progress and Factory Documentation modules enable you to implement controls to ensure that your products are manufactured under consistent processes, to the correct designs and specifications. Single-level, multi-level, co and by-product bills are all catered for and flexible bill definitions accommodate complex component and sub-assembly requirements.

Chemical production plants are often highly automated with sophisticated measuring and testing systems designed to ensure quality of raw materials and work in progress, as well as high production yields. It is therefore desirable that any ERP production control and tracking system is able to integrate seamlessly with this process technology to exchange information and highlight issues at the relevant points. SYSPRO e.net solutions enables rapid development of secure and version-independent integration with such best-of-breed technology.

SYSPRO enables you to implement continuous improvement by helping you to identify problems and points of waste as they happen. Raw materials and manufactured products in the industry often vary in grade and quality, so tracking and control is essential to reduce waste, scrap and defects. SYSPRO enables you to specify approved manufacturers for raw material supplies and supplier performance can easily be tracked using queries and reports. In addition, SYSPRO facilitates the tracking of materials from purchase through production to customer, thereby maximizing quality control and providing you with the tools to manage product recalls, should they occur.

You can flag purchased items as requiring inspection so that during receipting, detailed records of counts, inspection, scrap, rejects and returns is recorded. Units in inspection are visible, but unavailable for use until accepted into stock. Similarly, SYSPRO's Work in Progress inspection system provides the tools for you to inspect manufactured product quality and, depending on the results, select to receipt, scrap or rework quantities.

Your ability to harness e-Commerce technologies effectively has enormous potential to transform your business and enhance commercial success and growth.

Your customers and suppliers may look increasingly to closer collaboration, to cut production timetables and minimize disruption to their supply chain. This could involve working via their electronic order and supply chain systems to enable streamlining of operations and to reduce margin for error. Multi-organization research and design teams may need to work collaboratively and to achieve this, you must have efficient, secure systems that can deliver and receive information.

SYSPRO facilitates streamlined, secure electronic data interchange and collaborative commerce through features such Document Flow Manager, e.net Solutions, EDI, Office Automation and Messaging, SYSPRO Workflow Services and various Business-to-Business purchase and sales import and export functions. In addition, SYSPRO's Web Applications are out-the-box solutions which you can run on the Internet/Intranet and easily customize to suit end-user requirements.

Quick response times and accuracy in fulfilling orders are critical to your reputation in a diverse and demanding global market. Automated 24/7 customer order placement and acknowledgment is facilitated via SYSPRO's Document Flow Manager and email. In addition, SYSPRO's e.net Solutions enables the rapid development of applications for mobile devices, so that your sales force can check stock and place orders directly into SYSPRO while out visiting customers, thereby improving order turnaround time.

SYSPRO's e.net Solutions can be extended to integrate SYSPRO with other applications, such as shipping companies' tracking systems to determine the shipping status of customer orders. In addition, e.net Solutions facilitates the integration of SYSPRO with scanning and Smart technologies, thereby streamlining picking and packing processes, as well as inventory stock takes.

If your customers include Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) you can import and easily reconcile vendor EDI releases using SYSPRO's Blanket Sales Order module.

The standard of service that you provide your customers makes all the difference in building solid relationships and gaining the competitive edge. This requires keeping track, not only of customer sales-related information, but also details of internal or external business relationships. To make better business decisions about expected customer, product and market activity, you need to have information in appropriate formats and at different levels of detail to carry out analysis.

SYSPRO's Contact Management allows for multiple contacts to be assigned to organizations and individuals that you deal with. These can include your customers and suppliers, as well as entities such as charities and government departments. You can group contacts for related entities and record details regarding interactions such as phone calls, emails and visits against the contact. Integration with Microsoft Outlook allows email correspondence to be sent and updated as an activity within the Contact Management system.

Your ability to deliver quality products faster, with more customer-specific features, and at stable or even reduced prices differentiates you in a discerning market place. Features such as available-to-promise and customer delivery performance reporting, provide information to help you improve your customer service levels, and the Customer/Stock Code Interchange function gives you the flexibility to allow your customers to order by their part number.

SYSPRO enables you to keep a history not only of sales data but also individual customer-related product activities, so you can easily identify buying patterns and preferences, and quickly create repeat orders by copying and amending previous ones. SYSPRO Forecasting uses sales history to identify trends and seasonal components of demand, thereby assisting you in calculating more accurate forecasts, which in turn leads to better planning and improved customer service levels.

Simple, extended and contract pricing mechanisms give you flexibility to apply one-dimensional pricing and discounting, or tailor these requirements to individual customers. Where customers are large organizations—such as original equipment manufacturers (OEM) or retails chains—with whom prices are negotiated on a contract or volume basis, more complex pricing is required. SYSPRO's pricing, trade management and sales analysis facilities enable you to provide acceptable pricing terms and delivery targets to large customers without sacrificing profitability.

In order to maintain appropriate inventory levels in a distributed warehouse environment, you must be able to plan, distribute, monitor and control inventory moving across your internal supply chain.

SYSPRO's Goods in Transit system provides the facilities to create, manage and monitor transfers between multiple warehouses and provides complete visibility to the status and details of in-transit transactions. It gives you the tools to easily create and receipt stock transfers for each warehouse, capture transfer costs, identify and adjust exceptions as they arise and to reconcile transfers sent and received in terms of cost and quantity. The system provides a detailed financial subledger and enables easy reconciliation to SYSPRO's General Ledger.

Used in conjunction with the SYSPRO Sales Order module, the Goods in Transit system provides functionality to record backorders in the system for multiple warehouses and to electronically produce accompanying paperwork. Additionally, using the Material Requirements Planning module, SYSPRO's goods in transit functionality extends to Distribution Requirements Planning, thereby enabling plan production and purchasing to meet current and future distributed warehouse requirements. Order policies at stock code warehouse level accommodate different lot-sizing techniques per warehouse.

Efficient management of your receivables and mitigation of bad debt is essential to maintaining a healthy cash flow. SYSPRO's powerful features can assist you to improve your credit management performance with reduced effort, as well as to maintain single-point communications with your customers.

Extensive order and invoice credit checking features enable the implementation of flexible terms and controls to suit different categories of customer. Ageing methods offered include by invoice date, invoice due date, statement date and aged statement date and customer terms allow for a variety of settlement discount options. Multi-currency invoice and payments are catered for, as well as the automation of finance and recurring charges.

Prompt electronic delivery of customer statements, invoices and copy invoices is facilitated through SYSPRO's email and fax integration; documents can be transmitted directly from point of extraction. User-defined stationery formats preclude the need for pre-printed stationery and enable the creation of customer documents in Word or secure PDF format. Additionally, you can enable customers to query your SYSPRO database directly for detailed account information, via the internet with SYSPRO Office Integration or SYSPRO e.net solutions.

The Average Days to Pay calculation and extensive search, query and report features enable the quick and accurate assessment and targeted follow-up of customer debt. Rapid application of customer payments against a large number of outstanding invoices is efficiently handled using SYSPRO's Payments and Adjustment functions, including the automatic payments application feature. Also, the time and effort to manage trade customer accruals, rebates and deductions is significantly reduced through the use of SYSPRO's Trade Promotions and master/sub account functionality.

SYSPRO helps to greatly streamline the completion of account receivable month end procedures. Creation of workflow and checklists for periodic and month-end procedures is made possible through SYSPRO's customizable menus and Task Manager. The system’s multi-period accounting enables operational continuity for the new period, reducing pressure on the receivables department to finalize the month's transactions within a severely limited time frame. In addition, SYSPRO Reporting Services provides the ability to automate scheduling and electronic storage of month end reports ‘as run’, thereby precluding the need to supervise their production and printing.

SYSPRO's standard Trial Balance and Credit Management reports can be supplemented by additional user-defined KPIs and reports using Report Writer or SYSPRO Reporting Services. Furthermore, you can configure SYSPRO's powerful event management and customization features to alert relevant personnel to certain conditions, such as accounts being overdue by a stated number of days, via email or field highlights.

Whether a compliance-critical requirement, or an analysis tool for continuous improvement strategies, the traceability of products from material origins through manufacture to final destination, is a key system requirement in many industries.

SYSPRO facilitates the recording of traceability and quality data on materials and products from purchasing through inspection, manufacturing, manufacturing inspection, stocking and sales. The recording of expiry and shelf-life information is also facilitated and powerful queries enable both upward and downward searches by stock code, lot number and transaction type.

SYSPROls lot traceability and serial tracking functionality afford full visibility to the origins, build and customer destination of products and batches, thereby providing the means to rapidly trace and analyse the source of defects, should they occur. In addition, SYSPRO's Engineering Change Control module enables complete management and traceability of changes to product designs, while the Return Merchandise Authority provides consistent handling of product returns, as well as analysis data for improvement programs.

SYSPRO's integrated nature enables full backward and forward traceability, as well as comprehensive record-keeping to meet strict compliance requirements. Shelf-life management is facilitated through expiry dates and you can use SYSPRO's customization and custom form features to record other compliance-code dates, as well as to capture storage and transport compatibility codes.

SYSPRO's Quality Management System (QMS) enables the configuration and tracking of quality inspection points and metrics, to help ensure product quality and high production yields. Where a full QMS system is not required, the system can be configured to force sample, or full quantities of items through inspection processes, where detailed records of counts, inspection, rework, scrap, defects and returns can be recorded. Basic quality management is further enhanced through the ability to specify approved manufacturers for material supplies, as well as the ability to monitor supplier performance.

Tracking material involves knowing where it is at any point in time. In addition to SYSPRO's powerful traceability features, the system provides inventory management and visibility across multiple physical and virtual locations, as well as detailed tracking of purchase orders, sales orders, works orders, inter-warehouse transfers and available-to-promise quantities and dates.

SYSPRO's e.Net Solutions enable integration with scanning and RFID systems, to reduce processing time, as well as processing lags and errors, as material moves through the different processes.

SYSPRO provides the capability for the secure storage and fast retrieval of reliable integrated information to enable quick extraction when a product or batch recall is necessary. Adherence to stringent EU/ MHRA /FDA/TGA regulations in terms of traceability and recall procedures in industries, such as food, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, is facilitated through SYSPRO's lot traceability and serial tracking features. Multimedia capabilities enable the linking of relevant documentation and graphics to products and material, while custom forms facilitate the capture of essential traceability data relevant to your industry.

SYSPRO includes the facilities to trace items from raw material origins to customer, and vice versa, as well as the ability to identify the processor of every transaction or data change associated with the item, via Electronic Signatures. Full upward and downward searches and extraction of the integrated traceability data is provided by SYSPRO's powerful queries, and standard or user-defined reports.

Using SYSPRO's powerful traceability features, you can confidently identify the source of defects and quality issues, and thus limit recalls to defective product only. This prevents the need for total product recall and the associated costs and reputation impact.

Increasing manufacturing efficiency means getting the right balance between demand and supply, while optimizing capacity, improving throughput, and reducing waste and variable costs. SYSPRO provides interactive decision-support tools that give you visibility and control over all inputs and outputs.

SYSPRO's material requirements planning functionality gives you an integrated picture of your time-phased demand and supply, enabling you to model 'what-if' scenarios to produce viable replenishment plans.

SYSPRO Factory Scheduling assists you in maintaining accurate and up-to-date production schedules that take account of your material plans and the complexities of your factory. This enables better co-ordination between work centers, increased productivity, reduced work-in-progress and achievement of improved customer service levels.

Material and labor tracking, as well as cost, scrap and utilization management is facilitated through SYSPRO's Work in Progress module, which enables you to track in-process production at every stage and identify problems as they occur.

SYSPRO's Inventory Optimization and Forecasting modules enable you to minimize forecast error and manage seasonality, thereby helping you to reduce your inventory investment, and improve order fulfilment performance. This is further enhanced by features such as Available-to-promise and various time fence indicators, which give sales and production staff a reliable view of what they can promise to customers and when.

SYSPRO's Material Requirements Planning gives you clear visibility to the integrated effect of current and future supply and demand, thereby enabling you to make better purchasing and production decisions and reduce excess and obsolete inventories. The inclusion of sources of supply and demand is configurable and various reports and related review programs enable easy potential oversupplies and seamless execution of suggested actions. In addition, order policies by stock code at warehouse level enable you to implement lot-sizing rules for purchased and manufactured items.

In make-to-order environments, where a full material requirements planning run may not be required, features such as Advanced Trial Kitting provide full visibility to replenishment requirements for multi or single-level jobs. The purchase order to job link enables purchased or subcontracted materials to be receipted directly into specific jobs.

Standard reports such as the Inventory Exception and the MRP Potential Oversupplies report help you identify excess inventories and possible problems with your lot-sizing techniques.