Plan your resources with manufacturing ERP software for small businesses
The majority of workforces use manufacturing ERP software for material requirements planning, inventory management, and plenty more. Learn the benefits of such software, and why they are essential for modern-day manufacturing companies.
Manufacturing without ERP software makes staying competitive challenging
Let’s face it, direct-to-consumer business manufacturing is bigger than it ever was. That brings your company many opportunities – but plenty of competition, too. Software is becoming a staple of the manufacturing world, both in managing production and sales channels – the power to possess agility is essential. ERP software allows you, as a small business, to manage, prioritize, and most importantly, scale your operations in this ever-competitive space. Let’s dig into the how.
Manufacturing ERP software supplies complete visibility of your inventory
This allows you to have total visibility over your inventory, also helping you prevent instabilities in productivity. No more will you need to worry about new orders failing to be completed on time due to lack of raw materials – all the data you’ll ever need is managed.
Sounds good, right? Well, there’s more: ERP software for small businesses like yours gives you real-time alerts when new products need to be created or when shortages are surfacing concerning your raw materials.
ERP solutions like Katana give you the chance to exploit your untapped resources – including tracking material health, checking up on material costs, and ensuring you have enough raw material for manufacturing at any one time. In addtion, it can help you with your financial management and planning for future projects.
Manufacturing ERP software like Katana gives you the power to:
- Utilize priority-based planning for material requirements, helping you avoid stockouts
- Keep track of your current, committed, and expected stock numbers in realtime
- Oversee materials and product types in one system
- Check your resources and inventory across multiple warehouses
- Scan and recognize several barcode types, including internal, supplier item codes, and batches
Eradicate wasted time and start saving money with the suitable ERP software
By facilitating a hassle-free flow of materials and goods, manufacturing software helps your operations become much more efficient. There’s nothing more frustrating than holding on to a specific product or material for too long or, indeed, allowing it to go when you may need it the most.
As a small business, saving money is vital to sustained growth. As a manufacturer, having the right products on hand at the right time is also crucial. Put those two things together, and you get ERP software – namely, Katana.
Not only can you reduce costs with more negligible overhead, but you’ll be avoiding wasting your products due to complicated inventory management. Oh, and did we mention the hundreds of integrations with the industry’s biggest e-commerce and accounting tools?
Katana’s integrated cloud ERP system makes it effortless for you to:
- Connect Katana’s cloudbased ERP software to your e-commerce store, accounting tools, and much more – to maintain a perfect sync for your data.
- Follow your business manufacturing costs based on your Bill Of Materials (BOM) and production procedures
- Develop multi-level BOMs with subassemblies for proper financial management
- Make accurate pricing choices based on your product margins and production schedule
ERP solutions enhance your resource planning and scheduling
ERP software is a solution designed to assist manufacturers in their quest to be more efficient. Thanks to its ability to manage and track resources, as well as its capacity to give you foolproof planning options – your business will be more organized than ever.
You’ll soon be planning and scheduling your production and business operations faster and more coherently – ensuring your company remains in the loop with all current developments.
MRP solutions and ERP systems enable you to do more than just material requirement planning. You can also look over other critical resources, like machinery and employees – this allows your business to use manufacturing software to the full extent and ensures you’ll be running silky smooth.
Katana’s cloud ERP manufacturing software is a solution designed to:
- Re-order your priorities based on what your most efficient manufacturing tasks are
- Track business operations and material requirements to ensure seamless sales order fulfillments
- Determine and eliminate delay risks concerning your material supply
- Receive accurate and detailed completion dates in order to keep your sales team up-to-date
- Get a complete overview of the live floor-level production status
Integrate cloudbased ERP software with the services you know and love
Connect Katana to third-party software or create your own workflows via API
There are plenty of options available, from e-commerce and CRM to accounting, reporting, and automation integrations which help simplify your essential business operations. Katana’s manufacturing software has been built with simplicity in mind – whatever the software you need, we’ve got it covered. Take a look at our growing list of integrations in order to find out more.
With Katana, we are able to track products, build recipes for materials, and set reorder points for our materials as well.”
Lisa Diep
Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Peace Collective
It’s great to be able to see where inventory faults happen and being able to fulfill orders and where the turnaround happens.”
Alaina Oehrlein
Production Lead at Essence One
Katana accurately keeps stock of assemblies and ingredients so that I can plan production and get instant feedback on whether we enough resources in stock.”
Kelly Costello
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Puppy Cake
We also wanted an accurate inventory system for batch planning, warehousing, and sales. Katana fulfills all our needs in a simple, easy solution.”
Irah Vet
Founder and Production Manager at Hornby Organic
ERP software FAQs
ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning software, is a system for manufacturing resource planning. In essence, it allows businesses to manage and overview all business functions directly or indirectly connected to manufacturing. ERP software helps you organize materials, production capacity, finances, and even human resources.
ERP systems connect many business processes and enable a coherent data flow between them. By collecting your organization’s data from various channels, the system can remove erroneous or duplicated information and provide you with a “one-stop-shop” for all manufacturing information.
Although the difference between ERP software and ERP systems is not huge, people often believe that Enterprise Resources Planning software refers to an inventory management system, and ERP systems refer to the process of scheduling.
In fact, it doesn’t particularly matter what you call your materials planning program, as both terms refer to the same type of product.
There are some subtle differences when it comes to the actual planning side, but this will very much depend on which one you use, and how many features it offers. Even though the difference between the two terms is slight, it’s always good for business owners to understand precisely what they’re talking about.
Management tools for your enterprise resources are a significant component of most ERP software. Inventory management is a crucial aspect of manufacturing operations, as it helps you manage and keep track of many resources.
For example, you may choose to utilize resource planning software to track the number of days it takes each supplier to fulfill your order – or provide feedback about issues or complications with lead times. This allows your business to succinctly identify any delays or problems in your supply chain and prevent them from happening in the future.
ERP software is an incredibly effective tool for manufacturers of all sizes, particularly for small businesses looking to scale while keeping control over their production process.
Internal teams focusing on finance, engineering, R&D, manufacturing operations, customer service, and external suppliers can all benefit from having access to real-time data on demand.
Using a resource planning system will help your business achieve a more optimized workflow and keep track of many specifics like inventory, labor, material requirements, and other resources required for manufacturing and production processes. An effective ERP system will provide insight into departments that may not necessarily be directly involved in manufacturing but may be tied to it through the purchasing process.
By having real-time data at their disposal, manufacturing managers and product owners can see how costs and capacities change and flow over time – allowing them to modify their resource planning accordingly to reduce cost.
Don’t worry; we have plenty of documentation and guides for you to get started. We designed Katana with ease of use in mind – so once you get going, you’ll never look back.
So, what is Katana? It’s a manufacturing ERP software that gives you a live overview of your business. It includes inventory and manufacturing management, batch tracking for end-to-end traceability, a Shop Floor App for complete floor-level control, an open API, and an ever-growing channel partner network.
In addition, real-time master planning features help automate resource distribution based on priorities and are integrated with e-commerce, CRM, accounting, and reporting services – allowing you to centralize your entire operations in one visual and straightforward platform.
Get visibility over your sales and stock
Wave goodbye to uncertainty by using Katana Cloud Inventory for total inventory control
