Custom ERP for a Manufacturing Company to Cut Operational Costs by 25%

The Client managed their daily manufacturing and financial workflows without a unified management system, using different XLS/PDF files, emails, and papers. The process was full of manual work.

Key departments were blocked from access to new sales orders

A sales manager created a new order in an XLS file. The order was stored locally, so the procurement, manufacturing, and accountant departments were forced to request it every time. They depended on sales managers even in such routine tasks.

1. Procurement managers weren't able to fulfill the stock timely. A procurement manager made decisions about stock fulfillment by estimating the current amount of available raw materials, having no data about the number of new orders.
2. Manufacturing staff was unhappy to manually verify defected products and calculate manufacturing costs. The head of production expected an email from the sales manager with order details to start manufacturing. During the process, they had to manually track the amount of defective goods. At the end of production, they were obliged to manually calculate manufacturing costs.
3. Accountants had no single database, where all bookkeeping information was synchronized. An accountant gathered multiple emails from sales, manufacturing, procurement departments and manually added this data to the accounting software to calculate incoming and outgoing payments.

Sales managers had no tools to track order readiness and delivery status

The data about produced and shipped products was manually entered by sales managers. In case of large orders, that are often sent in several batches, and it was complicated to monitor which part of the order was shipped and which was still in production.

Business leaders didn't have real-time data about company operations in a single place

Business stakeholders requested employees to make regular reports manually. Otherwise, they had no full picture of the cost-effectiveness of their business and couldn't make timely and data-driven decisions.

A matter of urgency and lack of in-house development expertise

With the opening of new manufactures across Europe, reducing the risk of human errors, increasing data accuracy, and getting access to all company data in real time became of paramount importance.

For that, our Client wanted to build a custom ERP that would automate the manufacturing and financial workflows and create full visibility of the key business processes.

Having no in-house developers, they looked through some highly-ranked IT companies and chose Belitsoft as a technology partner. We could immediately provide our Client with a full team of talents that specialize in ERP development.

Belitsoft built a functional, user-friendly, and easy to manage ERP that ensured full visibility both for employees and business stakeholders and automated major manufacturing and financial workflows.

1. Creating an order in a single ERP database to make it visible across departments

A manager creates a sales order in the ERP after receiving a request from a customer. All the order details are visible to

• the accounting department to generate invoice on time;
• the manufacturing department to start producing goods without a delay;
• the procurement department to timely fulfill the stock.

The dashboard shows the process of creating a new sales order

2. Getting real-time data from stock to order raw materials on time

The ERP shows real-time information about the amount of raw materials in stock and the number of current orders. It helps predict stock shortage and plan its timely fulfillment.

To order raw materials, a procurement manager creates a new purchase order. A selected supplier gets notified about a new order by email.

The dashboard in Purchase Module with details of a supply order

When the ordered raw material comes to the warehouse, the ERP creates a new purchase invoice with all the details already filled in based on the supply order details.

The accountant sees the ready-to-pay invoice and makes a payment.

All the collateral documentation is also uploaded and synchronized with the supply order and becomes visible both to employees (managers and accountants) and business stakeholders.

The Approved invoice that is ready to pay and can be sent to a customer

3. Automating manufacturing costs calculation and quality monitoring

The head of production can see order details in the ERP and determine which operations the raw material must undergo to get the end product.

As soon as the raw material undergoes a certain operation, technicians scan barcodes on material packages using a cell phone app. That's how the operation cost is added to the ERP.

The dashboard shows how the ERP calculates an order price based on the number of performed operations and the cost of these operations

In addition, thanks to implementing advanced IoT-based technology on production lines, the ERP gets information about the number of quality end products and the number of defects.

4. Tracking products delivery status and automating invoicing

After completing the manufacturing stage, the end product is shipped to the buyer entirely or partially (in case of large orders). For large orders that are sent in several batches, a sales manager can track the order delivery readiness from 0 to 100%.

After the shipment, a sales invoice is generated automatically.

The automatically generated invoice that has already been paid and has a Completed status

5. Gathering and managing all bookkeeping data in a single ERP database

The company accepts all the payment in a single currency – euro. In case a customer prefers paying in another currency, the ERP calculates the sum based on the actual currency exchange rate. For that, the ERP has got API integration with the central bank of the country.

After receiving a payment in the accounting software, an accountant synchronizes the received payment with an order in the ERP.

The dashboard shows payment history for a single customer with issued invoices and debts

In addition, the company works with agents (partners or subcontractors) that receive commission for deals.

All sales agents' invoices are registered in the ERP. It allows managing and tracking all financial affairs between the manufacturer and its agents.

The agent's account history with order details and costs

6. Providing business owners with real-time data about financial and manufacturing workflows in a single place

Business stakeholders get regular reports to evaluate the production efficiency, sales margin, turnover volume, managers efficiency, orders details, full visibility of a cashflow, etc.

All in all, the ERP stores information about partners, products, and all company documents. Each report and document can customized upon individual request.

The report example reflects all the invoices for a certain customer with order dates, paid sums, debts, and other details

The ERP is SaaS software built and stored in the Server.

Tech Stack

• Backends: Django, Django REST Framework, Python
• Frontend: Vue.js, BootstrapVue
• Databases: Postgresql

Belitsoft developed a holistic custom ERP that automates manufacturing and financial workflows and creates full visibility of business processes across departments and for business leaders.

For now, using the ERP cut costs for business by 25%.

To develop this ERP, we've created a highly customizable framework that can be used for creating other ERP systems, making development fast and cost-effective.

Our team also received vast expertise in building ERP from scratch, which permits our specialists to iterate and scale custom ERP development for other businesses.