May 20, 2019 at 13:02CRM ++
There is an opinion that everything multifunctional is weak. Indeed, this statement looks logical: the more interconnected and interdependent nodes, the higher the likelihood that with the failure of one of them, the entire device will lose its dignity. We all repeatedly faced with such situations in office equipment, cars, gadgets. However, in the case of software, the situation is the opposite: the more tasks corporate software covers, the faster and more convenient the work, the more familiar the interface, the easier the business processes. Unification and end-to-end automation in the company solve the problem after problem. But can such a “multitool” be a CRM-system, which has long developed the image of a program for sales and customer base management? Of course it can. Moreover, in an ideal world - it should. Take a look at the anatomy of a software organism?
While a small or medium-sized company is engaged in the creation and sale of services, software, services, advertising and other objects of the intangible or conditionally intangible world, everything is fine: you can be capricious, choose CRM to take into account customers by the color of the interface and the form of existence of the sales funnel, bother with the color of the frames and font in function buttons and life is relatively easy. But everything changes when production and stock appear in the company.
The fact is that production, as a rule, is focused on the management and optimization of the production process. In such companies, especially small ones, the absolute priority is given to working with production, and sales and marketing already lack strength, hands, ideas, money, and sometimes just inspiration. But, as you know, there is little to produce in the capitalism system, you need to sell, and since competitors are on the alert, you need to get around them at the turn - of course, with the help of promotional and marketing. So, the main task is to implement CRM, which will combine all the components: production, warehouse, procurement, sales and marketing. But how then should it look and most importantly - how much does it cost?
Manufacturing companies, unlike trading companies, have a completely different attitude to software: from focus and rivulets of the interface, the focus shifts sharply towards functionality, connectivity and versatility. Any automation should work like clockwork and support complex business processes, and not just “lead customers”. So if the choice fell on the CRM system, this “CRM for production” should cope not only with the client base and sales funnel, but also include complex production management mechanisms integrated with warehouse accounting and operational functions familiar to any company.
Are there any CRMs for production? There is. What do they look like, how much do they cost, what language are they in? Let’s take a look below, but for now let’s dwell on whether it’s worth contacting CRM for production at all or is it better to work in separate sources.
We are a vendor of a CRM system, which has repeatedly encountered introductions in production companies of small and medium-sized businesses, and we know that implementing CRM in such a company is a difficult story that requires time, money and the desire to work with business processes from the inside. However, there is a whole list of reasons to start implementation and reach it to the end.
When all the business processes within the company are based on a single software platform (whether it be CRM, ERP or some sophisticated automated process control system), you get obvious benefits.
Let us return to the question posed at the beginning of the article - so which CRM system to implement?
And now, it seems, there are absolutely no problems with finding production management systems and sales: first of all, it’s SAP, then Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM. There are domestic manufacturers of ERP. These are complex, cumbersome systems both from the point of view of implementation and from the point of view of operation, but they are able to solve end-to-end automation issues. Their capabilities are impressive, only the price is impressive. So, for example, according to average expert estimates, the cost of SAP for small and medium-sized businesses is $ 400 thousand (about 25.5 million rubles) and is justified for companies with a turnover of 2.5 billion or more. Renting an average Microsoft Dynamics tariff will cost about 1.5 million rubles 10 people per year per company (we did not count the implementation and connectors, without which this CRM would not make sense).
And what about small production companies throughout Russia: manufacturers of industrial equipment, furniture, advertising and production agencies and other manufacturers who have a turnover of less than 3 billion and for whom 1.5 million subscribers, although a feasible, but very tangible waste?
We at RegionSoft CRM not only saw software, but, like any commercial company, we have a mission. Our mission: to provide functional and affordable automation tools for micro, small and medium-sized businesses so that they can begin to work intensively as quickly as possible. We minimize development and promotion costs, thereby making our CRM cheaper than competitors in the same class - for example, the most sophisticated version of RegionSoft CRM Enterprise Plusfor a company with a staff of 10 people it will cost 202 thousand rubles (for licenses), and you pay this amount once and for all, without a subscription. Well, okay, let’s add as much to the finalization and implementation (which, by the way, is not always necessary) - it’s still three times less than just renting licenses a year from other closest vendors.
Another question arises - what will the company get for this price? Ordinary CRM-ku with some kind of sustainable security due to the desktop? NOT. Here is what we continuously supply to manufacturing companies:
TCH calculation interface
The element described above- This is the mechanism of TCH (technical and commercial proposals). TKP is a tool for preparing commercial offers for the supply of complex technical equipment. In fact, this is a designer in which you can pick up a complete set of equipment, including optional equipment, with a calculation of its cost. If the manager uses TCH, then he can configure the compatibility of units and parts with the configuration item, determine the basic configuration, the number of necessary components, their technical characteristics and even a set of advertising information. Thus, he can quickly prepare a proposal for the supply of equipment with details on components, taking into account all discounts and margins, a payment schedule and promotional materials, if necessary.
After that, you can create a neat and detailed printed form of the TCH, write an invoice, an act, an invoice and an invoice based on it.
TCH printing form
Speaking of commodity matrices . This is also an important tool, which is a register of procurement prices indicating suppliers, the validity of these prices, as well as additional characteristics.
Starting with Professional Plus, RegionSoft CRM has built-in inventory controlaccording to two models: batch and average accounting. What type of accounting to choose depends on the needs and responsibilities of your company, we will briefly explain for those who have not yet plunged into the topic. Batch accounting is built on the basis of party registers, accumulations and totals in sections of warehouses. The most common principle of FIFO partion accounting is used. In the case of batch accounting, it is possible to write off only goods whose batches remain, that is, writing off the goods to minus is impossible. This technique is suitable for wholesale sales, especially if you have to reserve goods for shipment to the customer. Accounting for the average is more suitable for retail sales: it does not account for batches and it is possible to write off goods in minus (which, according to accounting, is not in stock, for example, as a result of re-sorting). Naturally,
RegionSoft CRMIt supports both simple production in one stage (bought components, assembled a PC, sold a PC to a client), and multi-product manufacturing, where production is carried out in several stages (for example, enlarged units are assembled from components first, and then from components and components) PC itself). In RegionSoft CRM, it’s possible not only to “assemble the N system from the subsystems n, m, p”, but also support operations for uncomplecting, converting, creating documents, calculating costs, creating a technological map, etc.
By the way, all these mechanisms can be applied to any type of production: from food production to assembly of helicopters. There would be a desire and understanding of how deeply and competently you are ready to automate production processes.
And, of course, the business process is the connecting link of all these components . All routine and standard tasks, all processes should be automated - that is, ideally, your CRM should have a system for modeling business processes, when you create them, tasks, responsible, deadlines, triggers, etc. are written. And this whole set should be debugged to work out and actually organize all employees to solve the next macro-task (for example, production of a batch of robots and coordination of a complex TCH).
At one event, our colleague was asked: “And how are you ( RegionSoft CRM is not a colleague, - approx.) look inside: closer to Basecamp or closer to 1C? ”In fact, this question was often asked more professionally, but never so naively and at the same time accurately. It is clear that we were talking about the complexity of the interface. And there is no answer to this question, rather, a whole philosophical treatise can be written here. The ubiquity of the web and the relative accessibility of programming have led to a flood of the market with simple solutions for doing business and managing tasks in the company: honestly, put me on the shelves, which are the fundamental differences between Asana, Wrike, Basecamp, Worksection, Trello, etc. (except for the atlassianovskogo stack)? The difference in design, gadgets and degree of simplification. It is on the basis of this three chips that modern software for small businesses began to compete. Then the developers of a piece of similar software realized
And only a couple of units of them went further, left / returned, including to the desktop, and began to add functionality to the warehouse, production, document management, etc. To implement such automation in a simple interface with stickers, cards and emoticons is almost impossible. In general, if you are developing enterprise software or choosing a good system for your company, I advise you ... go check your eyesight at some cool specialized center. It costs 1.5-2 thousand, but in addition to the main function, it will be interesting for you as a developer: equipment with an amazing physical interface (beautiful, minimalistic, convenient) is combined with a very complex operator interface on a PC. And you will not find there flat design, gradient, minimalism and so on. - only harsh interface buttons, tables, a bunch of elements and all kinds of integration between applications. And of course, the desktop. By the way, all these programs are integrated with the CRM system (that is, a repository of customer cards and financial information). The same story with dentists - but this is a less pleasant tour, do not get sick.
CRM ++ is the only way for many companies to set up processes, make work intensive, and release a certain amount of the most valuable asset - human labor. Yes, the introduction of CRM in a manufacturing company is always a little more complicated and lengthy than, for example, in a trading company, but this is a very justifiable waste. You have experienced staff with a salary, expensive equipment, reliable suppliers, your own know-how and development - the business flywheel is spinning. End-to-end automation with CRM will make the flywheel move faster. This means that the business will become more productive.
Business to business
While a small or medium-sized company is engaged in the creation and sale of services, software, services, advertising and other objects of the intangible or conditionally intangible world, everything is fine: you can be capricious, choose CRM to take into account customers by the color of the interface and the form of existence of the sales funnel, bother with the color of the frames and font in function buttons and life is relatively easy. But everything changes when production and stock appear in the company.
The fact is that production, as a rule, is focused on the management and optimization of the production process. In such companies, especially small ones, the absolute priority is given to working with production, and sales and marketing already lack strength, hands, ideas, money, and sometimes just inspiration. But, as you know, there is little to produce in the capitalism system, you need to sell, and since competitors are on the alert, you need to get around them at the turn - of course, with the help of promotional and marketing. So, the main task is to implement CRM, which will combine all the components: production, warehouse, procurement, sales and marketing. But how then should it look and most importantly - how much does it cost?
Manufacturing companies, unlike trading companies, have a completely different attitude to software: from focus and rivulets of the interface, the focus shifts sharply towards functionality, connectivity and versatility. Any automation should work like clockwork and support complex business processes, and not just “lead customers”. So if the choice fell on the CRM system, this “CRM for production” should cope not only with the client base and sales funnel, but also include complex production management mechanisms integrated with warehouse accounting and operational functions familiar to any company.
Are there any CRMs for production? There is. What do they look like, how much do they cost, what language are they in? Let’s take a look below, but for now let’s dwell on whether it’s worth contacting CRM for production at all or is it better to work in separate sources.
CRM for production - why?
We are a vendor of a CRM system, which has repeatedly encountered introductions in production companies of small and medium-sized businesses, and we know that implementing CRM in such a company is a difficult story that requires time, money and the desire to work with business processes from the inside. However, there is a whole list of reasons to start implementation and reach it to the end.
- The first and main reason for implementing CRM in any company is the accumulation, systematization and preservation of the customer base. For a manufacturing company, a well-organized customer base is a direct path to future profits: in the case of developing new products, components or related services, you can always resell products to existing customers.
- CRM helps organize sales. And sales are the solution to many problems in the company. Good sales figures are profit, cash flow, and accordingly, the boss’s good mood and good team spirit. Well, I’m certainly exaggerating, but this postulate is not far from the truth. When your sales add up, you breathe easier, you have the means to develop, modernize, attract the best market specialists - that is, you have everything to get even more profit.
- When you produce something and you have a CRM system, you actually collect all the data about orders and sales, which means you can accurately forecast demand and quickly adapt to new market demands, change prices or volumes, and timely withdraw a product or service from assortment. Also, planning and forecasting sales helps to form stocks and create a production plan - when, how much and what kind of product you need to produce. And the right production plan is the key to the financial health of the company: you can plan costs, procurements, modernize equipment and even hire staff.
- Again, based on the information collected, you can analyze complaints and eliminate defects. In addition, the CRM system is a great help and a guarantee of qualified work for customer service and technical support: you can view customer profiles, record their requests directly on the card, and also create and store a knowledge base for quick work with requests.
- A CRM system is always the measurement and evaluation of the result: what they produced, how they sold, why they didn’t sell, who was the weakest link in the process and so on. We at RegionSoft CRM went further and implemented a powerful KPI system, which can be customized as needed for each division of any company. This, of course, is +100 to the measurability and transparency of the work of those employees to whom KPIs can be applied.
- CRM connects the frontend of a company (commerce, support, finance, management) with a backend (production, warehouse, logistics). Of course, individually, everything will also work, but in the office the words “burn”, “hell of coordination”, “where is the signature of this **** pa”, “* opa with deadlines” and polymer must be mentioned (you’ll didn’t forget, right?). In addition to jokes, CRM itself, of course, will not do anything for you, but if you set up business processes and are not too lazy to engage in individual and collective planning, the company will become noticeably easier and more comfortable to work with. To develop or not to develop automation further will be your decision.
When all the business processes within the company are based on a single software platform (whether it be CRM, ERP or some sophisticated automated process control system), you get obvious benefits.
- Security - all data is stored in a secure system, user actions are logged, access rights are delimited. Thus, if a data leak occurs, it will not go unnoticed and unpunished, and in case of data loss, a backup will save you.
- Consistency - all actions within the company are organized and planned, due to business processes and project management, the time for completing work or providing a service is greatly reduced.
- Competent resource management - planning and forecasting allows you to properly build stocks, not to stop production and adjust the workload of staff.
- Savings points - thanks to CRM, manufacturers respond quickly to changes in demand, learn to fix seasonality and thereby save significantly, avoiding overproduction and overstock.
- Full-fledged analytics for management and strategy - today it is indecent to make decisions without analyzing information. The collection, storage and interpretation of information will give you a full understanding of what is happening in your business and you will be able to make decisions reasonably, and not intuitively or on the principle of “how the card will lie down”.
- Additional sales open the way to obtaining high margins from the sale of new products and services due to the fact that you do not need to invest in finding, attracting and retaining customers - this is your old investment, they are all already in your electronic database.
Let us return to the question posed at the beginning of the article - so which CRM system to implement?
Implement a system that works right away for everyone
And now, it seems, there are absolutely no problems with finding production management systems and sales: first of all, it’s SAP, then Microsoft Dynamics, Sugar CRM. There are domestic manufacturers of ERP. These are complex, cumbersome systems both from the point of view of implementation and from the point of view of operation, but they are able to solve end-to-end automation issues. Their capabilities are impressive, only the price is impressive. So, for example, according to average expert estimates, the cost of SAP for small and medium-sized businesses is $ 400 thousand (about 25.5 million rubles) and is justified for companies with a turnover of 2.5 billion or more. Renting an average Microsoft Dynamics tariff will cost about 1.5 million rubles 10 people per year per company (we did not count the implementation and connectors, without which this CRM would not make sense).
And what about small production companies throughout Russia: manufacturers of industrial equipment, furniture, advertising and production agencies and other manufacturers who have a turnover of less than 3 billion and for whom 1.5 million subscribers, although a feasible, but very tangible waste?
We at RegionSoft CRM not only saw software, but, like any commercial company, we have a mission. Our mission: to provide functional and affordable automation tools for micro, small and medium-sized businesses so that they can begin to work intensively as quickly as possible. We minimize development and promotion costs, thereby making our CRM cheaper than competitors in the same class - for example, the most sophisticated version of RegionSoft CRM Enterprise Plusfor a company with a staff of 10 people it will cost 202 thousand rubles (for licenses), and you pay this amount once and for all, without a subscription. Well, okay, let’s add as much to the finalization and implementation (which, by the way, is not always necessary) - it’s still three times less than just renting licenses a year from other closest vendors.
Another question arises - what will the company get for this price? Ordinary CRM-ku with some kind of sustainable security due to the desktop? NOT. Here is what we continuously supply to manufacturing companies:
MCC is a sales and order management center. This is a logistic mechanism that processes and tracks processes related to customer orders. Inside the sales control center, you can register customer orders, take into account accompanying documents for the transaction, ship goods to customers, conduct logistic analysis with the generation of production orders and orders to suppliers (in this case, suppliers' offers are analyzed), transport logistics has been implemented. In this case, the MCC intellectually prompts the most popular positions when processing a customer order.And at the same time, let's simulate in parallel how all this functionality can be used. Let us have a small fictitious factory for the production of designers and robots of a new generation for schools of robotics. We will make models typical and under the order.
You can draw up a technical and commercial proposal (TCH) - we will make it in special forms inside RegionSoft CRMthe necessary components for our "exclusive" robots in accordance with their configuration and automatically calculate the cost of the product. So in the document, our robot will be composed of nodes and parts, and the customer will receive by e-mail a full calculation of the cost of the product, together with the costs of development and assembly. At the same time, an analysis of the availability of ready-made robots, designers and the necessary components has already taken place in the production - and, if something is missing, orders were sent to purchase the missing components to suppliers.
TCH calculation interface
The element described above- This is the mechanism of TCH (technical and commercial proposals). TKP is a tool for preparing commercial offers for the supply of complex technical equipment. In fact, this is a designer in which you can pick up a complete set of equipment, including optional equipment, with a calculation of its cost. If the manager uses TCH, then he can configure the compatibility of units and parts with the configuration item, determine the basic configuration, the number of necessary components, their technical characteristics and even a set of advertising information. Thus, he can quickly prepare a proposal for the supply of equipment with details on components, taking into account all discounts and margins, a payment schedule and promotional materials, if necessary.
After that, you can create a neat and detailed printed form of the TCH, write an invoice, an act, an invoice and an invoice based on it.
TCH printing form
Software calculators are an important tool for manufacturing companies. Conventionally, imagine that you are producing doors: interior doors for Khrushchev, Stalin and new buildings, on request - for high apertures of cottages and cottages. That is, different-sized specimens from different materials. For each client, you need to calculate his order and, ideally, immediately upload this profile to all documents. In RegionSoft CRM, this can be done using software calculators in which you can calculate an order by parameters - in less than 1 minute. Software scripts are open, so any user with programming skills can provide any, even the most complex and individual calculation method.
Directly from RegionSoft CRM, you can create requests for suppliers in several ways: through sales analysis (based on registered sales in stock), through analysis of payment invoices, through the product matrix, through ABC analysis (auto-application based on custom criteria - the system itself analyzes the sales of goods for the period based on the Pareto principle and generates applications for groups of goods). After the formation of the application, they fall into the application log, are uploaded to a file or sent directly to the supplier’s e-mail.
Speaking of commodity matrices . This is also an important tool, which is a register of procurement prices indicating suppliers, the validity of these prices, as well as additional characteristics.
Starting with Professional Plus, RegionSoft CRM has built-in inventory controlaccording to two models: batch and average accounting. What type of accounting to choose depends on the needs and responsibilities of your company, we will briefly explain for those who have not yet plunged into the topic. Batch accounting is built on the basis of party registers, accumulations and totals in sections of warehouses. The most common principle of FIFO partion accounting is used. In the case of batch accounting, it is possible to write off only goods whose batches remain, that is, writing off the goods to minus is impossible. This technique is suitable for wholesale sales, especially if you have to reserve goods for shipment to the customer. Accounting for the average is more suitable for retail sales: it does not account for batches and it is possible to write off goods in minus (which, according to accounting, is not in stock, for example, as a result of re-sorting). Naturally,
The production functionality is based on inventory control, is integrated into the RegionSoft CRM Enterprise Plus edition and includes a number of mechanisms aimed at automating production output and managing production resources. We warn you right away - you should not confuse the production functionality in the CRM system with the automatic control system, although there are some points of contact. Nevertheless, ASUPP is software where production is primary, and CRM is a program where commerce is primary and end-to-end automation of small and medium-sized businesses is important.
RegionSoft CRMIt supports both simple production in one stage (bought components, assembled a PC, sold a PC to a client), and multi-product manufacturing, where production is carried out in several stages (for example, enlarged units are assembled from components first, and then from components and components) PC itself). In RegionSoft CRM, it’s possible not only to “assemble the N system from the subsystems n, m, p”, but also support operations for uncomplecting, converting, creating documents, calculating costs, creating a technological map, etc.
If you use RegionSoft CRM Enterprise Plus , you do not just get several additional modules - many segments of the interface are tailored to the needs of such a client. For example, when filling out a card for an inventory item, among other things, the user can fill out the Production section - the product warehouse, production specification and flow chart, production technology by stages and a free format description of the production are prescribed. Also, sections related to TCH are filled in the card, which will then help to form the TCH in a few clicks.
And it’s a pity that we don’t actually make robots, and schools buy them from Lego or from Chinese manufacturers :-)
By the way, all these mechanisms can be applied to any type of production: from food production to assembly of helicopters. There would be a desire and understanding of how deeply and competently you are ready to automate production processes.
And, of course, the business process is the connecting link of all these components . All routine and standard tasks, all processes should be automated - that is, ideally, your CRM should have a system for modeling business processes, when you create them, tasks, responsible, deadlines, triggers, etc. are written. And this whole set should be debugged to work out and actually organize all employees to solve the next macro-task (for example, production of a batch of robots and coordination of a complex TCH).
Lyric technical afterword
At one event, our colleague was asked: “And how are you ( RegionSoft CRM is not a colleague, - approx.) look inside: closer to Basecamp or closer to 1C? ”In fact, this question was often asked more professionally, but never so naively and at the same time accurately. It is clear that we were talking about the complexity of the interface. And there is no answer to this question, rather, a whole philosophical treatise can be written here. The ubiquity of the web and the relative accessibility of programming have led to a flood of the market with simple solutions for doing business and managing tasks in the company: honestly, put me on the shelves, which are the fundamental differences between Asana, Wrike, Basecamp, Worksection, Trello, etc. (except for the atlassianovskogo stack)? The difference in design, gadgets and degree of simplification. It is on the basis of this three chips that modern software for small businesses began to compete. Then the developers of a piece of similar software realized
And only a couple of units of them went further, left / returned, including to the desktop, and began to add functionality to the warehouse, production, document management, etc. To implement such automation in a simple interface with stickers, cards and emoticons is almost impossible. In general, if you are developing enterprise software or choosing a good system for your company, I advise you ... go check your eyesight at some cool specialized center. It costs 1.5-2 thousand, but in addition to the main function, it will be interesting for you as a developer: equipment with an amazing physical interface (beautiful, minimalistic, convenient) is combined with a very complex operator interface on a PC. And you will not find there flat design, gradient, minimalism and so on. - only harsh interface buttons, tables, a bunch of elements and all kinds of integration between applications. And of course, the desktop. By the way, all these programs are integrated with the CRM system (that is, a repository of customer cards and financial information). The same story with dentists - but this is a less pleasant tour, do not get sick.
CRM ++ is the only way for many companies to set up processes, make work intensive, and release a certain amount of the most valuable asset - human labor. Yes, the introduction of CRM in a manufacturing company is always a little more complicated and lengthy than, for example, in a trading company, but this is a very justifiable waste. You have experienced staff with a salary, expensive equipment, reliable suppliers, your own know-how and development - the business flywheel is spinning. End-to-end automation with CRM will make the flywheel move faster. This means that the business will become more productive.