Business Automation for Robust Efficiency with Paul Van Metre

Business automation can seem like an intimidating change, but the benefits are massive. Guest speaker, Paul Van Metre – president of Pro Shop ERP, shares how letting go of control can help grow your company and make it vastly more efficient. Automating your systems can help clear up communication, save you and your team energy and time, and help boost your profitability. Change can be daunting, but an automated system is definitely worth the cost.

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Embracing the big changes that come with business automation

Some may think that there are too many barriers to push through to make business automation worth it. Paul explains that people fear what they don’t understand and what they don’t know. While such fear is normal, it shouldn’t keep manufacturing leaders from making the switch. The initial expense and time invested in uploading your company’s data may seem like a shock at first, but the efficiency that comes with automation is incredible. Letting go of control could be the best decision you’ve ever made.

The tools you use to automate your business are crucial to your success. Paul gives some examples of automation, including robots for the machine shop floor, apps, and entire manufacturing eco-systems – such as Pro Shop ERP. Paul shares that his company grew out of the need to solve the problems they faced as a start-up. No one offered the software they needed to automate their systems so that they could stay on top of their game and grow with their clients. Pro Shop ERP is the result of Paul’s team’s hard work and innovation. They wanted a way to tie all the details of their business together into one, centralized system. Paul encourages listeners to not be overwhelmed by the nuances of launching an automated system but to rather focus on the big picture: making chips so that you can make more money.

Why Excel simply doesn’t cut it anymore

In every small business, there are going to be people who wear too many hats. Inefficiency isn’t something that growing manufacturing businesses can tolerate for long. Miscommunication, confusion, and extended lead time can all be results of outdated processes and the struggle of having to do everything manually – from customer onboarding to running machinery. It’s easy to get caught up in the everyday chaos and not realize what could be easily solved through automation. Excel isn’t always going to cut it for logging your processes and keeping track of customer information and accounting. Before Pro Shop ERP, there was automating software to help with the accounting side of business, but there wasn’t anything that was built from the shop floor perspective. Pro Shop ERP offers that perspective in an automated format so that you can focus on what’s important to the growth of your business.

Streamline everything from redundancy to your vendor supply scores

There are so many details to consider when running a manufacturing business, and tools like Pro Shop ERP help take the busywork out of the picture. Jim shares the improvements made to his company through the implementation of automation.

Redundancy: Jim explains that with an automated, centralized system, everyone knows where to find the native processes for different operations. Pro Shop is the one-stop shop to everything everyone in his team needs to know about any job within the company and any order a customer has placed. Jim can go find exactly what order was placed, who took it, what tools were used to make it, when it was delivered, how much it cost his company, and what types of inspections were required by the customer. Before, it took him hundreds of manual steps to fulfill an order. Now, everything is automated.

Vendor Supply Scores: Trying to log and remember which customer was excellent to work with and which ones weren’t can be time-consuming. Jim share that Pro Shop has enabled his company to automatically keep track of everything involving a specific vendor – from packaging to delivery and quality. Paul reminds listeners that while the system is automated, you CAN adjust all the settings and data manually. You define the details of all your processes.

Customer Information: Customer requirements, credit approval, financial information, preferences, and contact information are all logged by Pro Shop. Jim shares that this automation has saved him and his team incredible amounts of time. The automated system processes the details of how each customer wants each order completed – all the way down to whether the customer wants the paperwork for an order on the outside of the box or inside of it upon delivery.

Create greater impact by applying Pro Shop ERP to your sales processes

You can automate your sales process as well as your manufacturing processes. Jim shares that he uses Pro Shop even in the initial “interview” with new customers. Since quality communication is one of the pillars of Carr Machine & Tool, Jim likes to show new customers how well Pro Shop allows them to communicate as a team – both internally as a company and externally with their customers. He can also establish trust and openness by showing new customers the automated breakdown of pricing with Pro Shop so that there is no guesswork when it comes to quoting a price.

While there is a good bit of front-end work with uploading and customizing all of the data for an automated system, the end-product is invaluable to the efficiency of your manufacturing business.

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