Industry: Distribution

Continuous updates: stay current and avoid issues

Don't be afraid of continuous updates

Having a strategy (and extra help) for ERP software updates can smooth the path

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Scott Hambright is Sunrise’s Director of Global Customer Support. Prior to joining the Global Support Team, Scott was a Senior Technical Architect for Sunrise, assisting clients on ERP implementations in the apparel, retail, consumer goods, and manufacturing industries.

The new ERP update model

The continuous update model has been one of the biggest shifts in modern ERP over the past few years. In the past, companies would spend millions of dollars and go through intensive upgrade projects to migrate to the newer version of whatever ERP they were using.

ERP upgrades used to be expensive and time-consuming, but no more. Instead, companies have replaced one anxiety for another – continuous updates. Dynamics 365, and cloud-based infrastructure, means software updates can be pushed automatically. But this makes people nervous. Since an ERP system handles so many functions within a business, users are wary to just accept the latest updates. But they’re essential for keeping your business humming along. So, you need a strategy for handling continuous updates in a way that maximizes their value and minimizes impact on your business.

Prioritize the most essential business functions

When it comes to updates to your ERP system, focus on maintaining business continuity. Before you start testing, define the most important processes — the ones that you have to get right to keep the lights on. Being able to get orders out the door is far more important than posting a fixed asset depreciation journal. Get your team together and make a list. Plus, it’s easier to define success when you have criteria to refer to.

Focus on testing customizations and extensions

There are generic ERP software functions, and then there are your functions — the customizations and extensions that make your business unique. Get your software vendor to handle testing the basics, like creating sales orders, receiving a purchase order, etc. And if your software vendor can’t or won’t do this for you, find a vendor who will. This testing phase is your opportunity to make up scenarios to ensure your customizations are good to go.

How to handle integration testing

Integrations are the most fragile part of your system, so spend the most time making sure those connections are solid. Luckily, you only have one aspect to test – your connection, not the external system. Here’s one way to do it:

  • For inbound messages: have a set of sample data prepped before you start

  • In your test environment: push the sample data through the system (with the new updates) and see what happens.

  • For outbound messages: export your data in XML format and use file comparison tools to see if anything changed from the new updates.

Use automation to keep up with updates

Most cloud solutions will come with tools to help you test updates. This is where automation comes in handy. You can save significant amounts of time by setting up automated functional and integration testing. There are a lot of options – you can build functional scripts to run through your customizations. You can take data snapshots for use in inbound and outbound integration testing. Obviously, you’ll need a separate software environment to test everything, and a human to oversee this testing process.

We recommend that you aim to make testing your software updates as fast and automated as possible (so if there is a problem, you can devote time to fixing problems, not boring rote work).

Checklist for testing ERP updates

  • Define the most important business processes and prioritize testing those first.
  • Create test scenarios for your system’s customizations and extensions. Leave the standard functionality testing to your vendor
  • Spend the most time on testing integrations – these are the areas that are most unique to your system footprint.
  • Consider automated testing for functional and integration updates.

Further Reading

Dynamics 365 automated testing

Sunrise 365 Global Support 

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Are you interested in learning more inventory best practices? Would you like to a see a modern, streamlined allocation solution that gives you both flexibility and accuracy? Contact Sunrise today!

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What should your product numbers mean?

What should
your product numbers mean?

Should you use intelligent numbers in your product data setup?

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As a Senior Supply Chain Consultant for Sunrise Technologies, Melissa Welhelmi brings over 20 years of industry experience to the table and serves as a trusted advisor for apparel, footwear, and consumer goods companies that are in the midst of an ERP replacement. 

Intelligent product numbers

Like we’ve discussed before, product is the heart of your brand. And since product structure is such an integral part of your business, how you number (or don’t number) those products matter. A lot.

Intelligent numbering is very common in the industries we work with. This is when a product’s number or ID contains meaningful information. For example, a fashion brand might have a jacket label WJF20S123-BLK-S. In the style name, “W” means Women, “J” means Jacket, F20 means Fall 2020 season, S123 means the sequential style number. “BLK” is the color black and “S” stands for small size. The style numbers can get really detailed.

At first, intelligent numbering makes a lot of sense, especially for quick analysis. At a glance, users can see the most important attributes. Especially with companies using legacy inventory management systems, users may rely on those product numbers packed with meaning for reporting and analytics.

Why smart numbering is no longer a best practice

Businesses change. Employees leave and take their institutional knowledge with them. New staff members have to learn and maintain the product numbering schema. Because humans maintain these numbers, mistakes happen. Eventually, you may find that no one understands what your company’s product numbers mean anymore, but you have to maintain it for the sake of not having a better alternative.

In many ways, intelligent numbering is an outdated practice that should be left behind with legacy systems. There are many downsides: 

  • Someone needs to be well-trained and well-versed in the product numbering schema so they can correctly configure products. Mistakes cost time and money to fix.
  • Heavy reliance on insider knowledge — new staff members don’t know the meaning behind the intelligent numbers.
  • Hard to maintain — adding new product categories means you might have to rethink the whole data structure and add new, complicated logic.
  • Adding new products can be time-consuming, with a higher likelihood of manual entry and errors.

Intelligent numbering isn’t just a human problem, it’s a systems problem. Especially for consumer brands, once they start adding new product categories, additional information must be added to the product master data setup. The extra business logic that comes with this work adds another layer of complexity to something as simple as numbering products.

Trade smart numbers for a smarter system

We’ve discussed this in detail in some of our other blogs — there’s a better way!

Business applications today are built to handle multidimensional products without complex naming schemes. Data entities like dimensions, hierarchies, attributes, categories, and assortments can be used to create a new master data model for a company that is easy to maintain, without intelligent number schemes.

Legacy systems often lack this capability, so we understand why organizations struggle with intelligent product numbering.

Why you should ditch smart numbering in your product data management

Adding new products is quick and easy.

They can use other dimensions in the ERP system for search and reporting.

Multiple users can work with products in the system, and they don’t have to ask someone what the numbers mean.

Has your brand expanded into dog beds, home furnishings, or hair products? No problem. Configuring new dimensions is easier and faster than rethinking your numbering schema for your entire product catalog.

If product information changes, the number doesn’t have to.

Product catalogs from different companies or acquisitions can be merged without losing information.

Advanced reporting like data mining, automated queries, and business analytics is easier to do with simple product IDs.

Other considerations for intelligent numbering and ERP systems

A new systems implementation is a complete paradigm shift for your business. Like we discuss in product attributes, an ERP project is an opportunity for you to cleanse your data and setup a new master data structure that works for you. Changing these data entities is a big deal and requires a solid change management strategy.

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Analyst Reports: Read what industry experts say about Microsoft cloud solutions

Considering Microsoft Dynamics 365? Get Insights from Experts

In the news, analyst reports, and discussions

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Nucleus Research ERP Technology Value Matrix

The ERP Value Matrix reflects the continued shift to the cloud, with vendors seeing accelerated adoption rates. Microsoft continues in its Leader position with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise Edition. All the enterprise capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics for Finance and Supply Chain, Enterprise edition are underpinned by Microsoft’s global delivery strategy that includes 36 geographies and over 60 language localizations. Additionally, the Microsoft business application platform delivers capabilities such as Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, and the Microsoft Dataverse (formerly Common Data Service), helping customers better collect and analyze their data as well as build applications to automate manual tasks.

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Microsoft, A Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP

Product-centric organizations are increasingly adopting cloud ERP platforms to standardize operations and drive intelligent automation. The 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ recognizes Microsoft as a Leader for its ongoing innovation and proven ability to support scalable, composable transformation across finance and operations.

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The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Supply Chain

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management addresses key supply chain challenges. These include limited visibility, adapting to changing customer demands, outdated systems, and disruptions. The solution enhances visibility across the supply chain network, enabling better planning, agility, and asset uptime optimization, ensuring smooth operations even during disruptions. Forrester Consulting conducted a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to assess the potential ROI of deploying Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The investment led to significant benefits, including:

  • Increased production volume capacity by 10% to 15% due to faster time-to-market.
  • Enhanced operational efficiency with a 2% to 3% reduction in unplanned machine downtime, worth over $1.5 million over three years and 500 manufacturing machines.
  • Increased developer productivity by 10% to 50%, reallocating developer time for higher-value tasks.
  • A 5% boost in revenue attributed to improved product quality, translating to more than $6.8 million in three years.
  • Infrastructure footprint consolidation of 35% to 65% by shifting from on-premises to cloud solutions, saving close to $11 million over three years.
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The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Finance

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Dynamics 365 Finance on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using Dynamics 365 Finance. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a retail and wholesale organization with 120 finance personnel and revenue of $750 million per year.

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Above Average ROI from Dynamics 365

In analyzing the results of Microsoft Dynamics 365 deployments, Nucleus found that for every dollar spent, companies realized an average of $16.97 in returns. This is significantly higher than the average for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), which deliver, on average, $7.23 and $8.71 respectively. Nucleus found that companies taking advantage of Microsoft’s investments in cloud and usability, as well as integration and analytics, were able to achieve significant returns by increasing productivity and revenues and reducing costs. Microsoft’s integration of business capabilities such as ERP, CRM, and HCM with Office 365, Power BI, Power Platform, and Azure offer even greater value than the industry averages and as Microsoft makes further investments in integration and innovation, customers will benefit from the additional value provided by the cloud platform.

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The Total Economic Impact™ of Power Apps

Adopting Power Apps can transform a company’s IT function from a blocker to an enabler. One interviewee in the Forrester Total Economic Impact Study said: “We can now build once and deploy to different places….We can now make changes on the fly and support a very dynamic business.” Benefits included:

  • 74 percent less cost to develop an application
  • 188 percent ROI over 3 years, with a net present value of $6.1 million
  • Average payback period is less than 6 months
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The Digital Commerce Imperative

A staggering seventy-six percent of retail and CPG decision-makers agree that improving digital commerce capabilities is their most urgent business priority. And yet for many organizations running on legacy or disparate systems, this goal is far out of reach. Microsoft commissioned Forrester to evaluate how retail and CPG companies are approaching digital commerce improvements today. In this thought leadership report, read key insights about the state of the retail and CPG industries in a post-pandemic world, and how technology leaders plan to invest to make true unified commerce a reality.

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The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Dynamics 365 For Finance And Operations

Cloud simplicity, gained agility, improved user adoption, and enhanced security were a few of the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations. The quantitative benefits over a three year period included:

  • Increased wholesale revenue by 3 percent, retail revenue by 4 percent and decreased excess inventory and shrinkage by 10 percent
  • Operational efficiencies reduced cost of goods sold by 10 percent and improved gross margin by 2.4 percent
  • Employee productivity gains reduced shop floor staffing by 6 percent, increased finance productive by 20 percent, and increased sales productivity by 4 percent
  • Total benefits resulted in a 60 percent ROI and a 20 month payback period, including legacy license, maintenance, hardware, and admin cost avoidance
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The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Dynamics Commerce

Dynamics 365 Commerce provides a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital channels. Customers using a network of disparate and inflexible legacy solutions stand to save significant time and money by moving to an integrated omni-channel solution like Commerce. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact study of Dynamics 365 Commerce found:

  • Improved inventory management to the tune of $3.7 million
  • Saved $1.9 million through decreased training time
  • Increased brick and mortar sales by $1.5 million
  • 25 percent eCommerce sales uplift
  • Payback period of only 17 months
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Microsoft Security a Leader in 5 Magic Quadrants

Gartner has named Microsoft Security a Leader in five Magic Quadrants. This is exciting news that we believe speaks to the breadth and depth of our security offerings. Microsoft was identified as a Leader in the following five security areas:

  • Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions
  • Access Management
  • Enterprise Information Archiving
  • Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tools
  • Endpoint Protection Platforms
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The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Azure IaaS

Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study to examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by shifting some or all their management and operations from on-premises, hosted, and outsourced implementations to Azure’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering. Benefits included:

  • Improved production efficiency
  • Reduced datacenter, IT resource, and outsourcing costs
  • Easier and faster software and hardware management (such as patching and support)
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A Platform for Today, Tomorrow, and Decades from Now

Microsoft offers a complete platform at a tremendous value. When you consider the billions of dollars invested in research and development, cloud growth, and long term viability, an investment in Microsoft makes long term sense.

Ready to learn more about what Dynamics 365 can do for your business?

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Virtual Warehouse

Virtual Warehouses Best Practices

Are they ever a good idea for inventory management and fulfillment?

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As the SVP of Global Business Development for Sunrise Technologies, Cem Item serves as a trusted advisor to C-level executives running large global enterprises. He conducts corporate business strategy engagements and digital transformation workshops around the world. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Cem specializes in the textile, apparel, footwear, home furnishings, consumer goods manufacturing, and retail industries.

Warehouse data tells a story

Data tells a story about how a company runs its business. The warehouse table in particular — this core entity reveals so much about how a company manages its inventory. We’re fascinated by the creativity we see and how customers utilize their inventory data in so many ways.

A common setup: virtual warehouses

One way customers can manage inventory is by setting up virtual warehouses. This is when a warehouse that doesn’t exist in physical space is created in their inventory management system, and inventory is added. Virtual warehouses are a technique used to segment inventory. Think of it as “setting aside” a portion of your product for VIP customers or certain channels. Virtual warehouses aren’t necessarily a bad thing – if an important customer, region, or channel made an early commitment to your product, you definitely want to make sure that product is available to them. For single-channel brands or businesses with simple supply chains, virtual warehousing is a perfectly fine way to manage inventory, and a good business practice. But for omni-channel brands, or global organizations selling product in multiple countries, using virtual warehouses to segment inventory can cause problems.

How virtual warehouses cause problems in the supply chain

Problems start to happen when you set up dozens of virtual warehouses in the system to serve different channels, regions, and retail stores. Even though the warehouses are virtual, you still must deal with the same inventory management issues that crop up just like in a physical warehouse. There are overages and shortages. Demand fluctuates. Product that you “set aside” for your customers and channels changes, constantly, and now you must keep up with every warehouse you created. Different operational segments of the business may hide inventory from another, so they can ensure their fulfillment requests are met. It’s not uncommon for us to see a single warehouse storing product, yet the ERP system has four separate virtual locations. How can you fulfill orders from warehouses that don’t exist?

Fixes for virtual warehouses – that actually cause more problems

When businesses start to have these problems with virtual warehouses, they come up with a brilliant solution – virtual transfers! These cause their own sets of problems, though. When this happens, you’re moving too far away from the accurate, real-life understanding of your inventory. To fix this, companies ask their IT departments to write specific algorithms to automate these virtual transfers, which eats up more time and money. And all the while, the brand still must keep fulfilling orders and allocating product. What started out as a simple way to make every channel happy becomes a twisted nightmare of complex rules and business logic. There are also third-party solutions you can buy and implement to make virtual warehouse management easier. But at the end of the day, these solutions don’t fix the core problem: your virtual house inventory doesn’t match your physical inventory, and it’s hard for the business to make good decisions regarding fulfillment, allocation, and how to manage the supply chain.

The solution? Get rid of virtual warehouses

There is a solution for this virtual warehouse madness and prioritizing where inventory gets allocated. An intelligent soft allocation system can dramatically improve omni-channel inventory management. Soft allocation does this by pegging inventory to segments based on demand and supply from a single inventory point (aka a single warehouse). Instead of automating virtual transfers just to balance out inventory inaccuracies, soft allocation is configurable as demands change, with no complex rewriting or rules or algorithms. Users can prioritize inventory, while pulling from a single pool and maintaining global visibility across the entire system.

Frequently asked virtual warehouse questions

Soft allocation is the way to go. By keeping inventory transparent, you keep the supply chain moving quickly. Solutions can give you the flexibility to hard allocate once you’re ready to ship, but up until that point, you’ll want to be able to move orders around fast, without unnecessary data entry or manual processes.

We don’t consider virtual warehouses a best practice. For one thing, there is nothing fast about virtual warehouses. Once you start messing around with virtual transfers and virtual overages and shortages, you’ve moved too far away from reality, and your users are going to waste a lot of time trying to make your imaginary warehouse look right. At Sunrise, we advocate for having what’s in your system match your physical inventory, sticking as close to reality as possible.

Theoretically, yes, although it’s possible to put systems in place to prevent that. Even with extra business logic, though, solving one problem for virtual warehouses won’t fix everything that’s wrong with using them in the first place. Soft allocation prevents negative inventory from ever being an issue.

If your brand sells across multiple channels like retail, eCommerce, and wholesale, or they sell in multiple regions or countries, soft allocation is the way to go. The more complex an organization, the smarter it is to keep all the inventory in one big pool. It seems counterintuitive at first, but when done correctly, soft allocation ensures you can meet fulfillment demand and have an accurate, real-world view of your inventory across all your channels.

See how Dynamics 365 handles inventory management

Are you interested in learning more inventory best practices? Would you like to a see a modern, streamlined allocation solution that gives you both flexibility and accuracy? Contact Sunrise today!

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Product attributes: best practices for product management in a new ERP deployment

Product Attributes a Mess in Your Old ERP?

Follow these best practices to straighten out hard and soft product attributes in your next ERP deployment

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As the SVP of Global Business Development for Sunrise Technologies, Cem Item serves as a trusted advisor to C-level executives running large global enterprises. He conducts corporate business strategy engagements and digital transformation workshops around the world. With over 20 years of consulting experience, Cem specializes in the textile, apparel, footwear, home furnishings, consumer goods manufacturing, and retail industries.

So, you’re embarking on a new ERP implementation. It’s a new beginning, a chance to reevaluate, reorganize, and revitalize your business processes. And for consumer brands and retailers, product management is the most important piece of the ERP puzzle.

When starting a new ERP implementation, it’s absolutely critical that you think about how you’ll handle product attribution in your new system. For many companies, it’s a mistake to bring over the old product data structure.

Instead, take this as an opportunity to clean up messy, disorganized data and define a product hierarchy that frees your team from unnecessary and confusing product management.

Product attributes: the lifeblood of your brand

Product is the heart of a brand. Whether you sell jackets or handbags or table lamps (or all these things and more), you must define the type, colors, sizes, and many other dimensions for each product. A company’s product data structure is one of the most complex parts of an ERP system. Almost every area of your business will bring their own data and business logic to the product management party. It’s essential that you maintain clean and accurate data for your products to keep them moving through the system efficiently.

What are product attributes?

For those who don’t know: product attributes describe your brand’s, well, products. For those who are all too familiar: managing product attributes can be a pain, especially in a legacy system. Every time a brand debuts a new collection or starts selling a new category of goods, new attributes must be added to the ERP system.

What’s the best way to manage product attributes?

During a new ERP implementation, you have a rare opportunity to clean up your messy data and streamline your product management. Whatever data structure you decide on, you’ll have to live with for the next several years (or decades). Here’s the process we recommend for cleaning up your product hierarchy:

Step one: define your hard attributes

Hard attributes are characteristics that span your entire organization – examples are Brand, Gender, and Product Type. These are used by the business to sort and filter products. Hard attributes show up in the main forms and reports of a business. You will end up with a few of them.

Step two: define soft attributes

Soft attributes, on the other hand, are where you really slice and dice your product data. These are details that are specific to your product categories — think flammability for clothes, finish for furniture, material for handbags, etc.

Examples of hard attributes

  • Brand
  • Gender
  • Product type

…there will only be a few of these

Examples of soft attributes

  • Color
  • Finish
  • Flammability

…there will be a lot of these

The biggest mistake companies make in their product master data

We see this a lot with legacy systems: ALL the soft attributes, across every product category, are visible for every product.  Business users then get confused — why is Finish showing up for a jacket? Why is Flammability listed in the Footwear section? Am I supposed to maintain the water-resistance attribute for my furnishings products? It gets confusing and messy, fast.

Product hierarchies: an opportunity to clean house

It’s usually not a company’s fault that their product masters get so jumbled. Legacy ERP systems don’t handle multiple product categories very well, and people develop customizations and workarounds to get the info they need. Plus, the retail and consumer brands landscape has changed so much – an apparel company that implemented an ERP system in 1999 couldn’t predict that someday, that same company would evolve into a lifestyle brand selling handbags, shoes, accessories, and home décor.  Or that a company may acquire another brand that sells a completely different product, like furnishings, or cosmetics.

That’s where a modern, cloud-based ERP comes in: you need a system for handling many different categories, while minimizing confusion and extra work for product management. Adding a new product category should NOT require customizations to your ERP system.

ERP deployment considerations for product master data and attributes

The right ERP system can give you the correct product hierarchy to efficiently manage all your products. Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it easy to define parent-child product relationships within categories. New soft attributes can be added quickly and attached to the relevant products in your hierarchy. Your users only see what they need to see, and their work is no longer crowded with irrelevant product data.

Further Reading

7 factors for success: everything you need for a successful ERP deployment

10 challenges facing the apparel industry (and how to solve them!)

Soft and hard allocation: understanding the difference

See how Dynamics 365 handles multidimensional inventory

Are you ready to simplify your product data structure? Want to learn more about how Dynamics 365 can efficiently manage your supply chain and revitalize your company? Get in touch with us today!

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Evolve your ERP: Moving from on-premise to the cloud

Evolve Your ERP: Moving from On-Premise to the Cloud

If you’re wondering whether your company’s ERP solution has fallen behind the competitive curve, here’s your answer: More than likely, yes.

Current market research shows that over half of companies’ primary ERPs are at least 5 years old, a precariously long time for fast moving markets. As a result, more than 60% of businesses with at least one ERP solution still mostly rely on legacy on-premises systems.

The reality is that on-premises models are facing an increasingly uncertain future, and forward-thinking companies are behaving accordingly. Faced with an aging on-premise infrastructure, most companies with legacy ERP systems are turning to the cloud as the only viable option. Cloud ERPs have become the new normal.

ERPs are the lifeblood of most major businesses. Good platforms track everything from inventory to monthly close, which is why replacing or upgrading them should be approached with the appropriate amount of respect. When the stakes are high, being proactive is the smart approach.

Read The White Paper

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!

Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.

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Sunrise 365 for Dynamics 365 is TEC certified for fashion, apparel and footwear

Sunrise 365 for Dynamics 365 is TEC Certified for Fashion, Apparel and Footwear

Sunrise is pleased to announce that Sunrise 365® for Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment has been evaluated and certified for Fashion and Retail by TEC. Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is a leading software industry analyst firm.

To achieve TEC certification, software solution providers must conduct a demo of its product and submit a detailed functionality questionnaire. TEC analysts compare the solution against known benchmarks and provide a detailed review of the software’s features.

To learn how Sunrise 365’s extensions make Dynamics and Sunrise a perfect fit for brands and retailers, download the report today!

Read The White Paper

Start Your Journey with Sunrise Today!

Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.

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PLM integration

PLM Vs ERP

The difference and benefits of integrating PLM and ERP

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As a Senior Technical Architect and Project Manager with Sunrise, Mason Whitaker works closely with consumer brands and retailers organizations to ensure smooth Dynamics 365 implementations. Mason has experience working with global organizations in several industries, from e-commerce based mountain bike retail to high-end textiles and fashion.

The Need for Both Systems

Consumer brands and discrete manufacturers often need both PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

Since these consumer goods companies are designing and sourcing or manufacturing products, they require both solutions to handle their business operations.

And when shopping for a new ERP system, some companies hope to find them combined together in a single, all-in-one solution…but should you?

Here’s what we are going to dive into:

PLM vs ERP | Combining PLM and ERP | Boundaries between ERP and PLM | PLM and ERP Frequently Asked Questions | PLM Integration Framework

PLM vs ERP

Let’s start with a few definitions.

PLM: Flexible software that is used to manage the design process, configure and track design milestones, and facilitate team collaboration to plan and design new products to introduce to market.

ERP: Fully integrated financial and supply chain systems which handle high volumes of transactional, structured data, supporting the day-to-day business processes of sourcing and selling those products once introduced to market.

In the real world, the systems must pass product information back and forth…which can be done as an integration between two standalone systems or by adding PLM functionality to an ERP.

 

And while it is attractive to combine the two systems into a single solution, with a joint backend database, our recommendation may surprise you.

 

Should PLM and ERP be combined?

By trying to combine the two worlds into one product, companies often see a loss of features in either the PLM or the ERP. Attempts to combine the flexibility of PLM with the structure of ERP often fail — sacrificing unique characteristics of each that made them work in the hopes of finding a single solution.

Therefore, we recommend keeping PLM and ERP separate as a best practice.. In terms of application architecture, these two software solutions are complete opposites.

By allowing the two systems to operate separately from each other, both can function at their best to deliver the results you wanted from your investment in the first place. Product data for design, and product data for manufacture and sales transaction are very different.

 

The real need is for appropriate integration points so the two separate applications can pass product information back and forth, like attributes, variants, etc.

 

Where do you draw the boundaries between ERP and PLM?

Here are four general rules of thumb as you consider your product offerings across all channels and global regions.

  1. Not all products need to live in the PLM. Only the ones that your consumer goods company designs in house need to start their product lifecycle in the PLM. The products that are designed by third parties can skip the PLM cycle and be entered straight into the ERP.
     
  2. You must determine which system will provide the master for each product, and it should always be the master system going forward. This will help you avoid conflicts and duplications — which is critically important to avoid dual-sided, complex integrations.
     
  3. Planning an interface between ERP and PLM needs to take into account more than just the product data. For example, you need to first plan the foundation for how product data will flow across the applications without friction, including reference data for units of measure, seasons, currencies, and vendors.
     
  4. And finally, in addition to reference data and product data, more complex data integrations need to consider the flow of data for BOMs, POs, routes, etc.
     
 

If this sounds like a lot to consider when planning your PLM and ERP integration, or if you’re considering Microsoft Dynamics 365 for your ERP, then good news! We’ve already created a framework for you.

 

Frequently asked PLM and ERP questions

Create it in your PLM and push that product data to your ERP.

If you are going to drop a color, extend a color across seasons, or introduce a new color, you should make those changes in your PLM first and then push the data to your ERP.

No, these rules of thumb don’t necessarily require that all product data like assortments, hierarchies, attributes, etc., need to be maintained in one system.  

No, as a similar case to above. An intelligent integration design will keep a single system as the master application, while letting other third-party systems append additional data elements, such as attributes, as needed. 

PLM Integration Framework for Microsoft Dynamics 365

Because thinking through intelligent PLM integration frameworks is complicated…and because we’ve done it a lot, we include this as part of our industry solution, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

In fact, most of our customers require a best-of-breed PLM system to manage the design of new products, and that’s why we include a PLM integration framework as part of our Sunrise 365® Supply Chain extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365. It has everything you might need to configure, manage, and process the integration with your preferred PLM software – and has been built to be customized and extended to meet the needs of any implementation.

It utilizes a set of message entities to send and receive data to and from any third-party PLM system of your choice. The integration framework includes a set of out of the box entities for reference and product master data, and the solution can also be extended by creating additional entities or extending existing entities for your unique requirements (for example, add message entities for Bills of Materials).

In case you weren’t familiar, our supply chain solution extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations with a ton of advanced functionality that any consumer brand, apparel, footwear, or fashion company would need to make it a perfect fit. The PLM Integration framework is just one tiny piece of it, but you should also note, it also includes integration frameworks for your 3PLs and eCommerce platform too!

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 Whether you’re exploring your options for new business platforms, or ready to get started, we are trusted business partners for some of the world’s most well-known brands. With over 25 years of experience with the Microsoft stack, we can help you understand all the capabilities Microsoft has to offer.

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TEC certification report

Review: Sunrise 365 Supply Chain and Retail Replenishment for Fashion and Retail Brands

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is a leading software industry analyst firm. To achieve TEC certification, software solution providers must conduct a demo and submit a detailed functionality questionnaire. TEC analysts compare the solution against known benchmarks and provide a detailed review of the software’s features. The extensions in Sunrise 365 add support for essential fashion and apparel industry functionality, all seamlessly integrated into Dynamics 365.

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7 factors for success: Everything you need for a successful ERP implementation

7 Critical Factors for a Successful ERP Implementation

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Your guide for accelerating your cloud ERP deployment

People often ask us what they can do to ensure a successful ERP implementation. The thing is, ERP implementation strategies and best practices have evolved since the introduction of cloud ERP. To achieve a successful go-live, it’s important to refine and evolve your methodology as industries change. In this blog, we’re sharing some of our secrets for how to pull off a successful ERP implementation.

Over the last 30 years (and 300+ implementations), we’ve encountered every roadblock you can think of. So, we started to wonder: how can we counter those roadblocks? Is there a way to keep everyone on track and accountable while providing quantifiable metrics for a project’s progress? The answer is yes! We built a tool—Sunrise Quick Start 365®—to help smooth the path and ensure implementation success.

You already know that successful ERP implementations don’t just happen. It takes hard work from a lot of dedicated people to get a new system up and running. You might have noticed that we haven’t mentioned software yet. That’s because we understand ERP projects aren’t just about implementing software, they’re about people, and how those people embrace or reject a company’s new ERP system can be the difference between success and failure.

There are several ways to approach the implementation of a new ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics 365, and some approaches work better than others. At Sunrise Technologies, we’ve implemented hundreds of ERP solutions powered by Microsoft for our customers in the apparel, footwear, home furnishings, retail, and manufacturing industries. Along the way, we discovered certain methods and best practices for implementing ERP in these industries. If you’re looking for a guide to making your ERP implementation as painless as possible, you’ve come to the right place.

Based on 30 years of experience, we’ve identified seven critical success factors that influence the outcome of a project:

Seven aspects of a successful ERP implementation

Executive support

It’s vital that your executive team is on board with your ERP project. We know from experience that projects succeed when everyone is working from a single set of facts, which is why Quick Start data resides in a single database, giving both Sunrise and customers an identical view of a project’s status. Power BI dashboards with almost real-time updates give everyone a bird’s-eye view of the implementation and keep people on the same page. Embedding Power BI into Quick Start has been the biggest game-changer since we launched the tool in 2013. Users have a quantitative view of how a project is progressing, and project managers can spot bottlenecks quickly.

 

Employee involvement

Your ERP implementation team should be composed of the best employees from across your organization. These are your rock stars, the people who know your current processes inside and out. These internal resources should exhibit the ability to understand the overall needs of the company and be entrusted with critical decision-making responsibility and authority.

Quick Start comes with a library of top-notch workflow processes for your industry which helps take care of the repetitive work so consultants can get down to business. Our methodology combines agile and waterfall methodologies, and sprint-based work so our consultants shadow, interview, design, and leave behind a beautiful set of processes and documents.

Clearly defined project scope

Having a well-defined and written scope of work can mean the difference between a failed project with disastrous results and a highly successful project with huge benefits. Your project scope is the basis for the requirements of the project and the resources that need to be deployed. Don’t skimp on scoping. It pays to spend the time upfront making sure EVERYTHING is documented; plus defining clear expectations and establishing overall goals.

Quick Start is more than a task manager. Our dashboards provide a fact-based, quantitative view of your project’s status. Track progress, see how far you’ve come, compare against budget, and see what’s left to do. Implementations, at their heart, are just thousands of tasks (okay, maybe tens of thousands of tasks. To some of you, it probably feels like hundreds of thousands of tasks.) The idea is simple: have a single location where ALL the project tasks are tracked and make it visible to both the client and project teams.

 

Plan to optimize business processes

One of the most expensive aspects of an implementation is customization. We’ve heard horror stories of thousands of hours sunken into customizing an ERP system that, in the end, still didn’t work for the customer.

Quick Start saves valuable implementation time by providing standardized processes for the repetitive stuff we encounter in every implementation, and a set of best practices:

  • Datasets pre-configured for apparel, footwear, CPG, and retail companies
  • Abstract process flow guides aligned with best industry practices
  • Visibility into timeline and budgets
  • Tools to facilitate easier instance copying for testing, validation, and migration

We also gave the tool a makeover – now with a modern and simple UI, Quick Start stores everything in the cloud, so users can view a project’s status anywhere, anytime.

 

Proactive change management

ERP implementations change the way people do their jobs, and no one likes change. It’s important to build in enough time to train people on new systems and processes. After all, you bought a new ERP system to make work easier! Don’t let end users feel like they just swapped an old, clunky headache for a newer, shinier headache.

To make end user training successful, training should start early, preferably before the implementation begins, especially for skills that will help users better implement and utilize the solution. Executives often underestimate the level of education and training necessary to implement an ERP system as well as the associated costs. Top management must be fully committed to incorporating the training cost as part of the ERP budget.

For a successful implementation, you need structured project management, full transparency, and buy-in from users at every level of the organization. We created Sunrise 365® Quick Start to streamline Dynamics 365 projects, by combining methodology, best practices, and quantifiable progress metrics into a single solution. You can get to go-live faster and experience your company’s digital transformation sooner.

 

Project management tools

Why would we build a specific tool for ERP project management, when we could pull one off the shelf? Because ERP implementations fail for so many reasons: miscommunications, mismatched expectations, an inability to spot problems before they snowball…the list goes on and on. We set out to create a system that minimizes risk and gives everyone a task-oriented, fact-based view of the implementation in real time. Quick Start is tailored to Sunrise’s sprint-driven methodology. We cover this in much more detail in our methodology blog post, but the bottom line is that it works. By leveraging the knowledge we’ve gained from 30 years of experience and over 300 go-lives, Quick Start provides a structured path to success.

A partner that knows your industry

ERP deployments, especially for consumer brand companies, have many moving parts that impact every aspect of an organization. To help monitor and guide your project’s success, we recommend working with a partner who knows your industry as well as they know the software.

Since the original release, we’ve reconfigured the solution to optimize it for Dynamics 365 implementations. Every feature of Quick Start has been included because we encountered it in real ERP projects.  We built this tool from the ground up, and we continue to refine and update Quick Start as our industries change, Microsoft’s software roadmap changes, and new customers go live.

Quick Start: our secret sauce for successful implementations

In 2013 we debuted Quick Start, our Dynamics 365 implementation and project management tool. Since then, Quick Start has become indispensable to our customers and consultants alike. What began as a set of best practices, tips, mappings, datasets, and checklists has evolved into a full-blown, cloud-based project management application, specifically designed for Dynamics 365 implementations. Our customers love Quick Start so much, we wanted to share an updated overview of how Quick Start helps clients save time and money during implementations.

Quick Start saves time and money by packaging our Sunrise implementation methodology with a project management application and embedded Power BI dashboards to track progress. Originally developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3, today Quick Start is built specifically for Dynamics 365 and runs on Microsoft Azure. Power Platform tools like Flow pull data from a single database and Power BI dashboards show project status at a glance.

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How to have it all: a blueprint for a successful ERP deployment

There is a solution – we’ve designed Quick Start to ensure your Dynamics 365 implementation is a success. Quick Start is the ultimate blueprint for following the best practices in this blog. And Quick Start is included FREE with every implementation when you partner with Sunrise Technologies.

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Schedule a personal demo and we’ll show you the ins and outs…the secret sauce…that helps us take clients live on Dynamics 365. You’ll see how Power BI helps monitor project progress, and get the inside scoop on our successful project methodology.

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