Choosing the right ERP for a textile SME

Imagine an ideal world where you have access to your data in real time on a dashboard from your phone. In the blink of an eye, you see the progress of your products on your production line, the state of your inventory, the number of minutes required per parts category. Instantly, through a notification, you are alerted if you are running behind on shirts.

Now imagine that your suppliers are late delivering this or that fabric (classic) — in a few minutes, you are able to reorganize your production, no longer needing to be at a standstill for an entire afternoon. In short, you have room to maneuver!

Reading these few lines, you have surely shed a small tear, because these are things that are difficult and time-consuming to put in place. A good ERP tool is a significant ally for your SME, a true partner in your performance. The challenge is to find a solution adapted to your company and your issues.

With Bonx, you can work miracles, but we will first give you some more general advice.

Take back control of your production processes with a best-of-breed ERP

A good ERP for a textile factory is an ERP that intervenes across the entire production and enables improvement of all processes in the value chain. Today, the very unstable context we are witnessing is penalizing our textile SMEs, since they are victims of disruptions to European and global supply chains. Textile factories need a boost when it comes to digitalization. It is (somewhat) a matter of survival. Many factories still have clearly insufficient data collection, which penalizes them: parts traceability, inventory status, and production times are only partially collected. And the worst part is that the ERP software being used is obsolete (to the point of calling on retired ERP CEOs — true story). These dusty old ERPs do not have enough added value since you always end up reworking the data manually, and it is very complicated to make them evolve. So you make do. And honestly... it's not great.

Production is the lifeblood of a textile factory. Forget catch-all ERPs, we have already told you that. Start by digitalizing your production before tackling your other problems, and make the choice of an ERP software that will allow you to:

• Easily collect data at every process step with the aim of having real-time data, being able to make predictions, conduct analyses, and optimize your processes overall.
• Have dashboards for team leaders to better manage the different steps and become more efficient.
• Connect with many other tools.

Choose an ERP software that is quick to implement and open

ERP projects are a nightmare for many business leaders, because they are costly, lengthy, laborious projects that quite often end in failure or a mediocre result that only partially covers the company's needs. At Bonx, we have actually banned the word "project," since with us, implementing an ERP is much faster. For the textile and apparel industry, a good ERP aims to harmonize data from production in order to standardize processes, improve overall productivity, reduce costs, and minimize risks. This will allow you to reduce your inefficiency and avoid afternoons where the factory comes to a standstill due to lack of anticipation (the root cause of which is the crucial lack of data).

Let us recap: let us start by focusing on production, then let us center on one particular point of attention. You bill by the minute spent on this or that part: knowing and being able to optimize your production times can have a real impact on your business. Why not start by focusing on this very specific issue, begin collecting data, aggregating it in a production ERP, and creating the necessary automations to generate alerts in case of delay, for example. In this very specific case: it is fairly simple to implement from a technical standpoint and the impact on your business is already enormous after a few weeks. After a few months, it will (finally) be possible to standardize your processes by having a set number of minutes dedicated per part type at each production step. For example, a plain fabric women's blouse requires x minutes of cutting and x minutes of stitching. In short, the impact that a good ERP can have on your daily life in a textile factory is rather incredible. Then will come a second scope and a second impact, and so on until complete digitalization of your production processes — and there: welcome to the 21st century!

Choose software that is simple to implement, but also open by default. In technical terms this is called a SaaS ERP. Let me explain: a cloud SaaS software can connect to any other software in the cloud software family. Thus, you can bet on the best production software connected with the best customer management software (special mention to our friends at Hubspot or Sellsy), integrated with your HR software (Payfit)... (and the possibilities are endless): in short, you find yourself equipped with the best tools on the market, interconnected to serve your business — great, isn't it?

Choose an innovative and easy-to-use ERP for the happiness of your teams

You have understood: you need to integrate the best software by category around a cloud production ERP. Quick definition: cloud software is software that, through server-based storage, enables real-time data access by multiple users simultaneously. Bonus if you choose an ERP software that is easy for your teams to use! Why? We have visited many industrial sites and we agree that ergonomics is the least of many people's concerns. Well, that is not necessarily a good thing. If we forget the rest, ERPs offer a catastrophic user experience and you get the feeling of using completely archaic software. In a few words: it is a struggle for everyone! Suffice it to say that operators tasked with entering data into an ERP will do so reluctantly. Imagine that entering an order takes five minutes each time, because you are using dusty software and entering an order is anything but intuitive. You surely have a binder hidden somewhere that meticulously summarizes the procedure (worthy of a surgical operation) that allows you to enter an order without the software flashing red. There, the picture is clear. Now, imagine that entering an order is as simple as ordering a book on a website. Simple, practical, intuitive. Do you see the potential time and productivity gain? No need to say more, I think. Use an ERP that is easy to use for you and your operators — you will save time.

When we created Bonx, we wanted to make the ERP simple to use, accessible from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. I think we did not do too badly. We went further in simplicity thanks to no-code technology: after a few weeks of training, you are independent on Bonx and no longer need us (or anyone else) to modify your dashboards, your views, and your processes — all of this is incredibly simple!

To summarize? A good ERP software adapted to the textile or apparel industry:

• Allows you to collect far more key data for your business and enables you to analyze it in order to make informed decisions
• Focuses on one domain (e.g.: production) and fits together with the other champions of their category in a best-of-breed and cloud logic
• Is simple to implement (goodbye to year-long and longer ERP projects) and to use for all of your collaborators, which allows it to have a lot of impact (and very quickly) on your company.

We did not talk about Bonx much in this article, but we have detailed what we believe to be a good ERP software choice adapted to the issues of textiles. We can also continue to support you in this reflection during a brief half-hour exchange. Your move!