Supply Chain Management and ERP

About this issue

Supply Chain Management and ERP: Connecting Decisions with Execution

How can businesses coordinate supply, production, service, and finance when demand and costs keep changing? ERP News Magazine Issue 54, August 2025, examines supply chain management through the enterprise systems and partnerships that support reliable execution. Its interviews, practical articles, news, and five customer stories connect planning and procurement with inventory visibility, logistics, workforce capacity, and measurable business value.

The issue presents ERP as a foundation for shared information and coordinated action. Better software matters, but so do realistic plans, consistent data, capable implementation partners, and teams prepared to use new tools. Together, these elements help organizations respond to disruption while maintaining control of operational and financial performance.

Executive Perspectives: Retail Partnerships and Midmarket Modernization

Mary Dimouro, Director of Channel, Retail at Epicor, discusses the expansion of Epicor's retail partner ecosystem around Propello. Her interview considers point-of-sale usability, guided learning, partner onboarding, certification, and joint go-to-market activity. The emphasis is on building specialist relationships that can support independent retailers as their technology needs evolve, with recurring services and continued enablement contributing to the partner model.

Sanket Akerkar, Chief Revenue Officer at Acumatica, explains why midmarket businesses are reassessing disconnected legacy systems. His discussion connects cloud ERP with real-time visibility, industry functionality, usage-based licensing, integration, and practical AI. He also emphasizes the role of implementation partners, configuration, and community support. The interview encourages leaders to begin with operational gaps and desired outcomes when evaluating modernization.

Distribution, Planning, and Cost Visibility

Brenda Nobleza's Epicor contribution examines Conveyance Solutions and Prophet 21 implementations in distribution. It highlights industry experience, honest scoping, knowledge transfer, and the human side of change. The article shows how implementation expertise can complement software functionality when distributors need to protect continuity while modernizing.

Dorothee Dossmann, Senior Global Marketing Manager at QAD, distinguishes production planning from detailed scheduling. Her analysis explains why a feasible resource plan and responsive execution must operate as a feedback loop. Shared demand, material, machine, and workforce information helps teams reconcile longer-term commitments with daily production constraints.

Rootstock's tariff management article considers how ERP can connect changing import costs with sourcing, inventory, pricing, and finance. Gail Cole of Avalara provides a separate historical account of reciprocal tariff developments and the challenges of classification and effective dates. Both contributions underline the need for connected information; the issue's tariff details represent its 2025 publication context rather than current compliance guidance.

Manufacturing, Inventory, and Service Capacity

George Thuo, Director of Cloud ERP at Global Shop Solutions, examines automation, integration, and tailored ERP as ways manufacturers can improve productivity with constrained resources. His discussion spans scheduling, purchasing, accounting, shop-floor connectivity, and configurable dashboards, while stressing that each automation should support a defined business purpose.

David van Rensburg of SYSPRO explains how IoT data can support inventory availability, replenishment, warehouse visibility, and supply chain coordination. The article also addresses the infrastructure needed to collect, manage, and interpret device information within ERP. Matt Shea, Vice President of Sales for Asset & Service at IFS, applies capacity planning to field-service mergers and expansion, using workforce, geography, skills, and scenario models to evaluate integration choices.

Russell DeLapp, Industry Solutions Principal at NTT DATA Business Solutions, connects operational efficiency with financial innovation in contract development and manufacturing organizations. He considers how maintenance, yield, and inventory improvements can inform ROI and investment decisions. His numerical examples illustrate financial modeling rather than establish results from a named customer project.

Industry Developments: Partnerships, Cloud Platforms, and Agentic AI

The news section covers Aptean's expanded food and beverage partner program, Società Gasdotti Italia's selection of IFS Cloud for field service, and Canadian customer experiences with Acumatica. Capgemini research considers trust and human-AI collaboration as conditions for realizing agentic AI's economic potential. Further coverage introduces QAD | Redzone's Champions of Manufacturing events and updates to Intuit Enterprise Suite across agents, reporting, payments, and multi-entity financial management. These announcements distinguish product direction, expected benefits, and research projections from completed customer outcomes.

Customer Stories: ERP Value in Operational Context

Fyffes' Aptean story follows a long-running ERP relationship through international fruit distribution and a recent upgrade to Process Manufacturing ERP Ross Edition. The company sought to replace an aging version and address surrounding infrastructure and security needs. Its six-month target was completed with a one-week delay through a largely remote project. Further analytics, standardization, and AppCentral AI opportunities remain part of its roadmap.

Aker BP works with Lighthouse and SAP to connect condition-based maintenance using SAP Asset Performance Management, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform. The case describes a shared hub for asset data, specialist alerts, and maintenance workflows, including refinements to reduce excessive notifications. It reports qualitative efficiency, safety, and maintenance benefits. Eliminating unknown failures and extending the solution across further installations remain objectives rather than established fleet-wide results.

Convotherm, a Welbilt brand, replaces fragmented supplier information and manual sourcing with QAD Supplier Relationship Management. The story reports a 3.2× return on investment in the first year and RFQ preparation falling from about an hour to roughly five minutes, described as a 90% reduction. Centralized supplier records support broader participation, communication, and compliance, with further adoption progressing across departments.

CARMA Group adopts Acumatica Construction Edition after its accounting software struggles to support growth. Job costing, change orders, commitments, configurable dashboards, and connected applications improve access to operational information. The case discusses integration with Procore and Velixo, remote working, and easier document access. It reports qualitative benefits and staff experiences without establishing a quantified ERP-attributable financial return.

Navantia works with Capgemini and Microsoft on a structured Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption program. Training, champions, communication, and measurement support new ways to summarize information, create content, and collaborate. The case reports 91.7% activation of allocated licenses, average savings of 30 minutes per user per day, and satisfaction of 8.3 out of 10. Further extensibility is discussed alongside these adoption results.

Across these examples, supply chain performance emerges as a wider enterprise discipline. Connected systems become useful when planning assumptions, procurement decisions, frontline activity, and financial consequences can be understood together and acted on with confidence.