In this exclusive interview for ERPNews’ July issue, we delve into the 25-year partnership between ET Browne and SYSPRO ERP, exploring how this collaboration has propelled ET Browne to new heights. Pieter Goes, Vice President of IT & BI at ET Browne, alongside Jamie Veinot, Product Manager at SYSPRO Americas, share their insights into the evolution of their relationship, key milestones, and the transformative impact of SYSPRO ERP on ET Browne’s operations. From upgrading to the latest version of SYSPRO ERP in 2023 to implementing just-in-time inventory systems and enhancing demand forecasting, this interview reveals the strategies behind ET Browne’s impressive achievements, including a 22% reduction in inventory and a 113% increase in profits. Additionally, the discussion touches on the role of SYSPRO ERP in supporting ET Browne’s sustainability initiatives and managing the complexities of incorporating recycled materials into their supply chain. Discover how SYSPRO ERP’s innovative features and future-focused approach continue to drive efficiency, scalability, and success for mid-market manufacturers like ET Browne.
Pieter Goes, Vice President of IT & BI at ET Browne
1. How has the relationship with SYSPRO ERP evolved over the past 25 years, and what key milestones have you achieved during this partnership?
It’s been a great relationship, and as ET Browne has grown, SYSPRO has scaled right alongside us. For most of this time, we’ve relied on SYSPRO ERP to help us manage and control financial operations. However as our business has expanded, it became clear there were opportunities to take advantage of additional capabilities within the platform.
2. What were the primary reasons behind upgrading to the latest version of SYSPRO ERP in 2023, and how has this upgrade impacted your business operations?
Sure. By 2023, we’d grown into a $250 million company, and it was clear we needed to standardize all our facilities on a single system for managing inventory and the supply chain. It was evident there were efficiencies we could take advantage of, but we lacked the visibility to find them. By upgrading to the latest version of SYSPRO ERP, we took advantage of additional capabilities to gain better visibility and control, which enabled us to predict demand, understand how fulfilling the anticipated sales pipeline would affect our production schedules, and anticipate the peaks in demand we needed to buffer.
The benefits were striking. We were able to achieve a fill rate of 95% and reduce our inventory by 22%, and we didn’t sacrifice preparedness — we retained a substantial buffer so we could weather supply chain disruption.
3. Could you elaborate on how SYSPRO’s MRP capabilities have helped in creating a just-in-time inventory system and the specific benefits you’ve observed?
We can see exactly what’s on hand, where it is, and when and what we will need in the coming months given anticipated demand. But it does much more than that. Like any manufacturer, we need to use up the raw materials we have on hand first, and the system provides us with that visibility. So, purchasing managers can go into the system, see precisely what the forecast says we should order, understand what we have on hand, and then make informed decisions to purchase only what we need.
Those inventory reductions have translated directly into profits. Revenue grew 7% year over year, but our profit grew 113%. We couldn’t have achieved that without our just-in-time inventory system and the executive efforts to streamline our operation.
4. How have SYSPRO ERP’s demand forecasting and supply chain management functionalities improved your visibility and control over inventory?
Simply put, we’re no longer ordering materials based on spreadsheets — which may be out of date — or gut feelings. We’re basing decisions on hard data that’s accurate and the same for everyone. As I noted earlier, we’ve got a 95% fill rate, so we don’t run into shortages, nor do we have an overabundance of raw materials. This has led to improved forecast accuracy, which drives trust in the system across the planning, procurement and production teams.
5. Reducing inventory by 22% and increasing profits by 113% are impressive feats. Can you share more details on the strategies and processes that contributed to these results?
Ultimately, we wanted a system for inventory management that enables us to manage multiple warehouses, lot control, and the supply chain. That’s what SYSPRO provides. Then on top of that, SYSPRO provides an MRP calculator that enables us to know when materials will arrive. Without all this information, we couldn’t have achieved those inventory reductions and or a 95% fill rate. The key to our success in merging systems with processes is that our operational teams trust the data provided and act accordingly. Aligning the actual activities our teams perform with the suggestions coming out of SYSPRO drives most of the efficiency.
As far as processes go, we run mini MRPs at each warehouse and it gets consolidated into our finished goods warehouse. That leads to production job suggestions at our production facility and then to the purchasing dept, with all the required lead times. It simplifies a very complex process. We set up a fixed time period with a field that says all POs will be grouped into one big order I can place at the beginning of the month. We also conduct a weekly, thorough PO review to make sure we’re all on the same page, and this helps get all our purchases in much sooner than we did before, which results in better supply.
6. As you plan to meet the growing need for recycled materials in packaging, how do you anticipate SYSPRO ERP will help manage the increased complexity within your bill of materials?
ET Browne is committed to a variety of sustainability efforts, but currently in the process of moving from virgin plastics in our containers to post-consumer recycled plastics. But as we make that transition, we need to use up all the virgin plastic we have on hand first, and accounting for that in a bill of material can be an enormous headache from a management standpoint. SYSPRO will simplify this process, providing visibility and automation to our marketing, purchasing, and production planning teams to smoothly transition to these new components.
Managing the bill of materials for all our products is paramount in all cases, particularly those that are transitioning, to ensure the accuracy of the MRP outputs. As such, ET Browne puts a lot of effort into master data management, leading to accurate BOMs driving the right insights from SYSPRO MRP to our operational group.
Jamie Veinot, Product Manager at SYSPRO Americas
1. What has been the foundation of the 25-year successful partnership between SYSPRO and ET Browne, and what lessons have you learned from this collaboration?
SYSPRO’s ERP is specially designed to meet the needs of manufacturers and distributors, and our people pride themselves on knowing our customers’ industry and businesses as well as knowing the technology. We also have a culture of collaboration, where everyone is all in to solve customer challenges and ensure they get maximum value from the platform. In the software business, it’s unusual for a customer to stay with you for longer than five years, much less a quarter century. I think what we’ve learned is that if you understand your customers’ challenges and work alongside them as a partner to help them grow their business, you can forge a strong relationship that lasts.
2. What new features and enhancements were introduced in the latest version of SYSPRO ERP, and how do they address the needs of modern manufacturers like ET Browne?
ET Browne is primarily taking advantage of enhanced capabilities in warehouse management – such as the ability to easily streamline sales orders – and increased visibility into the supply chain. But there were many new capabilities and enhancements, the largest of which were:
- SYSPRO Embedded Analytics: This capability integrates intelligence and data capabilities directly within the ERP system, providing heightened visibility of operational activity across the organization. This empowers users to easily create, customize, and deploy dashboards and visualizations anywhere in SYSPRO, providing real-time, accurate, and relevant data from all aspects of the business.
- SYSPRO Quality Management: Fully integrated into SYSPRO ERP, this enables manufacturers to oversee all activities and tasks required to maintain a desired level of excellence. Manufacturers can set their own quality control standards in their business, achieve less variability, and improve overall customer satisfaction as it enables them to inspect and approve quality at each process throughout the supply chain quickly and effectively.
- Low Code Application Designer: Customers can use this capability to easily integrate new solutions into SYSPRO, and to also build custom solutions into the SYSPRO UI.
- Document Services: AP Invoice Automation: This form recognition enables the digitization of AP invoice data directly from physical forms, streamlining data entry and expediting the three-way invoice matching process.
3. Can you explain how SYSPRO ERP’s MRP and just-in-time inventory systems work, and what immediate impacts these systems have on a business’s efficiency and profitability?
SYSPRO MRP is designed to offer real-time visibility and control over manufacturing and supply chain processes by taking into consideration demand from sales orders, quotes and production plans, which it compares against existing inventory, supply chain transfers (SCTs) and incoming purchase orders (Pos). The results of these analyses help manufacturers and distributors streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve efficiency by providing insights into inventory, demand forecasting and production planning. By aligning production with demand and optimizing inventory levels, MRP minimizes stockouts, reduces carrying costs, and enhances overall supply chain efficiency. And as you can see with ET Browne, all these efficiencies translate directly into higher profitability.
4. How does SYSPRO ERP’s demand forecasting technology help businesses predict demand accurately and improve their supply chain management?
SYSPRO ERP employs advanced analytics and predictive AI to crunch all the data about the supply chain that resides within the platform to predict not only demand, required inventory levels, and purchasing, but it can also identify which suppliers are likely to deliver late and when these late deliveries will arrive. Customers who use it tell us they have no idea how they managed their supply chain without it — with all this new visibility, they say they feel like they’d be working blind without it.
5. In light of ET Browne’s initiative to use more recycled materials, how does SYSPRO ERP support sustainability and manage complexities within supply chains?
SYSPRO ERP supports sustainability in a number of ways. Companies waste and order less material because they know exactly what they have on hand. Raw materials don’t spoil because managers can see exactly which lots they need to use first. With a more efficient organization, they consume fewer resources, such as people, raw materials, power, and water. We believe sustainability and profitability go hand in hand, and SYSPRO ERP helps enable both.
6. How does SYSPRO ERP ensure that its solutions remain scalable and customizable to meet the unique needs of mid-market manufacturers across different industries?
There’s no simple trick to achieve this. Our platform’s scalability and flexibility are the direct result of many years of development and a guiding philosophy that our ERP platform must be easy to scale and integrate with other software systems. It’s what our customers need, and solving their business problems is our No. 1 goal.
7. What are the emerging technologies and trends that SYSPRO is focusing on to stay ahead in the ERP market, and how do you plan to incorporate these into your platform to benefit companies like ET Browne?
We focus on the mid-market, a sector that doesn’t have the resources of the Fortune 500 and the Global 2000, so our focus has been to provide them with advanced technologies within the ERP so they’re easy to use and maintain. For instance, we recently introduced embedded analytics, which provides analytics capabilities to our clients using the data they already have in the ERP, though they can bring in other data sources as well. This way, they don’t need to buy a separate, enormous business intelligence platform, build a data warehouse and then spend time and money maintaining it. Everything is contained within the ERP.
We have had AI predictive modeling capabilities since 2017 and will continue to build on what we have deployed by tying generative AI into the mix. We want to leverage AI with our document services engine to further streamline and automate business processes such as sales orders and purchase order processing. Our chief innovation officer, Kevin Dherman, is in charge of innovation. We expect to continue providing manufacturers and distributors with advanced technologies that aren’t just cool but also provide practical benefits that drive their businesses forward.
