How ERA™ Addresses Commercial Business Challenges

Manufacturing
Commercial organizations have special needs covering a broad range of operational areas that have an impact on manufacturing. ERA™ applications can help the commercial organization (re)design its manufacturing enterprise to better address:

• Global integration
• Material sourcing and suppliers
• Labor relations and teamwork
• Operations research and management
• Data analysis for manufacturing applications
• Performance metrics
• Product design centers
• Quality systems planning and implementation
• Project management
• Executive management facilities

ERA™ applications facilitate the establishment of a lean and agile enterprise that is performance based and considers a wide range of key performance parameters including surge capability, agility, quality, cost, etc.

Product Sales and Service Providers
Whether your business is retail, wholesale, b2b, b2g or a hybrid, the development of a sound business strategy is paramount to your success. Moreover, it is an iterative process. The mission and vision must be translated into definable and measurable business objectives. Business objectives must be supported by the appropriate core capabilities and available resources. ERA™ can be used to help the commercial organization (re)design, test and implement an enterprise architecture that is congruent with its mission and vision.

But that’s not the end of the process. As described in our “Commercial Focus - Challenges” section, business moves at the speed of light these days. As a result, corporate missions must be revisited at least every three to five years, and business strategies and models must be reassessed and “challenged” every year … in some E-commerce environments, even more frequently.

ERA™ can help the commercial enterprise better serve its markets even when customer needs change, suppliers appear and disappear, new sales venues emerge, etc. Most companies can’t afford the cost and disruption of totally reorganizing every year. Instead, ERA™ can help you build a performance-based enterprise that allows you to continually build and improve the company’s presence in your key markets and segments without disruption of on going business. You will be better able to:

• Optimize your selection and management of distribution channels.
• Keep pace with your customers’ demands for new products, product extensions and product feature sets.
• Improve and “tweak” your business models through joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, innovation, etc.
• Create better coordination and co-mingling of ideas between the functional groups within your enterprise.
• Improve the customer relationship process and harness the power of customer feedback to improve your products.
• Build, train/mentor, and effectively manage sales forces and support functions that enable sales.
• Most importantly, ERA™ will finally allow you to achieve real value from the use of tools such as “executive dashboards” and “balanced scorecards” because you will be able to adjust the enterprise more quickly to the strategic performance metrics that these tools are presenting you with.