Herbst Software is a well established Irish owned business with 40 years’ experience working with Irish and UK B2B businesses and are renown for establishing excellent relationships and a good level of understanding with lean consultants and team leaders.
Herbst software is a fully customisable, turn-key solution which can be adapted and changed according to specific business operations. This is important as many businesses evolve very quickly with management changing their direction. Some businesses even claim that they want everything they currently have, when in reality this is not the case, they just find it the easiest way to communicate things.
The main reason for investing in a system in the first place is because you want to optimise, streamline, integrate and become more lean and efficient.
Sometimes it can be hard for a consultant to communicate the advantages of lean to a client (without frightening them too much) as there is limited time. This is why implementing changes in separate phases is often a sign of an experienced, lean consultant.
Another advantageous thing about Herbst software, is that the whole concept is ‘one system’, which means it is more intuitive to learn, easier to implement, install, maintain and even from a consultant’s perspective, it’s easier to manage.
Of course there are instances where third party applications want to operate within the database and we have specific secure methods which work in cloud environments specifically swager open API3.0 and encrypted query services that automatically produce JASON, XML, CSV files (through URL queries).
Herbst software have been producing machines and developing ERP software solutions for the last 35 years and during this time, we found that rather than building an individual financial system or management system, it was more cost effective for the consumer if we encompassed the two, creating one solution.
With our system, the concept of everything being fully integrated makes a lot of sense when it comes to ‘lean’ practices. We offer fully integrated CRM, customer web services, stock management, account management, credit control, transaction business life cycles, goods-in, production, dispatch modules, stocktaking and the overall aspect (although it may seem like a mouthful) is that everything is built within the same environment, the same software and it’s all part of ONE system.
When you have one system, by default, you actually learn the methodologies of all the other aspects as well. If you’re using five different programmes, you need learn how to navigate and work all five programmes, even if they are inter-operating with one another. Then keeping up maintenance and having difficulty supporting your current programmes, it is all very cumbersome, even if it’s on a simple level.
For example, if you have a pickup truck and a car and trailer, that truck is definitely a lot handier and more useful if you are delivering large loads. However, sometimes it’s the car and trailer that is required for a specific job or possibly a van, or lorry. Even though the car and trailer has more parts, meaning more problems can occur, this still may be what is needed. Either way, the idea of this terminology is to show you that the system allows for these different functionalities.
In short, to keep it lean, keep it simple!
With fully integrated modules and functionalities, our system facilitates the concept of lean and streamlining businesses. It makes it extremely easy to optimise operations because you have individual staff from several departments working within the one database, who are communicating with one another unknown to themselves. Each department will have unique functionalities to aid their own role, however indirectly, they are also feeding each department information required to do their own business processes whilst facilitating each other.
This is very much the case for stock control, credit control, processing sales orders and quotations, your finance, budgeting, and forecasting. Although each department within the organisation will do their tasks as individuals, in essence, all information is being relayed into one database, within one system using the same software and information meaning everything is streamlined and management can access the figures they need at the touch of a button in real time.
Of course you may need to restrict certain information as not everyone will be granted permissions into other departments. This can be done by default which in return will only show staff the certain information they need to know.
By investing in one system, you automatically reduce the duplication and the complexity of your operations because everybody within the company is looking at the same data.
A good example of reducing duplication is having a fully integrated job costing module. General job costing usually involves many resources, meaning that when stock is out, there’s someone there with a spreadsheet doing the costing, there’s a costing beforehand, there’s another person doing a spreadsheet after the costing and one more person doing the invoicing in a separate place.
By integrating job costing with procurement, stock and accounts, you are removing the need for three or four members of staff duplicating essential information, freeing up time across each department.
A good implementation process to fit the requirements of the customer is key.
Not all clients will have the same requirements, however if a consultant is working within the organisation, they will know the personality of the company, have completed a needs analysis and can best advise the direction of the implementation. The essence and aim of a successful implementation is to work in line with the consultation process, agree on an implementation plan and during that implementation plan, you can set things out in different stages.
Realistically, the main goal is to have one or two ‘super users’ so when phase one of the system is implemented and ready go live, you will actually have two users within your organisation that know all the dynamics of the system. This is extremely beneficial as every staff member within an organisation does not need to know all of the ins and outs, so the power users are able to work in collaboration with each different department and teach the staff within, ensuring everything is going smoothly.
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Leasing Available for Herbst Software Systems
sales@herbst.ie
+353 (0)1 450 9329
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