Post on 12-Mar-2020
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
White Paper
ERP for the Connected World
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
3
Why You Should Read This
Your daily focus needs to be on managing your business and creating new ways to innovate.
Similarly, your employees want to work on innovative projects to help grow the business,
not managing data centers and databases, worrying about uptime, downtime, and security.
You want to move quickly to capture new market opportunities and not be constrained by
what your legacy ERP software will enable you to do.
Kenandy is a new approach to ERP that lets you and your people focus on driving innovation,
creating new product lines, and expanding your customer base even as you improve your
business operations. In this paper, we’ll explore six ways Kenandy supports innovation,
and provides a framework for operational efficiency. Kenandy is:
1. Easy to configure
2. Extensible
3. Always current, offering real-time visibility
4. Collaborative
5. Mobile
6. Easy to use
Cloud-Native ERP Supports Innovation and Growth
Whether you’re a growing single-site specialty manufacturer or a large multinational
organization, business does not stand still. Instead, there’s a constant need to grow, seek
new opportunities, and react to new competitive threats along with changing market
conditions. While there are many factors that determine how your organization responds to
market conditions, one key driver of success is the flexibility of your software infrastructure.
To understand why, consider, for example, a company that wants to enter a new geography
quickly to capture a new opportunity. To successfully enter this market may require new
manufacturing facilities, additional distribution channels, and modified logistics. It will require
reconfiguring business processes to include the new target market within the full operations
of the company. And if the target market is in a new geography, it may include having to
navigate a new set of financial or accounting regulations. All of these requirements require
supporting software.
Cloud is not just a
technology transformation
opportunity—it’s a
business transformation
opportunity. Leading
CIOs must now build
cloud-centric ecosystems
that connect employees,
partners, and customers
in real time, going
beyond tasks that just
focus on the benefits
of cost and speed.
Forrester Research1
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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The challenge for many companies is that they rely on legacy ERP with a rigid software
architecture that is simply not agile enough to set up and quickly reconfigure to support
new manufacturing facilities, coordinate new distribution channels, and modify logistics.
With legacy EPR, it can take several years to set up new data centers and hire new personnel
to customize and manage the software for a new market. A company that relies on legacy
ERP software may simply miss new opportunities because they couldn’t adapt their
manufacturing and supply chain in time.
Now imagine a different approach. A company that needs to react to new market conditions
can simply turn to a cloud-native ERP solution, such as Kenandy, that is available on-demand.
There is no need to provision new hardware or hire new IT staff. With Kenandy, it’s possible
to instantly provision the software support needed to take advantage of new market
opportunities or respond to dynamic business conditions.
The ability to instantly access cloud ERP resources increases the ability of a company to
innovate. With Kenandy, a company can quickly re-configure business processes to test new
product concepts and, perhaps as importantly, turn off these processes if the product does
not succeed. Additionally, there is no need to invest in new expensive hardware to launch
each test market, making innovation much quicker and more cost effective. This means
a company can leverage Kenandy to run rapid prototypes of new products and services
to see which ones will lead to business success. This approach is simply not possible with
on-premises ERP investments that require long lead times to provision new opportunities.
1. Easy Configuration Enables Innovation
Creating innovative products and services usually requires new business models. For
example, companies that used to sell products directly to the end-user are now offering
subscription-based services that require a different approach to managing customers,
revenue, and inventory. One example is a manufacturer of MRI machines that traditionally
sold the expensive devices directly to hospitals. Now, they’re changing their business
model so they continue to own the MRI machine, while billing the hospitals by the image.
This new model enables the company to increase their footprint to new hospitals that
otherwise would not have been able to purchase an MRI machine.
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Unfortunately, while legacy ERP systems provide a solid foundation to run a business,
they do so only if very little changes. Legacy ERP systems tend to be rigid, inflexible,
and hard to configure. So as companies transition to new business models, they’re not
able to leverage their existing legacy ERP solutions to support them.
By contrast, Kenandy is designed for flexibility and adaptability, enabling the rapid
configuration of new business processes to support innovation. If a company needs to
change its business model, or add an entirely new one, Kenandy makes it easy. Kenandy
derives its flexibility and ease of configuration from two key technologies: the Salesforce1
Platform and through a data model called Wide-Body Objects™.
Salesforce1 Platform
The Salesforce1 Platform is the leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise
Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS). In addition to providing software as a service
(SaaS), Salesforce1 is an application platform that provides all the computing services,
networks, web services, security, and reliability that you need to run software and
related services globally. The Salesforce1 Platform supports a global enterprise with
multi-company, multi-calendar, multi-country, multilingual, and multicurrency capabilities.
Data centers strategically located worldwide support high standards of performance.
The importance of the Salesforce1 Platform in enabling innovation can be seen through
a simple metric: developing on the Salesforce1 platform is 5X faster and one-half the
cost of traditional development with on-premises technology stacks. Salesforce1 is a key
reason why Kenandy customers can rapidly configure their apps to develop the business
processes needed to support new innovative products and services.
Wide-Body Objects™
Kenandy provides a unique way to support innovation of new products and services
by being easily adaptable to change, using a data model called Wide-Body Objects.
Kenandy built the specialized functionality of Wide-Body Objects on the Salesforce1
Platform to create an ERP system that is easy to use, update, and change. Wide-Body
Objects not only make complex software in the cloud possible, they are the foundation
of a business-customizable system.
The Salesforce1
Platform takes care of
the infrastructure, the
database, security—
all of those things that
allow us to very quickly
start solving customers’
problems.
Sandra Kurtzig, Executive Chairman and Founder, Kenandy.
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Wide-Body Objects store related items with common fields, formulas, and processes.
For example, invoice, credit memo, and adjustments share similar data structures
and therefore are expressed as a single object. You can think of Wide-Body Objects as
“business-ready objects” because they enable you to organize, control, and adapt your
business systems.
Wide-Body Objects simplify accessing, managing, and customizing Kenandy applications.
You can easily rename a field, change a workflow, or generate a real-time dashboard.
You don’t have to be a database guru or programming savant to change the system to do
your bidding. It’s part of the Kenandy philosophy to enable you to modify the system to
match your needs with “clicks, not code.” This architectural difference between Kenandy
and legacy ERP is key to enabling you to keep up with frequent changes in markets
and customer requirements. The flexibility of Kenandy Wide-Body Objects provides a
foundation for business innovation.
Social Real-Time Reporting
Customers Distributors Employees Suppliers Contract Manufacturers
Mobile
WorkflowGlobal In-memory Configurable Multitenant Protected Updates
Integration APIs
Scalable Secure
Kenandy Cloud ERP
Single Wide-Body ObjectTM Data Model
ORDER-TO-CASH PROCURE-TO-PAY PLANNING & PRODUCTION GLOBAL FINANCIALS
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Blue Clover Devices is an award-winning original design manufacturer (ODM) that
produces UL-certified power and audio accessories for some of the world’s most
popular digital devices. “Our focus on continually innovating to improve efficiency
was definitely a driver for moving to Kenandy Cloud ERP,” says Blue Clover Devices
President and Co-founder Pete Staples. For example, the company’s purchase orders
and inventory management were being handled by two separate systems that
couldn’t even talk to one another. With Kenandy, these functions have been seamlessly
integrated, along with many other productivity features. “In fact, Kenandy is like Legos
whereas the traditional ERP systems are more like a stack of lumber and blueprints,”
says Staples. “With Kenandy, it’s fundamentally easier to put things together and make
them work.“2
2. The Importance of Extensibility in Innovation
Instead of constraining your innovation, as does a rigid legacy ERP system, Kenandy helps
you grow your company. Should you need to add or change workflows, triggers, events,
or formulas, it’s all under your control. You can customize, tweak, and augment the system
so it meets your needs. All customizations are available to your workforce, anywhere,
anytime. When Merrow Sewing Machines wanted to expand by investing in new business
opportunities, their Kenandy system proved to be an enabler. As CEO Charlie Merrow
states, “The Merrow global investments in these (new) businesses are driven in large part
by our confidence in Kenandy. Because Kenandy is so easily extensible, we can build out
the backend support for these new businesses quickly at a relatively low cost. This is, in
fact, why these businesses are launching.”3
Being able to add new functionality to existing ERP systems is key to keeping the
innovation engine revving. Most manufacturing enterprises that have been in business for
years have their own version of ERP, whether from a major vendor such as Oracle and SAP,
or a home-grown collection of multivendor applications. Even considering all the benefits
of cloud ERP, it’s often impractical to replace the existing systems all at once. That’s why
Kenandy includes extensive integration points and application programming interfaces
(APIs) to ensure that legacy data flows freely between new cloud apps and your system-of-
record. In addition, the use of shared logic within Kenandy’s Wide-Body Objects simplifies
the integration of data sources.
Kenandy is like Legos
whereas the traditional
ERP systems are more
like a stack of lumber
and blueprints.
Pete Staples, President and Co-Founder, Blue Clover Devices
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Extensibility also means being able to quickly onboard a new workforce during an
acquisition or partnership. In the days of on-premises ERP, there would be new hardware
to install, software to distribute, weeks of extensive training to bring the new workforce
up to speed. With Kenandy, you set up sign-on security and all your users have access via
their desktop browser or mobile devices. With the intuitive browser-based apps, training
is minimized to understanding business processes, not memorizing menu navigation and
reporting toolsets. That’s business extensibility.
Big Heart Pet Brands (formerly Del Monte Foods, and now part of the J.M. Smucker
Company) acquired Natural Balance Pet Foods, and needed to integrate the companies
quickly. Since Big Heart had already selected Kenandy as its ERP platform, the
acquisition presented the perfect opportunity to implement the cloud-based ERP
system. Using Kenandy’s agile implementation methodology, Natural Balance was able
to go live on its new ERP software 90 minutes after the acquisition was completed.
“We’re confident that Kenandy will live up to its promise of providing a complete,
enterprise-ready ERP solution that has quick time-to-value,” says David McLain, Senior
Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Procurement Officer, Big Heart Pet
Brands. “At Natural Balance and in our corporate systems, we’re replacing a patchwork
of applications with one unified, extensible solution that will grow and scale with Big
Heart’s needs. We’re optimistic that Kenandy will help provide us the visibility we need
to improve the business now, and into the future.” 4
3. How Real-Time Visibility Supports Innovation
Transactions by day, reporting by night. This is the work cycle of legacy ERP. Need a report
to make a pricing decision while the customer waits? Place your request in the IT queue
and hope for the best. Need to understand the yield on your production line right now—in
Taiwan? Setup a conference call and hope everyone with the right information can attend.
With Kenandy, you get real-time visibility into your business when you need it. Even with
a global organization, all the data is updated in real-time on the cloud, so you can drill-down
to the single source of truth using intuitive reporting apps and analytics. Being able to
monitor the flow of goods and services within your organization provides the ability to react
quickly to changes in customer orders and supply chain bottlenecks, letting you innovate as
needed to adapt and keep on top of today’s challenges.
A system that is not
sufficiently flexible to
meet changing business
demands is an anchor,
not a sail, holding
the business back,
not driving it forward.
Gartner5
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Salesforce enables a
new level of developers,
often called “citizen
developers,” who sit
on the business side
to create apps with
tools that are close
to the spreadsheet
world that they live in,
but with the benefits
of a governable,
secure cloud platform
environment.
IDC Research8
Kenandy’s unified data model, Wide-Body Objects, are key to enabling you to quickly build
and generate reports and real-time dashboards using a graphical toolset—not by writing
SQL statements with complex joins. When you want everyone to be on the same page by
understanding the real-time status of the business, creating active dashboards that monitor
your business processes is a key step. By leveraging the power of Wide-Body Objects, your
managers can create dashboards that report on their departments’ key metrics with live
data.
“One of the most remarkable things about Kenandy is that it lets us really see what’s going
on in our business,” says CEO Charlie Merrow. “We have Kenandy running on three 50-inch
flat-screens in our big lobby space. Plus, in each department, there’s a giant flat-screen with
dashboards showing what’s going on in that particular area—how many invoices need to
go out, for example, or what packages are shipping. We’ve never had access to information
of this breadth and depth before. It’s really extraordinary, and it’s making an enormous
difference.”6
Custom adhesive manufacturer 3 Sigma uses Kenandy’s customizable dashboards to
extend real-time data inside and outside the organization. 3 Sigma’s sales managers can
focus on what’s selling in each region while the accounting manager can know when
the invoices are paid. “Before Kenandy, none of this was even possible,” explains Rowley.
“We were using a variety of tools—spreadsheets, databases, pencil and paper—and we still
couldn’t come close to having the kind of information that’s now instantly, and accurately,
at our fingertips.”7
Kenandy gives you global visibility to a single source of truth from anywhere, on any device.
You make more business innovations when you can monitor you business in real-time.
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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4. Collaboration Lets Everyone Contribute to Innovation
Kenandy is designed to facilitate connectivity to business information anytime and
anywhere. This provides the foundation for being able to “work socially”—an enhanced
form of collaboration among employees, partners, and customers made possible by
immersive apps and always-available connectivity.
Kenandy is permeated with collaborative channels such as Salesforce Chatter that connects
people and data. The unique aspect of this form of social working is that knowledge can be
tied directly to data objects in the workflow of business. If a production manager comments
on a particular object such as a customer order, that information is attached to the data
for everyone—who has permission—to see it and add to the conversation. Knowledge
travels with objects throughout the system, ensuring that data is up-to-date and relevant
to getting work done. This ability to work socially is one reason millennial employees take
naturally to Kenandy applications. It’s like an extension to their world of social sharing,
except focused on the context of business, and under secure conditions.
The Scott Fetzer Electrical Group (SFEG), and many other Kenandy customers, use the
collaborative Chatter channel to attach conversations to their sales and purchase orders,
keeping all the related information together for easy reference. The employees enjoy using
the system so the data is always current. “Moving to Kenandy has eliminated our legacy
challenges and allowed us to focus on quickly growing and extending functionality to sales,
service, marketing, and analytics,” says Rob Goldiez, General Manager at SFEG.9
5. Mobile Applications Enhance Innovation and Productivity
Mobile applications support collaboration and the ability to work collaboratively. But a
critical component of mobile applications is often missing—usability. In order to be useful,
applications delivered to mobile devices—smart phones or tablets—need to be designed
to take full advantage of the interface, not just re-painted onto a smaller screen. A hard to
use mobile app is an unused mobile app.
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Mobile apps native to the Kenandy architecture are designed with a toolset that takes
full advantage of the touch interface and appropriate screen size of tablets and smart
phones. The apps display always up-to-date corporate information in a mobile-friendly way,
presenting the most relevant content and using native input controls, geolocation, barcode
scanning, and imaging capabilities of the devices. Apps designed for mobile devices increase
the freshness of data in the entire system. When workers can access production data, add to
knowledgebases, and make updates on the go, productivity is higher and information flows
throughout the organization.
When you choose Kenandy as your ERP provider, you also have access to hundreds of
mobile productivity apps at your fingertips that are designed to integrate securely with
Kenandy. Need a link to Dropbox for file storage and transfers on the go? There’s an app for
that and it integrates readily with Kenandy applications. Your sales people need an email
marketing campaign manager? There’s a ready-to-integrate app for that too. You can even
build and customize your own app exchange to make select apps, including your own
custom versions, available for employees and partners to use on-demand. The Salesforce1
AppExchange brings a world of business helpers to your workforce.
3 Sigma may be considered a medium-sized business, but their customers praise the
company’s sophisticated capabilities. At customer sites, 3 Sigma sales people use
Kenandy on their smart phones to provide detailed order and account information,
which often isn’t readily accessible to the customers themselves. “Our customers
typically have to go through their own accounting departments to find information
that we can pull up instantly right in their office” says Tony Rowley, President,
3 Sigma Corporation. “The Kenandy system gives us the appearance of being larger
than we actually are. Customers often assume we have a large staff to manage such
advanced systems, while it’s really Kenandy that provides the backbone for these
systems to work.”10
The Kenandy system
gives us the appearance
of being larger than
we actually are.
Tony Rowley, President, 3 Sigma Corporation
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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6. Easy-to-Use Applications Encourage Innovative Action
The complexity of legacy ERP systems usually restricts its use to highly-trained
personnel. Traditionally, only a few employees used the system for data entry, report
generation, or managing production. The modern, intuitive, and consistent interfaces
in Kenandy make it possible for any employee to use the applications with minimal
training. Every employee or trusted partner with the appropriate secure sign-on
credentials has instant access to your business applications and information. Production
employees, for example, can update inventory and schedules from mobile devices
right from the warehouse or manufacturing line. Sales can enter and check on orders
no matter where they are, accessing up-to-date information with the swipe of a screen.
Managers can generate reports as needed, adding fields and rearranging layouts with
point-and-click ease.
The design of the Kenandy user interface, both on the desktop and mobile devices,
is immersive, both in the context of working with data—filling out forms, building
pick-lists, monitoring production lines—and communicating with co-workers. The
immersive app design obviates the need to open new windows that use different
interfaces and navigation. With a uniform interface, work becomes easier, more fluid,
and mitigates the need for training. And when people actually like using the apps, data
stays up to date and actionable, empowering people to get their jobs done.
When the Scott Fetzer Electrical Group (SFEG) consolidated three companies using
Kenandy ERP, they got more than a unified manufacturing system. Previously, only a
few key people knew how to update the data in the company’s old system. Because
it was hard to use, even they resisted using it. So information became quickly out
of date. With Kenandy, it’s the exact opposite. “Even those who resist change are
finding it hard to resist how much faster and more efficiently Kenandy lets them do
their jobs,” says Rob Goldiez, General Manager, SFEG. “Today there are lots of eyes on
the system. People are accountable to the data they are supposed to be managing.
Kenandy is easier to use since it has a familiar interface.”
“We’re excited that we can use Kenandy to support new features, such as enabling
our products to be connected over the Internet,” says Goldiez. ”We are committed to
living and breathing our innovation vision throughout the company, and Kenandy
is integral to enabling that vision.” 11
We are committed to
living and breathing
our innovation vision...
and Kenandy is integral
to enabling that vision.
Rob Goldiez, General Manager, Scott Fetzer Electrical Group
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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ERP for the Innovative Enterprise
Disruptive innovation usually means that an upstart company comes up with
a new product or service that makes the products of established companies
obsolete. Chaos ensues. But what if you disrupt yourself first? What if you can
reorganize your products and services to create new value? To do so, your
information systems need to run in an always-on, always-available mode with
flexibility, agility, and extensibility. With Kenandy your business systems can:
• Empower people with applications that are intuitive, immersive, mobile,
and social, with embedded analytics so that you can work anywhere,
anytime to keep the business running at Internet speed.
• Empower business with applications that are easy to implement and
extend, and simplify on-boarding new acquisitions and adding new
product lines and markets, while providing real-time visibility across the
enterprise with actionable information.
• Empower IT and business users with applications that adapt to changing
business conditions without having to manage a complex on-premises
computing infrastructure.
The future of your information systems is on the cloud. Kenandy can help you
get there. Today.
How does Kenandy
empower people? It
relies on the Salesforce
Platform to deliver a
user experience that is
appealing to the younger
workforce that has grown
up on the Internet. And
in making the solution
appealing to the
millennials, it also makes it
easier for the older crowd
to use. It recognizes there
are “mobile” and “social”
users as well, both of
which are addressed by
the platform.
Cindy Jutras12
Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation
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Footnotes 1 “Cloud Evolves From Point Solution To Strategic Enabler Of The New Connected Economy,” by Liz Herbert, 2015, Forrester Research
2 Blue Clover Devices, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/3-sigma-corporation
3 Merrow Sewing Machine Company http://www.kenandy.com/customers/merrow
4 Natural Balance Pet Foods, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/natural-balance
5 “Predicts 2014: The Rise of the Postmodern ERP and Enterprise Applications World,” by Andy Kyte, Gartner, 2014
6 Merrow Sewing Machine Company, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/merrow
7 3 Sigma Corporation, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/3-sigma-corporation
8 “Salesforce1 Platform: Accelerate App Dev with Huge ROI,” by Al Hilwa, Randy Perry, and Robert Mahowald, IDC Research, 2014
9 Scott Fetzer Electrical Group, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/scott-fetzer-electrical-group
10 3 Sigma Corporation, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/3-sigma-corporation
11 Scott Fetzer Electrical Group, http://www.kenandy.com/customers/scott-fetzer-electrical-group
12 “Next Generation ERP,” by Cindy Jutras, Mint Jutras, 2014
Kenandy, Inc. 303 Twin Dolphin Drive
Redwood City, CA 94065
1-855-KENANDY (1-855-536-2639) www.kenandy.com
Copyright ©2015 Kenandy, Inc. All rights reserved. Kenandy, the Kenandy logo, and Wide-Body Objects are trademarks of Kenandy, Inc. Other trademarks are those of their respective holders, and should be treated as such.