View this slideshare for manufacturing IT leadership, which outlines the three key reasons you shouldn't use your ERP to make mobile apps.

1. 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Your
Manufacturing ERP Vendor to Go
Mobile

2. Addressing operations challenges
with technology
Catavolt launched a survey titled “How Leading Manufacturers are
Accelerating Operational Excellence” in September 2014, to gain insight on
how manufacturing organizations are working to continuously improve their
operations, workflows and business processes.
We collected 111 responses from manufacturing professionals in various
disciplines on trends and technology that are driving operational excellence.
Increased competition in the market, meeting customer expectations, rapidly
changing plant floor conditions, and the need to increase revenue, is pushing
manufacturing organizations across all industries towards more efficient
operational processes.

3. Manufacturing organizations are increasing
operational excellence investments in 2015
Manufacturing organizations are constantly facing challenges to accelerate decision making
and efficiency needed to produce quality products, goods and services. Many of these
manufacturers are implementing ERP systems for their organization to manage work flows,
materials, scheduling, and quality control.
New technology, like mobility, is allowing manufacturing teams to have a flexible and
customized system that helps organizations do their jobs more efficiently, and at a lower
cost.
22%
of manufacturing organizations invest in ERP
software to better integrate systems across
multiple facilities
(Panorama Consulting, 2014).

4. Why is using ERP difficult for deploying
mobility in manufacturing?
Manufacturers rely on ERP systems as a common interface that supports all applications
-
agement, and quality control. But, what if the organization wants to customize their inter-
face to deploy mobility?
Manufacturing organizations are spending large chunks of their budget
implementing traditional ERP systems that promise to support
changing business processes.
Often, these systems do not match specific organizational needs, and IT
must invest in consulting services to fix bugs and customize programs
that help teams provide a competitive advantage.
There are now new approaches to software development,
implementation, and project management to drive efficiency and
flexibility among manufacturing teams.

5. Enterprise resource planning: a waterfall
approach
Operations and IT work
together to analyze business
needs
Operations approves
design and IT works with
vendors to develop a solution
IT designs a solution to
present to operations with
best possible outcomes
IT deploys the ERP system
to the organization
The ideal waterfall approach: At face value, this ERP development process appears to be fool-
proof. What often happens even when the process is followed
exactly, is that the manufacturing teams do not completely grasp an
understanding of what the ERP does or how it works.
By the time an ERP is launched internally months later, business
processes may have changed, new equipment and software has
been implemented, teams have been realigned, and the system no
longer meets the need of the teams.
With a waterfall approach that is similar to traditional ERPs, mak-
ing mobile apps is cumbersome, costly, and doesn’t involve the user
throughout the development process. For manufacturing teams to
use mobile apps, they must have a superior user experience.

6. The user perspective: taking the agile
approach
Identify Customer
Value
(Responsiveness)
Pursue Perfection
(Continuous
Improvement)
Map the Value
Stream
(Optimize Processes)
Create Flow
(Track Metrics)
Establish Pull
(Optimize Materials
and Labor)
By taking an agile approach to implement mobility, manufactur-
ing organizations are able to gain insight and information in to
account as a project progresses. With this information, manu-
With the right mobile platform, manufacturing teams can easily
-
work together to ensure that any new information is incorpo-
rated into the mobility platform.
-

7. Reason #1: ERPs are not best of breed
for mobility
A best of breed approach to mobility should optimize an organi-
zation’s environment without burdening their resources. Best of
breed mobile approaches provide manufacturing organizations
with deployment in days, preventing unnecessary costs, with an
easy to use interface and implementation process.
-
cess, especially when implementing mobile options for your team
Best of breed mobile platforms have focused on mobility from
the beginning. For ERP vendors, mobility is an upselling oppor-
tunity that can come with hidden costs.

8. Reason #2: ERPs maintain data silos
Data silos are described as a system that is unable to operate with any other system.
These “silos” typically occur because of how an organization’s ERP system is
constructed. So, why break down these data silos?
When data is being stored in multiple systems including
ERPs, it is harder to determine its integrity as teams
compare and synchronize it across multiple systems.
By investing in platforms that break down data silos in
manufacturing, organizations can foster communica-
among departments.

9. Reason #3: ERPs are expensive to
maintain
4% of IT executives believe their ERP system
creates a competitive advantage in their
manufacturing organization.
(CIO Insights, 2015).
Only
Implementing ERP to deploy mobility internally, often brings high or hidden
carry penalties and risks.

10. The rapid mobile app development
approach
user.
With the diversity of devices, network connectivity, and other mobile-specific considerations,
traditional ERP practices to develop desktop applications do not work for mobility. Additionally, trying
to virtualize ERP software on mobile devices will result in a poor user experience.
Catavolt’s business model focuses solely on deploying mobile apps, not using traditional ERP methods
that are designed for desktop applications.
Catavolt’s codeless mobile app platform enables business and IT analysts, not programmers, to create
apps quickly that are relevant to their team’s specific jobs. Developing mobile apps with Catavolt
requires very little development or maintenance effort from IT.

11. Why do manufacturing organizations
need real-time data?
With Catavolt, your manufacturing organization can easily modernize business processes and drive
informed decision making from relevant, real-time data accessed on mobile devices

12. How mobile apps drive flexibility and
collaboration in manufacturing
Mobile apps for manufacturing provide
real-time data that helps organizations
drive flexibility and collaboration among
teams.
Manufacturing organizations that have relied on ERP systems to
manufacturers can decrease the amount of time spent addressing
costly errors, and more time producing quality products and competing

13. Visit our resource center and learn more about
how mobility drives operational excellence
www.catavolt.com
• Addressing the challenge of integrating back-end
systems in manufacturing organizations
• How manufacturing organizations are using technology
like mobility to accelerate their operational excellence
initiatives
Click here to visit the Manufacturing IT Resource
Center for videos and additional resources