With the growing tensions between the United States and China, the conversations about recession have been mounting the headline and media of late. Manufacturing sector which contributes about 20% of the country’s annual GDP has been hit by heavy exposure to trade conflict, faltering demand in China, and the peaking of the global semiconductor cycle in the past year, causing firm holding back on their capital-expenditure plans.

Having a globally economic strong headwind as backdrop, Singapore has encountered the greatest disruption in the years ahead especially in the wake up the latest gross domestic product (GDP) flash data almost standstill in the second quarter of 2019.

The manufacturing sector has been singled out as one of the main drags, rocked by the global downturn, when the slump deepened than expected, well below the growth estimate of 1.1 percent put forth below a poll of economists conducted by Bloomberg.

Opportunities are for those who are prepared

ASEAN will become the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2030, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in this speech at the opening ceremony of the 50^th ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting held in Singapore. If you look at the bigger picture, this is the golden era for ASEAN, businesses must be able to take advantage of the existing resource to transform their business model in order to gain a competitive edge in this digital world before the next downturn rises.

In Singapore with limited land and high labour cost, these two factors always have been a concern when comes to production in manufacturing sector. Driven by the unpredictable changing demands customer and accelerated pace of new product innovation, digitization is the key to boost productivity meanwhile allowing projects to move faster and hit more aggressive deadlines.

There’s no longer room of tolerance for businesses sitting on the fence against this amid strong winds but to adopt an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System in order to keep abreast of disruption in the manufacturing sector. An ideal ERP for manufacturing can spectacularly increase profitability, help business leaders to gain more visibility into business operations and optimize each strategy efficiently before making any decisions.

Singapore has a pro-business climate underpinned by government support and companies should leverage the available initiatives to accelerate its ability to succeed in the new era. In our extensive years of experience, our consultants have successfully helped almost all the businesses that approached us to apply for the EDG Grant. Here

The programme under Enterprise Singapore provides customized support for enterprises to globalize and build deeper capabilities to gain a competitive edge in the digital world, allowing business to get funding up to 70% of qualifying projects. Taking the long-term perspective and targeted approach, these roadmaps are fundamental in enabling SMEs to create the conditions for long-term success.

There are three main reasons when a manufacturing company plans to implement an ERP software: they are business transformation, business process harmonization and replace legacy system which no longer is adding significant value to the business and dragging out the length of a project.

With the business transformation, the aim of the management is to undertake fundamental changes at the top line or bottom line of its business process. Business process harmonization is a business transformation practice where the objectives is to maximize process benefits across the organization.

An integrated ERP for manufacturing sector can seamlessly manage your operations as mentioned below:

At a glance—the benefits of ERP for manufacturing sector:

• ERP software helps in reducing manufacturing cost and in increasing of resource utilization
• Instant boost to productivity by having a well-implemented ERP System
• ERP allows project to move faster to hit more aggressive deadlines
• Simplify every business process to be transparent and effective

Inventory System

One of the strongest parts of an ERP system is its agility and scalability as it is able to provide you real-time information and statistical models that adapt to future changes and conditions that are imposed by buyers and ultimately helps you to take better decisions. It is a robust tool that gives you the capability to zoom in and see the internal picture and zoom out to see a 360-degree Celsius of how your performance business is.

The system will make just as easy to see about what has been ordered, delivered and purchased in a highly customized and intuitive report format. Additionally, whenever you make inventory adjustment, you can track your inventory better and control it through real-time updated stock levels. Besides, it can be easily maintained in an ERP system instead of spending too much of time performing manual and error-prone copying of data from multiple data entries.

When your business has such agile capabilities, whenever you do business, you’re no longer only respond better to customer need, but you can anticipate market shifts and run your business more efficiently and profitably. By automating and streamlining all the inventory processes and reports, you can lower inventory carrying a cost. Besides, it helps to track your stock levels, material usage, purchases seamlessly. Tracing your data or analytics made easier with all the data stored in an ERP System.

Customer Relationship Management

With the industry that is growing bounds and leaps, customer is still the name of the game. Businesses can’t afford to make a mistake that will derail the customer journey. By implementing ERP software, it incorporates all the products and services history supplied to the customers and ensures the customer journey goes smoothly.

Order status can be tracked, and information is received in real-time. Most importantly, it allows business to manage customer details, purchase histories, account statements and billings at fingertips, enable business leaders to churn out superior products that meet customer needs. Having an ERP solution that contains accurate, fast and reliable data, it can even deliver more insights to create a customized, responsive and a seamless flow of customer experience.

Human Resource Management

An effective ERP system can automate and integrate the entire leave management process. Businesses have the ease of access on applying leave policies, lowering leave administration costs and at the same time ensuring a more productive workforce from anywhere of the world. For example, if a manager wants to do a staff evaluation, they could just easily log in to the HRM and measure the employee performance review based on the employees’ attendance details in the dashboards.

With ERP system, it streamlines all complicated business processes and allows business leaders to manage it effectively without any extra effort. Staff in every department have the same access to all real-time data such as salary statements. Since manual work has been replaced by ERP, business leaders can focus more on their main scope and they will have more time to spend on their tasks and projects.

Accounting System

By investing in an ERP System, you can easily manage your purchase orders, delivery orders, recurring invoices, seamlessly manage transactions and gain insights into your profits and losses in just a single interface. From invoices to inventory, an ERP solution provides you a quick and efficient way to manage all your purchase processes. GERP meets all your business needs.

Manufacturing is a key pillar for Singapore’s economy and supported by its perfect location offering easy accessibility not only local but also international markets. Despite the turbulence rocking the global economy, Singapore’s still attracting good investors, and this reflects the confidence that investors have in Singapore. With this slight slowdown, it is an opportune time for manufacturers to get into the transformation year. As the manufacturing supply chain disruption continues to grow at an alarming rate, this is the time where the business model has to be transformed. As these headwinds may not abate anytime soon, manufacturers must prepare themselves for the upcoming rough ride.