Are Your Employees Spending Too Much Time on the Hamster Wheel?

employees going in circles on hamster wheelIn previous blogs, we described how Artificial Intelligence techniques (AI) in an ERP system can help improve efficiency and accuracy in your operations.  It can also free up employee resources with extra time for creative activities to add value for your business.  In this blog, we will describe one feature in our Kechie™ ERP system that uses AI techniques to automatically generate a whole series of new part numbers.

In any business, a critical item used in tracking almost every transaction is the Part Number or SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).  Part numbers are used in sales orders, purchase orders, manufacturing, inventory tracking, invoicing and everywhere in between.  The use of part numbers creates differentiation between multiple items for ordering, picking and packing the exact item requested by the customer.   Many companies have thousands (or millions) of part numbers in their system.  Managing this giant mass of data can become impossible without strong processing software to assist along the way.

New part number creation is one activity that can be quite time consuming for your staff, particularly when a large number of new part numbers need to be added at the same time. For the apparel industry, this can be a daunting task.  For example, a buyer wants to add a new style shirt to the inventory.  The shirt is available in long-sleeved and short-sleeved, classic and slim fit, sizes include extra small, small, medium, large, extra-large, and available in the sixteen colors.  That’s 320 new sku’s to be added to the system.  One-by-one, an employee sits in front of a screen and adds new parts numbers – perhaps a multiple day project.   Is there a better use of this resource?

Here’s where a built-in intelligence can save the day.  Kechie delivers a function that can automatically create part numbers and add them to the system.  An employee can now focus on descriptions and selling features for a quick-to-market process rather than being bogged down with keystrokes.  The artificial intelligence features in Kechie not only help set up new products – but can help your sales staff to up-sell features and products to maximize profitability.  More will be revealed on this feature in coming blogs.

My Office Apps, Inc., a business process improvement company, is committed to providing continued improvements and incorporating various advanced AI techniques in our Kechie ERP software. Our goal is to provide the best processing solutions for small and medium sized businesses in order to contribute to the success of our customers.  In the coming weeks, we will post additional articles that describe some of the specific AI features present in the Kechie ERP software and also provide a road map for other features that we expect to implement in the future. Our focus is not to just provide AI for AI’s sake, but rather to implement practical AI functions that can make a real difference in your business.  For more information, you can visit www.myofficeapps.com or better yet, call us at (949) 486-1947 and ask us to schedule a demo so you can view these features for yourself.

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