Custom ERP System for an Industrial Company

Overview

During my time as CEO of a small industrial company in need of modernization, I had the unique position of being both the provider and client of a custom ERP system.

The project was built in stages, targeting the higher-impact areas first.

As I was managing this company mainly on a remote basis, the priority was to give the employees a way to digitally log client orders, worksheets, and bills of material such that invoices could be sent out as soon as possible. The work leader would then convert the logged work and material into line items that would be combined into a client invoice containing all of their orders completed during a given period. This data would then be presented such that it could be copied and pasted verbatim into our invoicing software.

After this, we added a module for employees to report their work hours for simple salary reporting. This data was also combined with the hours logged on worksheets to give a week-by-week overview of the rate of the employees' billable hours. This was useful in two ways; as an accurate and timely indicator of what the order flow looked like, and for making decisions about approving overtime work.

We also added support for tracking inventory (paint) which allowed us to optimize how we managed our paint purchasing process, as we noticed that we frequently purchased more than was necessary. It also allowed us to easily compile the data necessary for accounting and tax purposes, as well as when we estimated the company's assets during the sale process.

At the time of writing, over two years since the company was sold, this system is still in use, with a near-zero amount of upkeep necessary.