white paper six ways cloud erp supports rapid …...six ways cloud erp supports rapid innovation 5...

Six Ways Cloud ERP Supports Rapid Innovation

White Paper

ERP for the Connected World


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


4

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.


5

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.


6

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


7

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


8

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


9

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.


1010

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.


11

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


12

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


13

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


14

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.

white paper six ways cloud erp supports rapid …...six ways cloud erp supports rapid innovation 5...

Documents