Manufacturing businesses have particular needs when it comes to enterprise resource planning. EFACS meets these demands, writes Jason Walsh.

A lot of ERP systems are finance systems at their core. “Ours turns things on its head: it does have finance and CRM, but it’s focused on how manufacturing works,” said Tadhg Henderson, managing director of profitsflow.com.  Produced by Exel Computer Systems, that system is EFACS E/8, which Henderson described as a modern, fully-integrated, flexible and browser-based ERP software solution:  “EFACS is an ERP product aimed specially at manufacturing and field services. We’re the island of Ireland partners,” he said.

Founded in 2009, profitsflow.com serves businesses which have ERP needs including detailed production & materials planning, bills of materials, scheduling and everything in between.  EFACS has been focused on manufacturing since it was first released in 1985, and most EFACS installations – over 90 per cent – are in the manufacturing sector. Of course, it has changed radically since its introduction.

“It has gone through three generations,” said Henderson.  “The first would have been a green screen UNIX system, and a small number of sites still choose to get support for that. Then, in the 1990s, it was one of the first ERP systems to fully embrace a Windows platform.”

Now, of course, EFACS runs on a platform-independent, browser-based basis.  “It can be done as an install on on-premise, be put on a cloud server or with a hybrid model,” said Henderson.  The majority of installations continue to be on-premise, largely as a result of the nature of manufacturing. “People still have concerns,” he said.  “The main issue we’re seeing with the cloud isn’t security anymore, it’s more that they worry about the infrastructure. It’s not that they can’t get fast internet – they can, [but] they’re worried that they will lose connectivity if someone digs a hole in the ground. For cloud, you need to guarantee 98 per cent uptime,” he said.  Nonetheless, the option is there.

Profitsflow.com, meanwhile, focuses on delivering what customers need, regardless of how they want it installed.   “As standard we provide a series of KPIs [key performance indicators] in chart and graph visual form, with drill downs. We have modules for manufacturing, sales, CRM, product definition and finance and so on. People’s requirements tend to be variants on a similar theme, so some people use them straight out of the box, [whereas] for some we customise and for a few we redraw them from scratch,” said Henderson.

In addition, Microsoft’s business intelligence package Power BI integrates seamlessly with EFACS.  Henderson said that profitsflow.com has three key advantages over its competitors. “The first one is we are specifically dedicated to manufacturing, covering various industries and methodologies, and field service is very similar to manufacturing in practice.  The second is integration: everything in the product is developed by the authors, [so] we don’t have to go and buy in, say, a document management solution,” he said.  “The third is, customers can learn how to modify a screen or create a new application. For example if they wanted to track company mobile phones it’s very easy for them to create an application to do that. Similarly you can integrate with a customer website to take in orders.”

The clear focus on manufacturing and field service remains key to profitsflow.com’s mission.  “It is absolutely in our interest to deliver a solution tailored to our customers. Our future existence is determined by them,” he said. away from siloed business toward self-service business intelligence. This is now available to everyone,” he said.