Personal Insights
Heliotron – An Intelligent Enterprise in Action
If you are involved with a small to midsize business and want to see how a company just like yours is leveraging ERP, check out the 3 minute video here.
The idea that ERP is something reserved for large enterprises is slowly falling apart. Heliotron is a great example of how a small business can leverage ERP solutions and applications to transform their customer experience and digitalize their business. With only 64 employees, Heliotron is able to deliver over 16 million wax candle combinations. How is a company of that size able to manage such a large amount of product? Utilizing ERP, they can gather insights from across the organization and accurately predict demand. Their ERP system syncs all of the different areas of the company together, enabling orders to be fulfilled in hours rather than days.
Enough of the fluff, you’re probably asking how exactly can my SMB benefit from ERP? Well here are a few of the ways:
- Lower customer acquisition cost
- Automatically deliver specialized marketing campaigns to optimize customer experience
- Build complete customer profiles that ensure relevant customer interaction
- Intelligent chatbots so customers get quick and accurate answers
- Realtime visibility into margins
Heliotron specifically increased sales efficiency EIGHT fold. They were also able to improve inventory turnover by a factor of five by integrating data from their demand and supply chain in real time. Forget the marketing jargon. This is a real world example of how a small/ midsize company is utilizing and succeeding with an Intelligent ERP system. If you’re someone who’s interested in learning more or you have a specific question about your own business, I’d recommend dropping it here. You’ll be able to find answers from other people involved in SMBs just like yourself.
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Do SMBs really need ERP to be successful in today’s market? Let me know your thoughts below!
Loved the video presenting Helitron. Made me feel really good about the company, both companies actually, Helitron and SAP.
It's great to see family-run businesses succeed and it always reminds me of my grade at the Family Run Business course during my masters, the first and only 20/20 mark I had. Maybe that's among the reasons I felt so good seeing this.
Either way, great company and the 8-fold sales improvement rate and 5-time inventory turnover rate are striking.
By the way, it was also nice to revisit the concept of inventory turnover, as I wasn't entirely sure what it meant first - of course, I asked Google Home about it. Like SAP Business ByDesign is becoming a hands-free ERP, I am trying to turn my home hands-free as well. Hands-free can bring a lot of value, irrespective of where it is employed, I guess.
P.S.: I hope no one minds my long-form comments. They just help me process what I read and remember it better.