Episode 32: An Interview with Bobby Haggard, TrinSoft LLC

In this installment of Products Finishing’s On the Line column, we discuss ERP solutions for finishers, and the latest trends and software for streamlining business operations. Given the wide variety of ERP systems, from off-the-shelf solutions to custom programs, how do finishers know what to look for when they’re thinking of implementing new software? Robert (Bobby) Haggard is a consultant for TrinSoft LLC, a company that provides industry-specific solutions for manufacturing and finishing businesses. PF recently sat down with Haggard to get his insights into what finishers should consider when exploring a new ERP solution. Check out the latest episode of PF’s On the Line podcast (stream above) or read an excerpt from the interview below.

Robert Haggard interview excerpt:

PF: Some finishers have been using the same software for running their business for decades — why is now the right time to reassess your business software?
RH: Data is an immensely untapped valuable asset. The problem with a lot of older systems is that they aren’t capturing relevant or essential data or they’re only capturing the basics.

The other problem is that oftentimes, these finishing shops are using a couple of different systems. We run into this issue all the time, where the solution a shop is using is software that was written maybe 20–30 years ago for a shop floor system and it hasn’t been updated — it hasn’t kept up with current technology. The shop then takes that old solution and tries to tie it back into a back-end accounting system. So their data is very siloed. To add insult to injury, these systems often don’t talk to each other — or they don’t talk well to each other, and when they do, it’s an extremely manual and painful process.

PF: How do you choose between an off-the-shelf solution and a custom solution?
RH: In terms of off-the-shelf ERP, there are a lot of options that are out there. But, there’s one big kind of hiccup or hang-up with these off-the-shelf ERP systems in that they don’t really support the uniqueness of the finishing industry.

The general flow of a finishing shop is to receive a part from a customer that they then perform a process or service on that part and then ship it back to the customer — it’s a next step in the supply chain. Most off-the-shelf systems tend to treat this as general manufacturing, forcing finishing shops into using a bill of material with a routing or some combination of that. This is a major issue because these finishing shops aren’t taking raw material A and raw material B and combining them together to create a finished good — that’s traditional manufacturing. 

Finishing shops need a solution that’s been specifically written for the finishing industry by a team of developers and technical consultants who understand the uniqueness of the industry.

While the finishing industry has many of the same needs of traditional manufacturing (such as item tracking, recipes, labor costs and capacity planning), at the end of the day it’s a service business. The finisher will never own these parts, but they still need to account for them. Companies need to know how many they have in-house, what are they doing to these parts and when, on what line and when will they be available back to their end customer.

PF: Can you talk about the importance of having a cloud-based ERP solution?
RH: In my opinion, a cloud-based ERP system is a game changer for a couple of different reasons.

First, it’s nice to have the ability to access your system anytime, anywhere, on any device. As long as you have an internet connection, or the ability to connect to your environment through the phone, tablet or laptop, you’ll have that connectivity to be able to view your system and do what you need to do.

Second, there are some tremendous cost savings with the cloud. So many finishing shops I talk to these days are still using on-premises servers, and they’re often old,  outdated and in desperate need of an upgrade. One of the problems that these shops are running into is having IT or technical people on staff to help maintain and support their on-premises servers. As a result, they often turn to third-party IT support, which can certainly be costly.

With a cloud-based solution, there are none of those concerns. For example, with our PHTPlus ERP solution, the software is on the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Microsoft takes care of the backups, disaster recovery, security upgrades, hotfixes to the server, etc.

Another very common reoccurring theme that I hear when talking with finishing shops goes something like this: “We use this system and it was new 10, 15, or 20 years ago, but we haven’t been able to update it,” or “the programmer we worked with has retired,” or “we fell a few versions behind on updates because it cost so much and creates so much downtime.” One of the biggest benefits of our solution is that it’s backed by Microsoft. There’s the security of knowing that no matter if it’s two or three months down the road, or even years from now, clients will always be on the latest and greatest version of the software. Those updates, patches and hotfixes are automatically pushed to your environment on a monthly basis. That means no downtime, better systems and better security.