A combination of human ingenuity and technology can move things forward to take customer service, internal processes, and overall business strategy to a new stratosphere. So we love hearing stories from customers who have used an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) app from AppExchange to completely transform the way their business operates.

As part of our App Talks series, Salesforce’s Kurt Smith spoke with two customers who have used Kenandy Cloud ERP to improve the way they run their businesses. What follows are stories from Merrow Sewing Company and Blue Clover Devices (BCD) showing how implementing an ERP system, in this case Kenandy Cloud ERP, has re-shaped their businesses in incredible ways.

1. Using an ERP app revolutionizes the customer experience

Both Eddie Chen, VP Finance of Blue Clover Devices ,and Charlie Merrow, CEO of Merrow Sewing Company, emphasized how implementing Kenandy Cloud ERP led to a better experience across the board for customers. Chen said that using Kenandy Cloud ERP to better define internal processes has helped BCD achieve a 100% on-time delivery rate in 2015, and thus far in 2016. “Our goal is to service more clients, better, without sacrificing quality,” Chen said. “With the help of our internal blue book “process bible” and Kenandy Cloud ERP, we’ve achieved that.”

For Merrow Sewing Company, Kenandy Cloud ERP provided an incredible level of insight that the company never before had. “We were able to watch our customers, from the moment they expressed an interest in the company, through to the point where they ordered things; we could then build all sorts of nurturing campaigns to make them better customers,” Merrow said. “Right away, we could take better care of good customers, and also understand those who were not as good customers, and that was really important.”

2. ERP can free up resources to do great things

Merrow Sewing Company is a 180-year old business which, before implementing Kenandy Cloud ERP, handled processes on index cards. Since implementation, Merrow has created new lines of business that drive the growth of the company. “A long time ago, I decided I wanted to make sewing machines sexy,” Merrow joked. “What that turned into was building value in stitching for Merrow, allowing customers to sew things and show value of what they’ve sewn to people purchasing them in stores. Our ability as a company to turn new businesses and existing businesses into businesses that better serve our customers is the single biggest thing that’s changed at Merrow.”

With the help of Kenandy Cloud ERP, Merrow Sewing Company has become somewhat of an incubator for startups, the need for which grew out of a crowded marketplace for sewing machines. “To grow Merrow at the rate we wanted to grow, we realized we needed to build a business plan that provided new value in these machines, and we needed to add businesses to our company that would allow us to grow into different spaces with totally different customer bases,” Merrow said.

ERP was a huge factor in the success of this diversification. “The magic of what we were able to do with Kenandy Cloud ERP is reduce the cost enormously to nearly nothing for us to take an idea, create organizational structure to develop that business, and then move it into the market,” Merrow said. “We’ve launched 14 new businesses over the last six years. We’ve created an entirely new Merrow that’s all over the world.”

3. ERP apps greatly improve the day-to-day life of employees

One of the things we repeatedly hear from ERP customers is the impact on employees’ day-to-day lives, through the streamlining and automation of manual tasks, allowing  them to provide more value in their roles. This was what happened at BCD. After first implementing Kenandy Cloud ERP, there was a little confusion among employees. That was quickly replaced, however, with relief and excitement after BCD worked to clarify any ambiguities and team members started seeing the benefits of operating more efficiently. “Very quickly, productivity came back and continued going up, along with morale,” Chen said.

Using Kenandy Cloud ERP, BCD had previously struggled to keep its offices in the U.S. and China working together effectively. “People used to spend a lot of time talking about processes, saying things like ‘Hey can you approve that PO?’”, Chen said. “Now, people can spend their time on things like [improving our] products and better servicing our clients, and that makes a big difference to us.”

4. Accuracy and efficiency is significantly improved with an ERP app

Using ERP to automate tedious manual processes, can provide your business with a boost to take it to new levels. Improving the accuracy and efficiency of your business operations creates large ripple effects across your entire organization.

For both Merrow Sewing Company and BCD, the amount of time saved and efficiencies gained using Kenandy Cloud ERP has led to some pretty remarkable results. Merrow said that quarterly reports, which used to take weeks, now only take 25 minutes to create. And for Chen and BCD, the lead time of several major product lines was reliably cut by 50%, and the company can now service 3X more clients concurrently than they could before implementing Kenandy Cloud ERP. These results are measurable ways to show ROI for purchasing an ERP solution, and it’s clear listening to both Kenandy Cloud ERP customers speak that these results couldn’t have been achieved without ERP.

For other episodes of App Talks, head to the AppExchange YouTube channel. To view available ERP apps, visit AppExchange.