I recently had the privilege of being a presenter at our 2014 User Group conference this past October. As I sat in the Grand Ballroom on Day 1, listening to our IQMS directors present their departments' achievements, I was impressed. However, once I heard the stories from our IQMS Manufacturing Success Award finalists, I was in awe. I was blown away by the humility and the ingenuity that our customers shared with all of us, and I felt very proud to serve our customer base.
The IQMS Manufacturing Success Award highest achiever honor went to custom manufacturer, AMA Plastics. AMA Plastics implemented IQMS' ERP and MES solution, EnterpriseIQ, in 2005. As both the manufacturer and the features in EnterpriseIQ grew, AMA Plastics discovered it was gradually going outside the ERP system. By conducting an Enterprise Application Analysis (EAA), AMA Plastics reinvigorated its use of the software, redeployed underutilized modules and maximized its use of EnterpriseIQ for impressive results.
Michael Engler, Vice President of Operations for AMA Plastics and a key player in the success of the winning project above, represents the type of audience I have the honor to work with every day. Most of the customers I train are those who admit that they don't have everything right. They want to learn how the software can work for them, understanding that right now they only think they know what it can do for them.
Oftentimes, when customers sign up for web-based training with IQMS' Training Department, it is a result of self-implementing a module or they are in need of refining their procedures. The manufacturer is at a point where they recognize that they need help. There is value in obtaining an outside, unbiased perspective of their operations and they need someone that lives and breathes EnterpriseIQ day in and day out. Together, we work to find resolutions for obstacles in their processes. Sometimes customers find that they already have the answers; they just needed some validity.
Hearing our customers' success stories motivates me to work even harder for them. For example, I was looking forward to teaching my advanced sessions on Day 3 at User Group. The advanced sessions are designed to allow customers an opportunity to offer development feedback and request changes to the software (we call them SERs - Software Enhancement Requests). I couldn't wait to hear how we can help make our software work even harder for our customers.
Entering into my first SER track on Costing, something caught me by surprise. Stephen Morse, Chief Accounting Analyst, and I ran that session with the support of Shannon Holloway, Director of Product Education and Support, and Tina Jolicoeur, Director of Quality Assurance. After presenting some recent enhancements to the software, many of which were driven by our internal Accounting Improvement Team (AIT), I asked the question: "Who would like to open up with their SER?"
The room was silent. In a bit of disbelief, I encouraged the audience to make good use of our bi-annual meeting to bring to our attention areas that might need improvement. There were a couple of hot items discussed that our development team was already on top of, but other than that, there were very few existing and new requests that were presented to the group. My interpretation of the awkward silence that began our session was that it is highly plausible that our AIT monthly and costing bi-weekly meetings over the past two years have made their success known.
At IQMS, we are always striving to improve and the AIT group is still actively meeting to discuss and resolve challenges presented by representatives from each of our departments, including technical support, training, professional services, development, quality and sales. We look forward to continuing to serve our customers every single day.
This guest blog post was written by IQMS Training Specialist, Melissa Bodilly.
