ERP - Multidata

The control and monitoring of economic assets and the associated financial transactions is one of the core processes of virtually every company and is therefore given corresponding priority. The challenge begins with defining what an asset actually is. Depending on the industry, these can be intangible assets, such as software licenses, ship-through goods that are simply stored and forwarded, or complex production chains in which high-quality products and services are created from a large number of subcomponents.

And that's just the beginning. Despite all attempts at standardization, every company still operates in its own unique way. On paper, the processes sound the same: purchasing, warehousing, order creation, invoicing—we find these disciplines in every company. But how these processes are implemented differs from case to case. And the devil is not only in the details.

Ultimately, this can only have one consequence: the ERP software in question needs to offer maximum flexibility and adaptability in order to reflect the individual characteristics of the respective company in the best possible way. Characteristics that, in many cases, exist for good reason. Characteristics that—if you have to adapt to a rigid ERP system instead—often lead to inefficiencies and friction losses in process flows and thus to reduced overall performance of your company.

With MD-Premium ERP, you can largely eliminate this risk. The ERP module is the most comprehensive and feature-rich module in MD-Premium. The ERP module combines more than 30 years of development and successful practical use in a wide variety of industries and economic sectors, and thus has mastered the craft of Enterprise Resource Planning from the ground up. What sets MD-Premium ERP apart from other systems though is its unmatched flexibility and sustainability

The entire business logic and every function can be customized and expanded. New functions can be added effortlessly. Communication with the outside world takes place via flexibly customizable interfaces and data formats such as REST or EDIFACT. And you can combine selected functions into automatically running function chains to establish customized no-touch processes in your workflows. All of this is based on the principles of the application framework, the technical foundation of MD-Premium. Flexibility and expandability are not afterthoughts, but are firmly integrated into its core and are therefore available to all function modules based on it.

Don't compromise when it comes to your ERP system. With MD-Premium ERP, your individual notions on how to do business are not a weakness but a strength, because they reflect the established corporate culture of your company. MD-Premium ERP not only respects this, but also actively supports you in integrating your uniqueness and condensing it into a tailor-made digital process landscape. If you want an ERP that adapts to you instead of the other way around, MD-Premium ERP is your choice.

Order Handling

The most essential ERP process of them all is the processing of customer and supplier orders. Since an ordering process depends on the respective company and involves many phases and decision paths, an ERP system must be able to customize the order process so that it can cover all possible scenarios.

MD-Premium ERP uses so-called order codes for this purpose. Each order code represents a phase of the order process. You can individually specify which phases may follow next, which documents/reports should be generated, and which actions should be executed in the system.

MD-Premium ERP comes with a comprehensive set of predefined order codes that should cover most business requirements, whether for trading companies, distributors, or manufacturing companies, including price inquiries and quotations. Of course, customers can also add their own order codes if their ordering process requires it.

For recurring orders, such as service contracts, periodic orders can be stored in the system and automatically processed at the set time. The system also provides separate processing phases for web shop orders. If you link your order processing to a sales project, you will automatically receive up-to-the-minute evaluations of your company's current sales numbers.

The larger your customer base and the more orders you have to process each day, the more urgent the need for automated order processing workflows becomes. Thanks to the unlimited expansion options offered by the MD-Premium Application Framework, you can combine individual functions into automated function chains. The REST interface of the Webservice Application Framework can integrate external data sources, which can also be queried and processed automatically, while the EDIFACT interface ensures automatic data exchange with customers, suppliers, and other business partners.

By taking advantage of all these options, you can integrate a customized no-touch process into your order processing, where human interaction is only required when circumstances demand it. This reduces errors in order processing, noticeably reduces the workload on your staff, and achieves productivity gains you may never have thought possible.

Electronic data interchange

The digitization of business processes continues to advance, and the exchange of electronic data between business partners is almost a must in the 21st century if you value efficient and smooth processes.

For this reason, MD-Premium ERP has taken up the cause of EDI and made it one of its core competencies. An extremely powerful and flexibly expandable in-house data format based on XML forms the basis of MD-Premium's EDI strategy. Any type of business information can be extracted from the database using this format and forwarded to the relevant recipients.

Due to the expandability and transformability of XML files, the in-house format can be expanded to include additional aspects and converted into any target format conceivable. This transformation into a target format is part of the EDI process, and the system can be configured for each recipient to determine which target format is used.

The best-known global standard for electronic data exchange is UN/EDIFACT. MD-Premium ERP is fully compatible with this standard. Data exchange takes place using the in-house format, which is received by the EDIFACT clearing house and converted into the respective target format. MD-Premium is already integrated into several well-known clearing houses, and customer or supplier connections can be established very quickly via these partners. However, thanks to the clear structure and comprehensive documentation of the in-house format, other clearing houses can also be integrated without any complications.

In addition to the EDIFACT standard, MD-Premium ERP also supports other electronic exchange formats, which are becoming increasingly important, particularly due to the EU's e-invoicing initiative. These include, in particular, the ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, and ebInterface formats. But basically the system can understand any format based on the UBL or CII standards.

The EDI interface is highly configurable. You can specify individually for each customer or supplier whether documents are to be exchanged in electronic form, in which format this exchange is to take place, and at which stage of the ordering process. This means that some customers can receive invoices in ZUGFeRD format, while others receive order confirmations, delivery notes, and invoices via the EDIFACT interface.

Centralized EDI management allows you to keep track of current EDI transactions and also archives all historical transactions for troubleshooting and traceability purposes. The EDI interface can be integrated into automated processes via individual function extensions, making it an important building block for end-to-end automation across the entire supply chain..

Article & Warehouse management

MD-Premium ERP offers extensive options for specifying and managing items and the associated item stocks in the master data. MD-Premium can handle physical items—i.e., items that are typically kept in stock—production items, and intangible items such as licenses, services, and support.

Thanks to comprehensive categorization options, you can describe and specify each item precisely. Accurate item descriptions, product images, and documents are just the beginning. Different product and price hierarchies enable precise classification of each item. You can also integrate classification standards such as eClass.

To avoid having to use separate item numbers for near-identical items that differ only in minor details, you can store variations under one item number, e.g., differences in size or color. These variations are displayed transparently throughout the entire ordering and delivery process, including your in-house B2B web shop.

If you want to combine several thematically related items into an order package, you can define a so-called sales set and attach a corresponding bill of materials to it. The price of the sales set is either calculated automatically from the cumulative individual prices or can be specified separately. If a sales set requires additional effort in production or assembly, a production set can be defined instead. Production sets are controlled via production orders. These orders can be carried out in-house or outsourced to an external service provider. By segmenting production into sub-orders (set-in-set), even complex production orders can be mapped. You are free to decide whether or not you want to include the working hours incurred in the pricing of the finished item.

MD-Premium's warehouse management can cover all scenarios that may occur in companies. Starting with small storage areas to internationally distributed production and delivery warehouses. Warehouses themselves can be divided into any number of storage locations. Individual dimensions, weight specifications, and package sizes can be stored for each storage location. In addition, freely definable storage location types can be assigned to each storage location, for example, if a special security tray for chemicals is available or similar.

Assign each item individually to one or more warehouses or storage locations, with individual minimum and maximum stock levels and delivery times. As an alternative to a fixed storage location assignment, MD-Premium also allows dynamic (chaotic) warehouse management. Or you can dispense with storage locations altogether and leave the micromanagement entirely to the local warehouse staff.

Batch/serial numbers

The complete recording and linking of batch and serial numbers is absolutely essential in a quality-assured supply chain.

The item management feature in MD-Premium ERP allows you to specify for individual items whether they are relevant for batch or serial numbers. This data is recorded when goods are received and is permanently stored in the system.

Goods withdrawals for batch or serial number items are carried out either manually or automatically using a FIFO (first-in, first-out) procedure. This ensures that goods that have been in storage for a longer period of time are used first for customer orders. This procedure is highly recommended, especially for perishable goods. If desired, the system can also be set to a LIFO (last-in, first-out) procedure.

In addition to the batch number, the system also stores any best-before dates associated with the respective batch and automatically warns you about goods that are about to expire or blocks goods that have already exceeded their best-before date. Thanks to this transparent end-to-end storage of batch and serial numbers, you always know which items were delivered by which supplier and to which customers they were passed on. The traceability of items in the event of a quality defect or recall is ensured. You can locate the affected customers in a targeted manner and initiate appropriate measures.

You can also use the serial number to better handle warranty cases and maintenance requests.

Product information included

Traditional ERP systems typically do not bother with the management and provision of extensive product information. This data is typically outsourced to PIM software and distributed to customers and partner companies via a catalog interface or content delivery network.

MD-Premium ERP saves you this additional, costly component in your IT landscape. The ERP data model includes extensive options for describing your products and assigning attributes to them. You have complete freedom to define which attributes you want for your product range and how you want to assign them to your products. The system allows you to store product information in multiple languages, making it accessible to an international audience.

In conjunction with basic product data such as item number, EAN code, and customs tariff number, as well as the ability to provide standardized classification data based on eClass, MD-Premium ERP offers everything you need to define product catalogs and make them available to trading partners or web shop operators. Of course, MD-Premium's in-house B2B web shop also accesses this data..

In addition to this catalog data, MD Premium document management allows you to assign a wide range of documents to each individual item, which you can then make available to customers and partners. The selection ranges from marketing and advertising materials, data sheets, and user instructions to multimedia content such as sales and training videos—unless you want to make these available via a public video platform.

Take advantage of the opportunity to transfer these documents to a cloud via S3-compatible storage and make them available globally via a content delivery network without overloading your ERP installation with excessive data traffic.

Other Features

Deposit/empty container management

Items that generate empties that must be taken back (e.g., chemical drums) are specially marked. A log records which items were delivered to which customers in order to arrange for the corresponding returns, including financial aspects (reserves).

Approval process

You can integrate a flexible approval procedure into the quotation and order process in order to obtain approval from a higher authority for defined order phases. The need for approval can be linked to conditions (e.g., order amount)

Best price finding

The system automatically searches all price models applicable to the respective customer (including promotional prices) for the most favorable one and applies it. This prevents a promotion from overriding a special customer price, even though it is lower.

Order-related supplier orders

Creation of supplier orders for non-stocked goods directly from a customer order. Combination of several individual orders into one collective order.

Fresh deliveries

Short-term (next-day) deliveries of fresh goods thanks to automated ordering processes, including bundling and prioritization of supplier orders and breakdown of consolidated deliveries into individual customer orders.

Order-related returns

Return orders for unused goods are compared with the delivery volume to prevent more goods from being returned than were originally delivered

Tax administration

Automatic calculation of various taxes and fees, such as ARA, ERA, and various material surcharges (copper and aluminum surcharges), automatic forwarding of billing data to the relevant tax authorities.

Contract management

Transparent management of supplier and customer contracts. Monitoring of order quotas and reallocation of unused volumes. Supply contracts with multiple price levels, allocation of the appropriate price level according to customer price sensitivity.

Digital delivery notes

Delivery notes can be signed on site using a mobile client and immediately stored in the system. This speeds up order processing and completely eliminates the tedious task of digitizing signed paper documents

Cash register connection

Connection of electronic cash register systems, including setting up a signature and registration with the tax office, start receipts, daily, monthly, and annual financial statements.

Mobile warehouse recording/inventory

Special functions and processes for mobile inventory and goods recording in the warehouse, including connection to mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, scanners)

Accounting interface

Interfaces for data exchange with financial accounting software. Pre-integration with the accounting systems of Schmidhuber GmbH, BMD, and Diamant. Other financial accounting systems can be connected on a project-specific basis.