Demo environment

Digital path

Take a look at where you go in digitalization and where you could head.

Astu DBL-digipolulle!

ERP demo environment

The Digital Business Lab project has developed an ERP demo environment where students and SMEs have the opportunity to learn about the digitization of different areas of business. Are you interested, for example:

• Customer relationship management
• Development of the order supply chain, including e-commerce
• Management of the marketing process, including somemarketing
• Digitization of procurement, production control and inventory management
• About project management and time tracking
• Integrating the above processes into financial and human resources management and reporting.

The demo environment is comprehensively integrated into SeAMK’s teaching. The system will be used in the following courses:

• ERP systems
• Fundamentals of databases
• Data analytics and BI
• Online shopping

There is also co-operation between the courses and, for example, the data created in the ERP course is utilized in the basics of databases course and further in data analytics. In this way, the understanding of ERP is combined with database and reporting expertise. Similarly, students have the opportunity to utilize what they have learned in the course, e.g. in project studies and digital tutoring.

If you miss the system and demo environment for your own course, contact the Digital Business Lab. In the demo environment you will find tools for the project e.g. virtual business operations, customer relationship management, information systems procurement, human resources management and purchasing.

A more detailed description of the demo environment

Sales of products in different channels

In the demo environment, it is possible to present the sale of products as a combination of e-commerce and stone foot trade. The company has created several stone footstore checkout systems and its own warehouses, while the online store operates from the main warehouse. For the sake of clarity, the product range of the sample company has been kept small so that the various product examples do not lose weight and each product can be associated with its own clear story, which it seeks to present.

The online store can e.g. recommend similar, more expensive or better covered products as well as complementary products as customers become familiar with the range. A purchaseable version of the products, a product based on a short-term rental and a monthly subscription service are also available. By combining these features, a company can form its own product palette and create relationships between different products.

Web visibility and marketing

In addition to e-commerce, the company must have professional online visibility. Demo A website has been created for the company, which covers the company’s basic information, events, blogs and customer stories. A versatile website provides several ways to reach potential customers, build leads, and develop customer relationships. Of course, the website has a contact form, but it is also possible to generate new customers from event attendees and blog readers. Diverse content such as blogs, videos and podcasts create credibility for your business and enable content marketing. On social media channels, a variety of content has the potential to achieve a wide range of benefits, both free and paid.

Social media channels enable diverse and targeted marketing, but managing and using multiple channels can easily become tedious. Tracking a company’s industry keywords and hashtags is easy on a single platform, but it can be tricky to get an overall picture across multiple platforms. In this case, a tool for managing different platforms can be used, which allows data to be collected from several platforms and which allows the same or slightly modified content to be distributed to different channels, optimizing the content and scheduling according to each platform.

Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management starts with the registration of customer companies and contacts in a common system. This helps to get rid of a situation where all the contacts that are important to the company are in the memory of one phone, for example. In this way, operationally important information can be managed through a shared system.

Sales management is also an integral part of a CRM solution. It allows the company to monitor ongoing tenders and negotiations and forecast its future sales. Each offer and related actions can be tracked both as a whole and through each individual vendor’s own perspective. Once events such as calls, emails and appointments are scheduled and planned, they will not be forgotten and therefore customers will not be lost unnecessarily. A common view also ensures that the same customer is not contacted by several sellers and without knowing each other. The progress of sales must be monitored through comprehensive reporting and it must be ensured that the impact of the measures taken on, for example, customer profitability and the customer’s life cycle is analyzed.

Procurement, production and logistics

The products of the demo environment have been selected on the one hand in terms of the presentation of different sales functionalities, but also in terms of different sourcing channels. Some of the products are sourced entirely from a subcontractor, but a single product requires its own production and the associated sourcing, warehousing and quality control processes.

The company’s sales order starts the necessary production processes. There is a lower limit for products and parts below which purchase orders are automatically created. Part of the order has been submitted manually to demonstrate functionality. Receipt and payment of products are integrated into the ordering process. In the case of self-manufactured products, under-execution triggers a production order, which in turn can trigger purchase orders if the product quantities in stock fall below a specified threshold.

Automation and integrations also bring with them systematicity. The duration of the different production steps can be estimated and these constants can be compared to the realities. In this way, the company can learn from its production process and further develop it. Production can also be accompanied by quality control points, where either each product or batch is inspected and the measurement is recorded in the system. In this way, errors are better noticed already in production, which tends to reduce the number of complaints.

Future development of the demo environment

Financial and human resource management processes are built on the background of production and sales processes. Purchase and sales invoicing create a significant part of the income statement entries. Another important entity, ie wages and salaries, can be based on either hourly data on production or monthly wages and salaries, of course also taking into account employer contributions. Management and external reporting builds on this information.

The demo environment currently focuses on selling and renting products.In the future, it will also be possible to develop a demo company suitable for the services. Project management and time tracking enable versatile productisation and invoicing of services.