User Solutions: Affordable Agility with Tailor-Made ERP Solutions

Jim Convis, Vice President

Enterprises of all sizes are focused on maximizing their return on investments using a variety of business management tools. Enterprise Resource Planning software has already gained mainstream usage and is a must-have for the major players in any industry. However, most ERP users find varying levels of rigidity, complexity, and difficulty while implementing and using these one-size-fits-all ERP applications. Every organization has its own unique methods, especially in the area of Production Scheduling, that can’t be addressed by large ERP systems. According to Jim Convis, Vice President of User Solutions, “This is where we fit. We listen carefully to what the customer needs and deliver solutions that are affordable, easy to integrate with existing ERP Systems, quick to implement, and flexible to adapt to specific needs that involve resource planning, scheduling and tracking. Those resources can be any combination of people, materials, MRP, machines, tools, and workcenters.”

User Solutions serves as an ERP enabler to organizations with its broad range of solutions—Spreadsheet add-ons or templates (Excel), Windows database solutions, and cloud-based solutions. They are a perfect fit for customers still performing much of their planning and scheduling manually, using whiteboards, paper, and custom Excel sheets even though they might have a formal ERP system.

As an example of rapid return on customer investment, Convis illustrates the success story of GE Capital [NYSE:GE]— the financial subsidiary of General Electric. Serving the U.S. Rail Industry, with close to 200,000 railcars, at about $20 per day lease rate, the customer held an on-time delivery record of about 30 percent. “When they applied Workcenter Scheduler XL to plan, route, track, and schedule railcar repairs for their shops and sub-contractor shops, they were able to increase on-time delivery beyond 90 percent,” explains Convis.

User Solutions delivers products that are affordable, quick to implement, and flexible to adapt to manufacturing specific needs that involve resource planning, scheduling and tracking

User Solutions migrated ‘Resource Manager for Excel’ to ‘Resource Manager- DB’ and added many advanced planning and scheduling features (APS) including optimization, multi-user capabilities, and easy integration with existing customer systems (ERP and Custom). Now, recognizing all the benefits for cloud and mobile applications, User Solutions has developed SweetRP, a cloud based version of their popular Windows offering. Providing powerful and flexible routings, employee scheduling, and simple material management, SweetRP has affordable subscription rates and runs across all mobile devices.

In discussing their company’s vision, Convis remarks, “Our customers are the ones who drive innovation. User Solutions is both our company name and vision. Our job is to listen and deliver. That is how we have been able to incorporate so many requests, over the last 25 years, into the core software. Think of blending thousands of ‘best practices’ into a single offering. Having the same core team for 24 years, enables us to quickly respond to customer requests in a way that no other company can match. For example, a recent customer, during implementation on Monday, made a request for a new feature and we were able to deliver it on Tuesday. They were blown away, remarking, ‘that would have taken us a minimum of 6 months and lots of money to do with our ERP vendor.’ “

An avid adventure-lover, Convis correlates the chaos of managing ERP Add-On Solutions, with taking an adventurous trip with children. Reacting to unexpected external events with a variety of internal capabilities, User Solutions will continue its consistent approach towards rolling out affordable and flexible solutions, that work the way different people and different companies operate, to help them react to all types of ‘emergencies’ all the while being compatible with internal systems.