Visual Business Solutions: Guiding Manufacturers to Achieve their Goals

Daniel Johnson, President

Visual Business Solutions (VBS) is a leading provider of Infor business application software solutions, guiding and benefiting manufacturing companies since 1993. The VBS client-base ranges from emerging manufacturers to multi-million dollar operations including some of the top manufacturers in the U.S. In today’s evolving competitive market, VBS, an Infor Certified Gold Channel Partner, offers Infor solutions to empower organizations with the flexibility and agility to enhance performance, growth, and adaptability. The company’s President, Daniel Johnson, shares insights on VBS’ combined expertise and solution offerings, unique value proposition, and roadmap.

What are the industry’s contemporary trends and how has VBS injected these trends into its solution offerings?

The manufacturing industry has been catching up to the imagination of thought leadership, with the once impossible-sounding ideas of space travel and self-driving cars, coming to life. This scenario is driven by the availability of easy-to-adopt tools that maximize the operational efficiency of the manufacturers. Today, end-users can deploy the SaaS-based tools with easy process integrations without IT assistance. We are leveraging our partnership with Infor to offer such enablement tools, which also attract the entire workforce demographics from millennials to boomers.

What are some of the key challenges that your clients face and VBS addresses?

The customers are most concerned with gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace but are challenged by the availability of tools that address their pain points and also offer them intentional and demonstrable ROI. We offer solutions that align with the competitive details of Fortune 500 as well as SMB and emerging manufacturing companies.

Furthermore, our customers demand to master OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) and understand the trends and their impact on the marketplace to sustain competitive advantage. Data mining and business intelligence is an everyday expectation. For the purpose, we facilitate the essence of change management and specify to our clients the simple premise that success follows the acceptance and identification of their issues. Instead of offering a feature/ function set, we provide the VBS Way model which is a mutually accountable process focusing on commitment, issue clarity, and building success trust prior to solving issues. Infor provides one leg of the three-legged stool (People/Process/Technology). The VBS Way helps customers successfully attain ROI with far better speed to value.

Could you describe in some detail your services portfolio?

Our VBS Services—delivered by highly skilled professionals—comprise ERP consulting services, project management, continuous improvement, custom development, customized training, and other services with on-premise, cloud, hosted, and hybrid delivery options.

Through our in-depth discovery process, we first comprehend the clients’ business objectives and how they want to run their business.

We then work with the clients to decide the best delivery option to achieve maximum results through upgrades and migrations, reports and macros, requirement definition and review, custom development, continuous improvement, re-implementation, business process assessment and action plan, application training, and products that support PPT (ShipperLink, eCommerce).

At VBS our passion is to bring clarity and solutions to our clients

also offer managed services involving an initial assessment, on-going monitoring, proactive management, and maintenance of the client’s visual enterprise and infrastructure environments. Features of the managed services include 24/7 monitoring and issue resolution, remote and onsite resources, backup and recovery best practices, and more. The deliverables consist of SLA managed reliability/performance, monitoring and proactive management, and monthly status reports. We deliver the PPT solutions to enable clients to realize the maximum value to improve efficiencies and drive revenues.

Could you describe VBS’ high customizability addressing your clients’ unique requirements?

High customizability can be a confusing topic to address. All companies are unique: their senior management leadership style, corporate culture, staff capabilities, and more. It is critical to understand our customers thoroughly and work with them to tailor a solution that addresses their needs. We developed the VBS Way from our experiences in over 750 implementations. We work with our clients based upon mutually agreed upon measurable objectives. We ensure clear identification of the issues, a definition of success,and then resolve the issues on time and on budget, to benefit both sides.

Could you tell us about a client success story? A case study perhaps?
We engaged the VBS Way for a company concerned about its Infor scheduling tool. Through discovery and coaching, we apprised the company about how missed delivery dates were threatening the loss of their customers.

The clarity step comprising a meeting with the IT manager and executive staff, helped them agree to improve their ability to understand lead times upon order entry and delivery to meet the expectations. With the department heads, we developed measurement criteria, to elucidate the executives about the progress being made. Both teams realized that promising and delivering were most important. Expectations for the measurements were set, and the company agreed that their goal and measurement were clear.

During the trust stage, we acquainted with the teams managing different department’s function, and developed a joint plan (PPT) aspect to evaluate, control, and measure the improvements to be accomplished. Later, we concluded with the executives that the teams, process revisions, and the technology used would achieve the objectives. Within a month the customer saw a significant reduction in both the Dollar- Days late and PD/PET. Within three months the customer had met their targets on both. We then regrouped with the executive team, who now believed they could achieve their desired growth with this new control and determined the next step to change their measurement to Dollar-Days Late vs. Customer Request Date.

What would you say is the unique, disruptive element that VBS brings to the Infor Partner solutions landscape?

The VBS way is our differentiator, disruptive across our industry as well as others. It is set on the premise that organizations need a fundamental commitment to solving an issue, the issue must have clarity, the impact must be measurable, and the organizations must trust each other that an effective solution for the issue exists. Many consultants and customers shortcut these steps, to their disadvantage. We guide customers on a clear and pragmatic path to achieve objectives on time and on budget, aligning performance of tactical requirements, followed by evaluation of the results. Our superior services translate process improvement into profitability.

Looking ahead, where do you see your company?

Besides the continuity of self-service, we see our industry and the significance of supporting the customers, changing. The modern tech-savvy customers expect a social collaboration in all event structures alongside accessibility to all intelligent data. We are aligning our thoughts with IoT and AI practices that shall continue to define the impact of manufacturing. This shall assure our platform-readiness for the changing market. At VBS our passion is to bring clarity and solutions to our clients.