Cloud ERP Scalability: Manufacturer Expands Production by 60%

Let’s say your company wants to expand production, tripling your inventory and product lines and increasing lead times for overseas production. As much as you want to seize the opportunity, you’re concerned. After all, your business system simply isn’t set up to support this growth.

FloraCraft, manufacturer and supplier of Styrofoam brand foam products for the craft, floral, display, and event industries, found itself in this position. The company’s legacy ERP system couldn’t keep up with customer demand and its expansion goals. With on-premise or hosted software, there is a possibility of maxing out the available hardware and space—requiring additional infrastructure that can often lead to complicated, time-consuming IT projects.

A cloud ERP solution can be infinitely scaled and expanded as needed, with no disruption to the existing service—or more importantly, the business. When speed-to-market is a key differentiator, bringing plants online in a matter of months rather than years is critical. In fact, the case for cloud ERP as a strategic path to sustainable growth can pretty much be made with the quick return on investment, lower total cost of ownership, and ability to leverage updates across the business.

FloraCraft realized that it was more strategic to focus on its core business than supporting a complicated ERP solution. So the company went with a manufacturing cloud ERP and within a few months rolled out the solution to its operations in Michigan, Arkansas, California, and Mexico with a 60 percent increase in SKUs (approximately 3,500 in total). In 2014, FloraCraft won Walmart’s Supplier of the Year accolade—something the company said it would not have been able to do without its cloud ERP system—and in 2015 the company received recognition from ComputerWorld in the Data+ Editor’s Choice Awards. Today, FloraCraft supplies its products to more than 12,000 retail locations including Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, JoAnn’s, and other wholesalers.

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