E-book

Selecting an ERP system for chemical manufacturing

Maximize insight, efficiency, agility, and profitability.

SAGE X3: THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Demand flows in the chemical industry are in flux. Feedstocks are disrupted and input pricing continues to be volatile. Most players are not operating at optimum capacity for their plant investments. And geopolitical factors have not yet settled into a new equilibrium.

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That means your ERP has become even more critical to achieving success and growth even in such a turbulent environment.

If your ERP is flexible, it will be easily tailored by your solutions provider to fit your exact business needs, improving performance and profitability

If your ERP is truly designed for your industry then many industry-specific functions (formulation development, hazard reporting, feedstock potency) will be there, ready-made, out-of-the-box.

If your ERP provides a window on your business, it will provide customized dashboards and insight drill-downs that put your firmly in control of operations, safety,

compliance, quality tracking, distribution, sales and customer service in real-time

And if your ERP is AI-powered, it will help you streamline operations and make better- informed decisions. By leveraging data insights, predictive analytics, and automation features available within or connected to your ERP, you can simplify compliance tasks, enhance quality management, and accelerate product development cycles.

All these, you get from Sage X3.

This short ebook summarizes the Sage X3 features and capabilities that meet the demands of a chemical company considering their next ERP upgrade.

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Contents Page

Operations management Page 4

Accounting and financial management Page 5

Supply chain management Page 6

Sales Page 8

Customer service Page 9

IT & security Page 10

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Formula for success #1:

Operations management To stay competitive, your operational efficiency has to reach new levels in the light of tight and volatile markets. You need Sage X3 to optimize and automate key workflows. After all, formulation anomalies can shut down a plant or raise hazard levels to dangerous levels.

Data and insights With Sage X3, capture plant and operational data, such as formula management, batch sizing and scaling, potency tracking, traceability, and quality control/ reporting. An AI-powered ERP delivers time-saving automation and surfaces insights fast to support improvements in plant cost management and productivity.

Managing raw materials Implement just-in-time raw materials and catalyst management, with real-time insight into inventory categories, feedstock storage conditions, units and splitting, along with views of (multi-) warehouse utilization, stock location and values.

Workflow efficiency Whether it's people, raw materials, or products, a unified master data source across your operations enables optimized workflows within safety parameters. If a demand spike occurs, AI-powered insights and advanced manufacturing intelligence in Sage X3 allow you to manage it without ramping up temporary production costs.

Modern, intuitive interface Sage X3 interfaces - including mobile – are designed to be easy and intuitive for users, minimizing training needs, accelerating onboarding, amplifying staff productivity and satisfaction, and getting up and running quickly.

Mobile capabilities Whether in-plant, at a sister site or on the road, your people can collaborate on the move with mobile data access and automated data collection.

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Formula for success #2:

Accounting and financial management You need a real-time view of the financial flows in your business through Sage X3. That way, you can make agile, confident and productive decisions based on real data and analysis.

Powerful reporting Key KPI reports, tailored charts, automated triggers. Create the customized dashboards and drill-down analysis you want to give you the financial performance insights you specify. Get visibility on subcontracting management, multi-production units, co-product and by-product management, line productivity/profitability, just-in-time feedstock management, and more.

AI-powered accounting Harness the power of AI and apply to automating processes behind budget management, feedstock pricing rules, accounts payable disciplines, inter-company charging, document processing and anomaly resolution.

Audit Make auditing powerful and cost-controlled. Drill down from headlines to the detail. Meet safety reporting, product transit and compliance rules and make risk, flow analysis and pricing and other queries easy.

Multi-everything Multi-company, multi-site, multi-plant, multi process line, multi-currency, multi-ledger, multi-legislation, multi-language… manage any level of complexity in your organization.

Planning & Budgeting Plan and budget by product category, just-in-time inventory costs, plant clusters, routes to market, intermediaries, projects, initiatives and budget lines. Set budget structures and roles (managers, recipients, control/responsibility hierarchies, reporting/approval lines).

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Formula for success #3:

Supply chain management Nothing is more certain than uncertainty. So Sage X3 needs to help you rapidly pivot to changing customer demands, sourcing requirement and supply chain partner offerings.

Visibility Gain the analytics you need across logistics, orders and inventory/feedstock data streams through tailored reports. Create supply chain structures that can rapidly adjust to disruptions or tariff changes. Manage raw materials storage management and potency. Understand supplier performance and adjust for the optimal mix.

Feedstock & inventory Automate re-ordering, Predict supply requirements. Implement just-in-time and just-in-case stock levels and re-ordering thresholds. Manage the flow of supplies across multiple sites, country operations, group companies.

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Purchasing & cost management Implement demand planning and procurement, standardizing processes, optimizing routing within hazardous substance regulations, as well as sustainability, quality and safety tracking. Get AI-enabled insights on suppliers, purchasing, payments.

Quality Implement quality assurance and safety management reports through automatic dashboards. Investigate customer issues or order rejections at speed. Improve quality control, non-conformance management, and corrective and preventive action (CAPA).

Administration Renegotiations, supplier volume allocations, contractual terms, credit profiles, authorization routines, can all be supported by automated information and document management. Generate GHS (Globally Harmonized System) safety data sheets through automated processes embedded in Sage X3.

Suppliers Develop strategic supplier relationships and sourcing reliability. Nurture your essential supply line partnerships. Trial different supplier combinations and strategies, analyzing performance, reliability, pricing, capacity and range.

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Formula for success #4:

Sales Sales in the chemical industry tends to mean nurturing and managing long-term customer relationships – whether directly with end customers, or with crucial distribution partners. That’s why the sales team needs Sage X3 to equip them with high-quality information, insights and activity triggers.

Administrative support Let your salespeople focus on selling by minimizing their administrative burden – with automated quote generation, pricing, sales reporting and customer profiles.

Performance transparency Analyze relationship development effort versus sales closure data – whether by sales team, partners, channels or introducers – through tailored insights and dashboards. Deploy AI to dynamically align sales forecasts, targets and performance.

Allocation and alignment Match customers and prospects to the right salesperson or channel partner. Use multi-criteria configuration to manage sales workload for optimal outcomes. Also link into production data to ensure product sales do not outpace capacity.

Triggers Put AI-driven alerts in place to trigger best-practice customer development – customer behaviour such as exceeding thresholds, or falling short of predicted purchase volumes, along with pricing guidance, sales potential score, minimum order values, payment performance. Use sustainability tracking as a competitive sales asset to clinch more orders.

New product introductions Link up R&D, regulatory approvals, production and sales potential in order to bring competitive new products to market faster. Embed evidence and documentation for new product approvals, compliance reporting and prospect/customer communications.

Pre-screening Empower intelligent sales activity with credit limits, pre-screening with corporate parameters, value potential modelling and order history.

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Formula for success #5:

Customer service Nurture your clients, improve the climate for sales and growth. Deploy the power of Sage X3 to help your customer service staff intelligently build customer satisfaction. Chemicals are often hazardous so real-time visibility and control are critical to avoid and/or resolve errors that can prove not only expensive but also dangerous to life and limb.

Performance insights See how your customer service people are performing in terms of client geography, sector, size. Look into the effect of high-touch service on client value/profitability/potential. Align service cost with commercial outputs and balance service staff workload where it produces the greatest effect.

Customer profiles Make sure your people have client data – profile, contacts, roles and responsibilities, authorization level, order history, and more. Help your people answer queries as intelligently as possible.

Service staff Assign volumes of work on a data-driven way to your service staff by customer type, staff skills/knowledge, service team, product group or a host of other criteria.

Alerts AI supports real-time operational alerts with insights are surfaced automatically in the product to highlight delays, changes in behaviour, and opportunities. It also helps teams manage fulfilment issues, identify at-risk customers, and act quickly to preserve customer satisfaction.

Service efficiency You want your people’s efforts to be directed towards the best results. Deep integration with finance functions helps analyze service cost per customer, which in turn allows dynamic adjustment of service team workstreams in the quest for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

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The integration of OT and IT into a connected, holistic digital environment dials up the need for even more robust IT systems and failsafe cybersecurity. Sage X3 allows you to integrate with other line-of-business applications while guarding your digital security.

Visual process maps Simplify processes and enhance efficiency with easily created process maps in the plant, in finance, in R&D, in distribution. Seamless integrate new product development workflows from conception, through testing, compliance readiness, production efficiency, safety and quality tracking, pricing, logistics and sales.

Dashboards Total flexibility to build the dashboards your people ask for. Configure them precisely off any data table and implement triggers or alerts that help your people act swiftly to seize opportunities and shut down inefficiency. Gain reliable lot-tracking to minimize product recalls. View insights customized to your specific recipes and formulas.

Solution performance Remove the pressure of updates, backups, security, and more when you move to the cloud. Have real-time insight into IT performance including cloud access, with always on rates, system audit, API performance, as well as the ability to simulate and test workflows such as product recall.

Integration Easy integration with popular apps and services such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Crystal Reports, AWS as well as HTML 5 compliant web interface for use with multiple browsers.

Business intelligence (BI) Sage X3 offers out-of-the-box reporting – but you can also seamlessly integrate with your favorite Business Intelligence technology. AI-enablement helps set up internal insights and analytics; or you can implement customer self-service for

Permissions management Security and hazard management are critical in the chemical sector – so define all employee and partner access permissions – individual or role level – for

Formula for success #6:

IT & security

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All of the company’s manufacturing, distribution, and operation processes run through Sage X3. From complex manufacturing tasks, to supply chain management and warehousing, Sage X3 is helping Polycoat optimize its resources and grow its operations sustainably.

Even routine tasks like the company’s optional business audit have been simplified. “Our annual audit used to take three months,” notes H.K. Sharma, Vice President of IT for Polycoat. “All the documentation was stored in file cabinets. Now, we sit down with the auditors, access everything electronically, and we’re done in hours rather than months.”

Sage X3 at Polycoat Products Polycoat Products, the California manufacturer of industrial coatings, required a scalable ERP solution that could support its expanding operations without compromising on efficiency or innovation.

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