Case studies are a great way to bring in more customers. There’s the honesty of actual customers talking about their experiences with your shop, but you can control what makes it to the case study. Before you start calling customers to interview them for case studies, you’ll need to know the best way to make your case study…
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Marketing can be complicated, and most people who run a job shop don’t have lots of time to spend on it. Let your customers market your job shop! Potential customers are more likely to trust customer reviews than advertising. Some of the best ways to have customers do the marketing for your job shop are word of mouth,…
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Buying an ERP system isn’t something you can do quickly if you want to get a good fit. It’s a process. However, it doesn’t have to be complicated or take a long time. Below are four questions you can ask to help search more effectively. What does your shop need? You can’t buy the right software if you don’t know what your shop’s needs…
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Manufacturers have been improving their processes since they first existed. However, manufacturers have never needed to improve as quickly as they have over the past year. The pandemic changed many things for our world, but manufacturing was one of the industries that was hit first. Many of those changes will likely stay even after COVID-19 cases drop to…
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Managing people can be rewarding but challenging. In a job shop, it’s one of the roles that just happens. You may have started your own shop and gradually started hiring or moved up in the company you worked for because you were doing a great job. Now, you have people reporting to you with little training on how to…
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Job travelers are a list of steps required to complete a job. It’s a simple principle, but it can make a big difference in your job shop. The time saved and confusion prevented make jobs flow much more smoothly. And, as anyone who runs a job shop can tell you, keeping jobs moving smoothly is critical. Routing When the estimate for…
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If you’re going to take the time to make a website for your job shop, it should look great. Ideally, it will have an attractive theme, powerful images, and compelling content. It should be generating the traffic and leads you envisioned when you created or designed it. As a growing business in 2021, the last…
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Choosing new ERP software can be a long process, and after you’ve chosen your software, you want to make sure your employees use it. Even if you’ve picked the right software for your shop, you may end up not using that software you spent so long picking out if you don’t have a plan. Read below for our list…
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What is Performance Management? Performance management is a process of making sure that a set of activities meet a company’s goals effectively and efficiently. Performance management can apply to an entire company, a department, an employee, or even a process. Essentially, it’s making sure that your company or employees meet their goals in the most efficient way possible. In manufacturing, your goals may be increasing the number of orders…
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Training is critical in a job shop, especially for employees on the shop floor. However, training isn’t just about meeting OSHA requirements, although those are critical. Training can make your shop more efficient and keep your best employees from looking for work elsewhere. Efficiency in Your Job Shop Training your employees to meet quality control standards…
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Sustainability has become more important, especially this past year. Now, we are seeing it make a big difference in how people perceive companies, especially manufacturers. People are looking for companies that are thinking of the future when they make decisions. At its heart, sustainability is future-proofing your shop. Making your job shop sustainable can give it a boost in multiple ways. Reputation Most consumers…
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Marketing your job shop is crucial. How else will you get new customers? But it can be time-consuming, and if you’re already running a job shop, you don’t have time to try every marketing craze. Below are four easy things your shop can start doing today to market more effectively and bring in more customers. …
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Family businesses are great, but there’s pressure to pass them along to the next generation. And there are many reasons that these businesses don’t get passed along. Even if you’re not planning to leave the family business for several years, it can be helpful to start thinking about your exit strategy now and look at the potential…
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ERP software can make a huge difference in a shop by raising the bottom line, increasing productivity, improving quality, and many other things. However, ERP software can also help a shop before it’s even implemented. ERP software can help your shop, but it tends to magnify whatever already exists. So, to get the biggest impact…
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Many people are familiar with the phrase, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” The same is true with the makeup of your workplace. If all your employees have the same general experiences, your shop will keep running in about the same way. If you want to…
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One of a job shop’s greatest resources is its customers. You may have heard that for most places, 20% of your customers provide 80% of the work. Couple that with the difficulty and expense of getting new customers, and it becomes obvious that keeping your customers happy is important. But what’s the best way to keep them happy? One of the…
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If you’re considering ERP software, whether you’re looking to change vendors or buy your first system, it’s helpful to think about what it should do for your shop. What will make a particular ERP system a good fit for your job shop? The four points below are a great place to start. Helps You Get Your Job…
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Getting answers to your business questions doesn’t have to be hard. All you need is good ERP software. It can keep your shop organized and make finding information a breeze. If you’re using spreadsheets or not using software at all, you could make a dramatic difference in your shop just by implementing an ERP; slash the time and effort…
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Spring is often the time we start cleaning out homes and making them look nice. This spring, consider cleaning up your shop’s operations and making them more efficient. Below are four tips to help you. Track Important Data To make your shop more efficient, you have to determine how you’re going to measure that. Do you want to send out more…
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Data collection is often an unsung hero of ERP software, but it’s what we build everything else on. Putting good data into your ERP system means getting good information out. First Tool Corporation and Rapid Design Group both saw first-hand what data collection could do for their shops. First Tool Corporation First Tool Corporation has seen some great changes from data collection….
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The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provides loans to businesses during the COVID-19 crisis to keep people employed. The government can forgive some of these loans, giving these small businesses a leg up during this unexpected, global event. Your shop may qualify for a PPP loan, even if you’ve already gotten one. Check out the PPP section of the SBA…
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This past year has been hard on small businesses. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council partnered with TechnoMetrica to survey small businesses and find out what impact software on the cloud had on their businesses. Their cloud software helped a large majority in various ways. The two biggest ways it helped them were by keeping their shops open…
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Virtual meetings have become huge over the past year, and they’re here to stay. Even after we can gather in groups again, customers may still opt for the convenience of a virtual meeting rather than an in-person meeting. This means you might be making your first impression through a computer screen rather than in person. Make…
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Things change quickly in job shops, and it’s important to make sure everyone can keep up. However, it’s hard to talk to people on the shop floor while social distancing. The more your shop is optimizing for things like profitability and meeting due dates, the more often you might need to communicate with the folks on the…
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2020 was a year of change, especially for manufacturing. Shutdowns and supply chain worries were a big part of the year, and shop owners were looking for ways to be more efficient. This past year, Shoptech’s top ten most popular blog posts were about improving shops and learning new things. 10. 3 Tips for Scheduling…
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If you are a current customer with a support question, please email shoptech-techsupport@ecisolutions.com directly.
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