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New tools keep your shop running like a finely tuned engine.

Ever been driving along in your car, glanced down at the dashboard and seen the CHECK ENGINE light on? The first thought that goes through your mind is, How long has that been on? You wonder when it was you last actually looked at your dashboard gauges. Then you realize that you do not have many gauges and that your dashboard is comprised mostly of "idiot lights" like the CHECK ENGINE alert. And CHECK ENGINE means a trip to the shop to find out if you have no problem at all or if you are looking at a $1500 engine repair bill.

While you mull this over, you try to figure out what the problem could be. You listen for abnormal sounds; you check your acceleration and a dozen other things. You recall having a feeling of a slight hesitation when you hit the gas - something you first noticed a month ago but did not think anything of, and you now hope your ambivalence has not caused significant damage to the engine. All the while, the CHECK ENGINE light beams at you. At this point, you'll just have to see what the auto technician says.

Unfortunately, this makes a good analogy for how some people run their businesses. The CHECK ENGINE light could be an email from an unhappy customer, a notice that a supplier has put your account on hold or it could be a red number on the NET INCOME line of company financial statement.

Many companies are so consumed in their day-to-day operating activities that they do not take the time to analyze their important data. Even if they had the time, many companies do not have data systems that can provide useful information: information that is accurate, timely and in a format that mere mortals can easily understand.

Most EMS companies run their operations using several different software packages or systems. They use MRP/MRPII, accounting and engineering packages along with smaller standalone databases and Word or Excel files. Sharing data between these systems is rare and getting good, meaningful information is often difficult. This is where Business Intelligence Management software comes in.

Business intelligence is about taking all the gigabytes of data that businesses build up and putting it into accessible formats that permit better operating and strategic decisions based on hard data.

Given the speed at which EMS companies operate, having real-time, to-the-minute information is critical. Monthly, weekly and sometimes even daily reports are often not timely enough to allow the best decisions or give customers the support and responsiveness they deserve. Several BIM software programs provide a dashboard screen, which displays your most important business information in real time. This makes it easy to quickly spot trends, opportunities or problems and take appropriate action. For example, in less than a minute, you could:

• See that the margins on booked orders so far this week are below your target margin percent. Then, with one click of a button, see a detailed job list for the week and spot the jobs that are dragging the margin down.

• Look at the quality and delivery performance of your key suppliers to determine where to place a critical order.

• See a sharp upward trend in your real-time inventory tracking graph. Then drill down into a detailed report to determine what is causing the increase.

• See the total dollar value of your open customer orders and how that will translate into invoices in the upcoming days or weeks. Then bring up a list of those customer orders to see if some of them can be pulled in, thereby accelerating the revenue.

• See that the bookings from an important customer are declining recently, look at some detail to determine the probable cause, then work with the customer to reverse the trend or focus more strongly on customers with upside potential.

• Receive a call from a customer, and quickly see up-to-date financial, quality and delivery facts about your business with that customer, information that can be used to improve the relationship and negotiate from strength.

These are only a few examples of the many uses of business intelligence.

One of the beauties of BIM software is that it extracts the information you need from software programs and systems that you currently run. There is no need to endure the agony of scrapping an old system and installing a new one. BIM software allows you to share and combine data from different systems, summarize it and display it in a useful, readable way in graphs and report form.

BIM software packages currently on the market range in cost from $4,500 to over $25,000. Bigger is not necessarily better and some of the lower-cost packages contain all the features of the larger packages and more. Given the type of return that you can expect from making better and faster business decisions, this is one software cost that can be easily green lighted.

David Wolff is president of P.D. Circuits Inc. (pdcircuits.com); dwolff@pdcircuits.com.