Whether they’re creating eye-catching shipping boxes for subscription companies, innovative packages for makeup manufacturers or blister packs for the pharmaceutical industry, packaging companies are all about making their clients stand out from the crowd. Packaging must not only protect the goods housed within, it’s often a consumer’s first hands-on experience with the product, particularly in this era of e-commerce sales.
On the back end, packaging plays an important role when it comes to fulfillment, logistics and shipping, too. So manufacturers must balance looks and functionality when it comes to design and production.
Product packaging manufacturers may make custom products to order, stock packaging that they sell through distribution networks or both. Many focus on design while employing outside manufacturers to handle the actual production of some or all of the packaging options they offer. That means these firms must handle complex projects — plus a network of in-house employees and third-party contractors — all the way from the design phase to delivery of the final, functional product.
Packaging design, manufacture and distribution is a complex process, so packaging companies need unified business systems that bring their operations onto a single platform that all stakeholders can access and use. Companies saddled with disparate systems, piles of spreadsheets and endless email tag often spend too much time, money and other resources getting projects over the finish line, cutting into profitability and customer satisfaction.
This white paper delves into technology challenges facing packaging companies today and explains how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, supported by an implementation partner with experience in the packaging industry, can help companies overcome these hurdles, automate their processes, operate more efficiently and delight customers.
Managing the Complexities of Packaging Projects
Packaging does everything from attracting consumer eyeballs to extending the shelf life of products. Globally, this market is expected to reach $1.05 trillion by 2024, up from $917 billion in 2019, as demand for innovative and cost-effective solutions grows.
To manage their growing enterprises, many packaging companies use basic tools like QuickBooks, sometimes combined with legacy ERPs and a variety of homegrown spreadsheets.
“That makes functions like invoicing tedious,” said the NetSuite practice leader at solution provider partner Net at Work, which has locations across 13 US states and Canada.
Moreover, most packaging companies lack customer relationship management (CRM) systems and as a result have little or no visibility into the status of their current sales prospects and deliverables. When a project manager can’t see what’s going on with operations, for example, and salespeople can’t track their customer orders or historical data, the company is flying blind.
These complexities mount as packaging companies grow, win new clients and come up with innovative designs to bring to market.
How Net at Work and NetSuite Help
Net at Work helps packaging companies with revenues ranging from $15 million to $250 million take full advantage of NetSuite’s capabilities. The company brings 20 years of industry expertise and product knowledge to each client engagement to manage all necessary customizations and application integrations.
With an average implementation time of about six months, Net at Work gets its customers up and running on a highly capable technology platform quickly. And its consultants do so while delivering end-to-end visibility into their operations — from the work they do with their vendors to activities happening within their own production facilities to projects they’re managing with customers.
“Our consultants are well-versed in the packaging industry and can provide companies with solutions and capabilities to truly become ‘one-stop shops’ for their own customers,” said the Net at Work practice leader.
In most cases, implementing NetSuite delivers a major upgrade for companies that were managing their processes piecemeal and relying on spreadsheets and email for vendor and customer communication and collaboration.
Using NetSuite’s core ERP and financial functionalities plus CRM and a specialized NetSuite Configuration developed by Net at Work, packaging companies can bring all activities onto a single business system. This helps reduce the complexity of the packaging design, production and delivery process, which typically involves many internal and external stakeholders, including a customer that wants a product designed, for example, and vendors that provide quotes for different stages of the process, from design and manufacturing to shipping the finished product.
With NetSuite, packaging companies can easily set up a new project, distribute RFPs to their vendors then monitor the progress and respond to queries, all within the ERP. They can review and compare quotes and select the vendor best suited for each customer project.
With these details housed in an ERP, packaging companies can confidently go back to their clients with accurate quotes and a plethora of other details about their projects. With NetSuite’s integrated CRM capabilities, companies can also effectively manage their client relationships, attach documents to client records versus having to use Dropbox or email and automate processes that were previously handled manually or using disparate software solutions.
Net at Work’s goal is to give packaging companies one comprehensive platform to work with, versus having to patch various systems and processes together to complete a single project. With this mission in mind, the company has helped clients configure NetSuite in a way that really meets the needs of a modern, multifaceted packaging company.
Understanding the Nuances
NetSuite supports packaging companies with fluid operational needs. For example, Net at Work is currently engaged with a packaging company that manages some of its own manufacturing but also uses contract manufacturers for certain projects. With NetSuite, Net at Work can offer that client one consistent platform that has both contract manufacturing and in-house capabilities.
Moreover, the ERP manages customer-specific packaging variations, such as the addition of bubble wrap and other materials into boxes that are being made for a large e-tailer. The packaging company will use its own machinery to handle this requirement, so the job is set up in NetSuite as a manufacturing project, and managed as such.
Net at Work understands packaging industry nuances and works closely with its customers on the framework for a successful ERP implementation based on requirements like these.
Once a packaging company has NetSuite in place, the pain associated with managing complex projects on spreadsheets and disparate software systems are in the past. Wins that Net at Work has delivered center around clear visibility into everything that’s going on in the organization for every customer project, from sales to project management to billing. This, along with the reduction of manual processes, is a huge win.
In today’s challenging supply chain environment, NetSuite also helps companies access and evaluate order lead times for raw materials, for those manufacturing in-house, and other goods and supplies. They can use NetSuite’s vendor performance scorecards to make better decisions and produce more accurate forecasting, demand planning and in-plant capacity insights for manufacturing. This helps companies understand their own performance and their ability to meet the promises made to their own customers.
From a project management standpoint, NetSuite eliminates many of the previously manual steps that packaging companies relied on, replacing them with automated, simplified processes. This allows companies to reallocate valuable human resources to more important tasks. And people are now operating with better data — instead of managing projects on spreadsheets and spending hours tracking down information, with NetSuite, it’s all right at the user’s fingertips.
Even better, multiple departments now have access to and visibility into reporting, capacity use, project status and other important data that used to require a lot of emails, phone calls and spreadsheets to obtain.
These benefits extend right out to end customers, which gain a much more responsive, interactive and predictable experience.
In some cases, packaging companies don’t realize the power of a unified finance, operations and CRM system until they get NetSuite up and running. Having a single view of everything related to their customers is often a need that these companies didn’t even know they had. Suddenly, whether someone is in sales, operations, accounting or project management, they have a full window into the company right at their fingertips. That’s pretty powerful.
Preparing for Future Growth and Success
As the US packaging industry continues to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 3.5%, and the companies operating in it take on more business and explore new opportunities, they’ll need robust technology tools and experienced implementation partners to achieve their goals. With NetSuite and Net at Work, companies can effectively address their current challenges — both internal and external — while preparing for future growth and success.
Particularly now, an ERP also helps packaging companies offset labor market challenges, which preclude them from simply hiring more people to manage their growing customer bases. Having the right systems in place positively impacts customer service and helps packaging makers operate more efficiently as they shepherd projects from concept to completion, effectively and scalably.
NetSuite CPQ enables sales teams to quickly configure, price and quote (CPQ) complex products and services with complete accuracy and reliability — directly in NetSuite. Learn how.
