We understand the challenges of maintaining an efficient manufacturing process, including finance and inventory management. Despite dedicating time and effort to checking stock accuracy, manual stock checks remain prone to errors, leading to shortages, excesses, and unidentified losses.
As a manufacturer, using a top-tier ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system can significantly enhance your operational efficiency, provide accurate results, and reduce the number of required workers.
We have curated a list of industry-specific ERP software, designed to address common failures in manufacturing companies.
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So, What Is the Best ERP for Manufacturing?
In the challenging landscape of manufacturing, with a global growth rate of 3.9%, powerful automation ERP software like Netsuite is essential. Netsuite ERP stands out for its high automation capabilities. Its AI-powered digital assistant streamlines tasks, allowing users to ask questions like “What’s the status of my open purchase requisitions?” and “What reconciliations are due today?”
For a comprehensive list of the best ERPs for Manufacturing in 2024, read on.
1. Netsuite ERP: Highest in Automation and Best Overall
Netsuite ERP is a complete, modern, cloud ERP system that provides manufacturing companies with advanced capabilities, such as AI to automate manual processes, analytics to react to real-time market shifts, and automatic updates to stay current and gain a competitive advantage.
Additionally, it is a lifesaver in organizing expenses and following the chain of command, especially for financial approval of large purchases. The system allows for tracking approvals through to the highest level of management, which automates the process.
Managers in management and finance usually go through each list and approve each item manually. Still, with Netsuite ERP, they can automate the approval process and integrate that with our vendors to make purchasing more streamlined and to keep strong records for audit purposes.
Benefits of Netsuite ERP in Manufacturing Industries
AI-powered assistant: Netsuite ERP identifies patterns in even the largest volumes of data, whether structured or unstructured, providing predictive insights that help manufacturing companies optimize workflows and find cost-saving opportunities.
Financial management: Netsuite ERP software handles customer payment schedules, revenue tracking, and credit management across the entire company. It also manages income, expenses, and assets in an organization.
Automation: With the help of Netsuite ERP, manufacturing companies can improve their business operational efficiency through cost reduction, increased accuracy, productivity, and more.
Netsuite ERP System Pricing
The pricing model is pay-as-you-go. It upgrades twice a year. Depending on the specifics of your implementation, such as company size, complexity, industry requirements, modules, and more. The costs are between $25,000 and $75,000 per business. For more details click here.
Free Trial: Yes
2. Odoo ERP: Best for Asset Management
Odoo is the perfect ERP software example for manufacturing companies as it records fixed asset details, performs regular maintenance and repairs, ensures compliance with regulations, and assesses depreciation.
The ERP is a suite of open source business apps covering your company’s needs: CRM, eCommerce, accounting, inventory, point of sale, project management, etc. It uses barcodes, QR codes, or RFID to help track long-term assets over their entire lifecycle, from acquisition to disposal.
Benefits of Odoo ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Equipment management: Odoo ERP system is used to monitor the performance of enterprise equipment, manage equipment life cycle from planning to disposal, and automate its maintenance processes. It helps manufacturing companies maximize equipment life and efficiency, improve safety and compliance, and increase ROI.
Task management: With the help of the Odoo ERP system, manufacturing companies can monitor their project’s tasks through various stages from start to finish. This involves actively making decisions for your tasks to accommodate changes that can occur in real time.
Asset Management: Odoo ERP software’s Extended capabilities provide full warehouse and inventory management support. The module provides capabilities to track the purchase and disposition of assets.
Odoo ERP System Pricing
- Standard is $7.25 - $8.95 / user / month
- All apps, and $10.90 - $13.60/user/month All apps
Free Plan: Available
3. MRPeasy ERP: Best for Usability
MRPeasy is an all-in-one cloud ERP system well-suited for manufacturing companies to simplify and effectively manage inventory, production, and supply.
MRPeasy is in the top tier for its usability; its easy automation provides visibility of real-time operational and financial performance.
Manufacturing employees prefer to use ERP systems that are more convenient for them, which is why most manufacturing companies prefer using MRPeasy ERP. It is the most flexible ERP system in the world; it guarantees the ease of monitoring inventory levels, supplies to customers, and the flow of goods across the value.
Benefits of MRPeasy ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Warehouse Management: MRPeasy improves warehouse processes in manufacturing companies by providing organized methods for receiving, picking, putting away, and shipping goods that help reduce errors and improve employee satisfaction. It also can communicate with other departments like customer service so they can be informed of what is happening with orders in real-time to assist customers better.
Order management: MRPeasy handles everything from order entry to delivery dates. It automates receiving, routing, fulfilling, tracking, notifying, and potentially returning/exchanging orders.
Inventory management: MRPeasy helps companies identify which and how much stock to order at what time. It tracks inventory from purchase to the sale of goods. The practice identifies and responds to trends to ensure enough stock to fulfill customer orders and proper warning of a shortage.
MRPeasy ERP System Pricing
- Starter is $49/user/month
- Enterprise is $99 /user/month
- Unlimited is $149/user/month
Free Trial: 30 days
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365: Best for Third-Party Integration
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for midsize and larger manufacturing companies. It’s one of the best ERP systems that offers organizations a single, end-to-end solution for managing finances, operations, and sales.
The ERP System has third-party integration capability. The individual applications within Microsoft Dynamics 365 can be used as standalone products, combined, or integrated with a wide range of external business systems to provide a completely customized solution.
This platform integrates with third-party applications such as Ameyo, Salesforce, DocuSign, PandaDoc, ADP, Gainsight, Tacton CPQ, and more. With this unique ability, manufacturing companies cannot purchase additional ERP software packages.
Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Third-party integration: No ERP system performs all functions needed by manufacturing companies. So, the third-party capability of Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables it to manage projects centrally and reduce the need to purchase additional software.
Manufacturing management: Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system provides tools for planning and scheduling production, allowing companies to optimize production processes. It does this by helping companies improve how their resources are used – a crucial consideration in today’s highly competitive market.
Service Management: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Service Management functions allow the control of customer maintenance contracts and billing, visibility of the customer’s site equipment, a full-service history against that equipment, and full scheduling and communication with the technicians through a web-based portal.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP System Pricing
It has different pricing categories, including pricing specific for SMBs, commerce, project management, supply chain, sales, finance, customer service, etc. Click here for details.
Free Plan: Yes
5. SAP ERP: Best for Finance Management
SAP ERP is an enterprise resource planning software developed by the German company – SAP SE, specifically for effective finance management. It helps manufacturing firms run their business, supporting automation and processes in finance, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain, services, procurement, and more.
The major aim of manufacturing companies is to maximize profits and ensure long-term sustainability, and that’s exactly what SAP represents. SAP ERP helps manufacturing companies streamline processes, increase accuracy, reduce costs, prevent account errors, and observe company activity.
It also enables them to communicate financial information to external parties, including vendors and customers.
Benefits of SAP ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Finance management: SAP ERP helps manufacturing companies speed up their financial processes and offers auditable revenue and expense management. It perfectly handles customer payment schedules, revenue tracking, and credit management across the business.
Expense tracking: Knowing where each dollar is going makes you more empowered to change your cash flow. You’ll also have a good understanding of how much your company can save toward new financial goals. So, SAP ERP monitors and identifies areas where cash flow can be improved, such as reducing unnecessary expenses or improving payment terms.
Financial Reports: Financial reports illustrate the net worth of a manufacturing company and its financial position. These reports detail the assets, liabilities, and capital of a business. SAP ERP system works well in automating the generation of these reports, including income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.
SAP ERP System Pricing
The Pricing is primarily based on the business requirements, and ERP systems are unit-priced on a per-user basis. It has a Starting license package, Limited, and Professional package. Apart from this, you need to pay different fees for Maintenance, Support, Integration, & Consultation.
Free Trial: Yes
6. Acumatica: Budget-Friendly Option
Acumatica is an affordable ERP system designed for growing manufacturing companies. It helps save money because there is no client software to install or maintain. It runs on familiar technology, allowing users to automate processes without paying for individual user licenses, and reduces auditing time by linking documents to transactions. Acumatica allows them to consolidate several subsidiaries on a single deployment.
Acumatica ERP also helps teams increase productivity, and this software offers many features at a very low price. So, It’s excellent for Manufacturing firms on an operational budget but can easily be enhanced when necessary.
Benefits of Acumatica ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Inventory auditing: Acumatica ERP cross-checks a company’s financial records against its inventory records and ensures these records match its physical inventory count. Ensuring inventory accuracy and identifying discrepancies in stock counting or financial records is vital.
Integrated Document Management: Acumatica includes the ability to link documents directly to financial transactions, help files, input screens, and reports, or organize them using a business wiki to simplify information sharing and reduce auditing costs.
Change order management: Acumatica ERP addresses any change in the project scope, detailing what needs to happen, how much it’ll cost, and when it can be expected to reach completion.
Acumatica ERP System Pricing
Pricing is based on three simple factors, and you can change at any time with no penalty:
Applications: based primarily on the number of applications you implement.
Projected Resource Consumption: Start with what you need now to handle, and adjust resource levels as you add users.
License: Choosing the right deployment option for your business. Click here for more details.
Free Trial: Yes
7. Oracle ERP– Known for its Extra feature
Oracle ERP is a completely cloud-based ERP software that helps manufacturing companies integrate data from multiple systems into one flexible and user-friendly system. The platform allows users to work with several industry-specific templates for plastic molding, plating, custom manufacturing, and other small market manufacturing groups.
This ERP software completed everything manufacturers needed to run their manufacturing activities. Many features allow users to see full information screens rather than item by item like other software.
Benefits of Oracle ERP in Manufacturing industries
Production scheduling: Oracle ERP helps manufacturing firms anticipate demand, stock resources, manage labor, and prioritize on-time production. It corrects production flow inefficiencies and optimizes the production process.
Quality Control: Quality Assurance is the most important point for a successful and effective ERP system, and that’s what Oracle ERP represents. It detects and removes defects from the system. It ties together all the production processes and quality functions, giving you deeper insights and greater efficiency to optimize manufacturing performance.
Inventory Optimization: The Oracle ERP system combines practices, strategies, and technologies for maintaining the right amount of inventory required to meet production, logistics, and customer demand to avoid common inventory issues such as stockouts, overstocking, and backorders.
Oracle ERP System Pricing
Flexible pricing options are available for almost any budget · Start a Trial. Try QT9 ERP free for 30 days – No credit card needed.
Base pricing plans start around ~$2,200 per concurrent user per year; a free trial is available; training and implementation are separate.
Free Trial: 30 days
8. Fishbowl ERP– best for inventory management
According to reports, Fishbowl has been QuickBooks’s top-selling manufacturing and warehouse management product since 2003. When it comes to inventory management, Fishbowl ERP is the best. Its powerful inventory control system gives manufacturing firms the exact tools needed to manage inventory more effectively while cutting out waste and extra costs.
It takes up where Quickbooks left off and provides a fuller range of functions that help track items, monitor stock levels, and manage common tasks like creating job orders, bill of materials, or item movement.
Benefits of Fishbowl ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Inventory Management: Fishbowl allows manufacturing companies to order, store, and sell inventory. It also analyzes the warehouse’s surplus stocks, rejections, and repairs and gives accounts of the incoming materials, outgoing materials, and the balance on hand.
Asset tracking: Fishbowl is an example of an ERP system that enables manufacturers to track items by lot number, serial number, expiration date, etc. Monitor asset levels in multiple locations and transfer between locations when necessary.
Work planning: Manufacturing firms use Fishbowl ERP to generate work orders for assembly, disassembly, replacement, repair, and other jobs. It also saves commonly used work orders and bills of materials for use in future projects.
Fishbowl ERP System Pricing
Starter price is $329 just for two users, hosting price is $299 per month, and $49. For each additional add-on per month. Click here for more details.
Free Plan: Yes
9. Epicor Prophet 21 ERP: Best for Distribution Management
Epicor Prophet 21 is the leading Cloud-based ERP solution for the distribution of goods. It works well for managing accounting and finance, human resources, customers, the supply chain, inventory, distribution, and production.
Powered by Microsoft Azure, Prophet 21 can run on browsers, tablets, and smartphones in iOS®, Android®, and Windows environments. It combines proven distribution expertise with a robust turnkey infrastructure built on a modern technology stack—including HTML5, Angular JS, .NET, and Microsoft SQL Server to improve agility, scalability, adaptability, and reliability.
Epicor Prophet 21 is an example of ERP software that gives your manufacturing team easier access to information from anywhere—in the warehouse, in the field, or working counter sales.
Benefits of Epicor Prophet 21 ERP in Manufacturing Industries
Distribution management: Epicor Prophet 21 ERP manages shipping and transportation logistics, helps forecast product demand, supports on-time, in-full (OTIF) requirements, tracks inventory levels, offers built-in EDI services, and enables you to calculate true landed costs.
Export/Import Management: With the help of Epicor Prophet 21 ERP, manufacturing companies will understand international marketing, trade, and the concept of foreign exchange. It manages the collection of items, transporting them, loading them on ship or cargo, and delivering them on time.
Reporting and Analytics: Reporting and analysis capabilities of Epicor ERP systems enable manufacturing companies to gain a deeper understanding of business operations and performance, enabling them to make more informed decisions. It also monitors liquidity, solvency, and efficiency to evaluate the financial position and stability.
Epicor Prophet 21 ERP System Pricing
ERP software price is divided into three tiers. The price also comes in per user and month. It offers more features for large-size businesses, including accounts for multiple users. The number of users must choose the given package depending on the price. Visit click.
Free Trial: Yes
10. SYSPRO ERP: Highly Customizable
SYSPRO’s ERP system has been built over 40 years by industry people, delivering last-mile, industry-specific functionality across Manufacturing industries. It services over 15,000 licensed companies in over 60 countries across six continents across three key regions, including the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.
SYSPRO is the best ERP software example that allows you to choose the deployment that best suits your unique manufacturing needs and budget, whether on-premise or in the cloud.
This allows the company to automate some of its tasks and activities without needing significant adjustments in the ERP system.
Benefits of Syspro ERP system in Manufacturing industries
Customizable Fields: If you need to capture some information, but there is no standard Field available for it, you can go to Syspro’s Customize Form and insert Custom Field in a form as per your requirement. It allows manufacturing firms to capture and convey uncommon information about their project’s status, process, phase, risk, or classification.
Operations management: Syspro enables companies to oversee and coordinate their operating system, minimizing disruptions, reducing downtime, and maximizing productivity. Furthermore, it allows them to maintain a competitive edge by meeting deadlines and delivering on time.
Supply Chain Management: With the help of Syspro ERP, manufacturing companies manages the flow of goods, data, and finances related to the product, from the procurement of raw materials to the delivery of the product at its final destination.
Syspro ERP System Pricing
Pricing is based on chosen modules, the number of users, deployment, and the quantity and quality of available information.
License/Subscription Cost,
Maintenance Cost, Customization cost, Data migration cost, and Renewal cost. Visit here.
Free Trial: Yes
Frequent Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Microsoft Dynamics an ERP system?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud and on-premises ERP software for managing the operational process in any manufacturing company. It comes embedded with business functions designed to assist the broadest possible audience, with functionality typically for accounting, production, supply chain, HR, and customer relationship management.
Is Workday an ERP system?
The answer is NO. Workday is an entirely new Enterprise Management Cloud-based software class designed specifically for human capital management and financial management applications.
Instead of moving data across systems and reconciling data, Workday uses machine learning to capture transactions, scan details, route and balance transactions across team members, recommend appropriate accounting treatment, and detect anomalies.
It also automates the creation of accounting, intercompany eliminating entries, and currency translation, making it easy for multinational organizations to run their business worldwide.
Is SAP an ERP system?
SAP ERP is an enterprise resource planning software developed by the German company SAP SE. SAP ERP integrates the main functions of an organization’s core business processes into a unified system. It helps manufacturing firms run their business, supporting automation and processes in finance, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain, services, procurement, and more.
Is Salesforce an ERP system?
Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, not an Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) system. It offers some business processes and operations functionalities, but its core focus is on managing customer interactions, sales, and marketing activities. That’s why Salesforce is primarily recognized as a CRM rather than an ERP.
Is Oracle an ERP system?
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP is a complete, modern, cloud ERP suite that provides manufacturing companies with advanced capabilities, such as AI, to automate manual processes that slow them down and analytics to react to real-time market shifts.
It is the perfect cloud ERP software example for manufacturing companies as it records fixed asset details, performs regular maintenance and repairs, ensures compliance with regulations, and assesses depreciation.
Is Netsuite an ERP system?
NetSuite is the No. 1 enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solution. NetSuite ERP offers a comprehensive range of functionalities known for every ERP, including supply chain and inventory management, order and billing, fulfillment, and financial planning modules. It also offers a fully integrated HCM tool and extensive financial management and accounting functionalities. It is a multicurrency and multi-language system that accommodates global client bases.
Final thoughts on the best ERP system for manufacturing 2024
There is enough evidence that manufacturing suffers from errors due to manual stock checks. This problem can only countered by a strong finance and inventory management ERP system such as Oracle, Netsuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, etc.
The declining growth rate of manufacturing companies is alarming. So, they should not waste time implementing a high-automation cloud ERP system like Netsuite.
Netsuite ERP speeds up routine tasks and provides organized methods for receiving, picking, putting away, and shipping goods. It also helps to reduce errors and improve employee satisfaction.
