Manufacturing & Industrials
A manufacturer's margin is often decided where the monthly report cannot see it: a quote priced on last year's material cost, an order keyed in twice, a job costed after it has shipped. We connect the ERP, sales and finance data behind those decisions and automate the reporting. We have not yet published an engagement in this sector.
Discuss this with usMarket context
UK manufacturing output grew by 0.5% in the three months to July 2026 compared with the three months to April 2026, with 7 of the 13 subsectors increasing.
Among EU manufacturing enterprises using AI in 2025, the most common purposes were marketing or sales (30.41%) and the organization of business administration processes or management (27.05%).
Source: Eurostat, Use of artificial intelligence in enterprises (2025 data)
In many mid-sized manufacturers, product cost, selling price and delivery date are held in different systems, so margin by customer or product line is worked out by hand, if at all.
Business challenges
01
Quotes priced on out-of-date costs
When material and energy costs move faster than the price list, quotes built from a spreadsheet of standard costs can win work that loses money. The loss shows up months later, once actual job costs are reconciled, if anyone reconciles them.
02
Orders keyed in more than once
Orders arriving by email, EDI and distributor portals are often re-entered into the ERP by hand. Each re-entry is a chance for a wrong part number, price or delivery date, and few businesses count how often it happens.
03
Month-end packs assembled from exports
Finance exports from the ERP, the CRM and the production system, then reconciles them in spreadsheets. By the time the pack reaches the board, the next month's prices and production plan are already set.
04
Three versions of demand
A manufacturer selling direct, through distributors and online sees demand in three places. Sales targets, production plans and stock decisions end up resting on whichever figure each team trusts.
Where the opportunity sits
Margin by product, customer and channel
Joining ERP cost data to sales records gives contribution margin per product line, customer and channel, refreshed on a schedule instead of rebuilt for each board meeting.
Order intake without re-keying
Order capture validated against the price list and part master, with exceptions routed to a named person, removes manual re-entry and records how often an order needed correcting.
Quotes that keep their cost basis
A quoting tool that reads current material and labor rates and stores the cost basis of every quote lets the commercial team see which quotes made money once the job is costed.
How we approach it
We start read-only with the systems that hold orders, costs and invoices: usually the ERP, the CRM or sales ledger, and the spreadsheets that sit between them. We trace how a customer order becomes a production job and then an invoice, and note every point where a figure is re-entered or adjusted by hand. Findings become a prioritized task list, each item with an owner and an acceptance check. If the client wants us to build, the same team delivers the data pipelines, reports and automations, documents what each one reads and writes, and leaves them in the client's own accounts. Shop-floor control systems, machine safety, engineering design and product certification are outside our scope.
How our experience is evidenced
No anonymised engagement in manufacturing or industrials is published. This page describes our approach and the capabilities we would apply: data integration, management reporting, process automation and commercial systems, as we use them in other sectors.
Questions executives ask
Do you have manufacturing case studies?
No. We have not published an anonymised engagement in manufacturing. The capabilities on this page are ones we use in other sectors, and a proposal would say which parts of the work we have done before and which would be new.
Will you replace our ERP?
Not by default. Most of the problems described here sit between systems, so we start with how data moves between the ERP, the sales ledger and the spreadsheets around them. If a platform change is justified, we write down the reasons, the migration plan and the record counts that would show nothing was lost.
Do you work on production lines or machine control systems?
No. We work on commercial, financial and operational data and the software around it. Shop-floor control systems, machine safety, quality certification and engineering design stay with specializts in those fields.
How would you show whether the work helped?
Each task carries an acceptance check agreed before work starts, such as the share of orders entered without correction or the number of working days to close the month. We report the measured figure, and say so when there is not yet enough data to read.
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