Exclusive: ECI Software Solutions sets ERP 'activation' strategy

ECI Software Solutions is gearing up for a renewed push into the Australian manufacturing market, enhancing its ERP portfolio with AI-driven capabilities and a stronger focus on industry-specific solutions. Paul Farrell, Senior Vice President of Product Management at ECI Software Solutions, is in Melbourne this week meeting staff and customers as part of a wider shift in how enterprise resource planning systems are deployed and used.

The US-based company serves 25,000 customers worldwide, including around 14,000 in manufacturing and several hundred in Australia.

Farrell says manufacturers are increasingly seeking faster returns on ERP investments, greater practical utility from their systems, and robust security and compliance features to protect critical business data.

Activation model

"ERP is the terrible history of people buying this much and then they're using 40% of what they've purchased and never really getting the benefits from it," said Farrell.

He argued that traditional ERP rollouts have been overly focused on lengthy implementation cycles, configuration and staged deployment, often leaving large portions of functionality untouched.

"I think more activation rather than implementation. If our customer is a job shop, or they're a mixed mode manufacturer, or their batch process business, and they know their business, when they switch on our software, it should just work, and they should understand it and be able to utilise everything that's in it, rather than someone have to train them, implement them, spend months configuring."

Farrell said ECI is prioritising what he calls a "straight line of usage", enabling customers to switch on additional functionality incrementally, without reworking core systems or activating large, unnecessary modules.

"As they require more, they can switch on more," he said.

He added that modern ERP systems must be designed for end users, not just administrators. "The next generation of ERP solution is more about that activation. It's more about engaging with the people that are actually using the functionality and enabling them to work out how they can quickly and easily use new features."

Industry focus

ECI differentiates itself, Farrell said, by concentrating on specific manufacturing segments rather than offering a broad, horizontal ERP platform.

"We are focused on key industries. We're not providing a horizontal ERP solution," said Farrell.

The company targets job shops, discrete and mixed-mode manufacturers, and selected batch process sectors such as food and beverage. It also tailors products by company size, arguing that smaller manufacturers often require greater automation rather than fewer features.

"In a small company, one person might be doing 10 things, and you need an experience that enables them to consume that, while in a larger business, you might have 10 people doing one job," he said.

Farrell rejected the notion that simplifying ERP means stripping out functionality.

"Simple is not easy," he said. "Just because it's simpler to consume, doesn't mean it's simple to write. It can be very, very difficult."

He likened feature-heavy software to a complex television remote control. "When you use a remote control, you basically use probably five buttons. So it'd be far better to have a remote control with just five buttons that were the easiest things to use."

The company's JobBOSS² product, aimed at small and emerging manufacturers, reflects that approach, combining what Farrell described as sophisticated technology with a tightly defined feature set to support rapid deployment and return on investment.

AI integration

Farrell said artificial intelligence is accelerating the shift away from transaction-only ERP systems towards platforms that handle unstructured and machine-generated data.

"So much of that is unstructured data and generative AI is great at looking at a document and being able to transform that into a structured document you can then do something in ERP," he said.

He identified two near-term areas of impact: automating the ingestion of emails, drawings and documents into structured ERP records; and using AI tools to analyse reports and recommend operational improvements.

"If you can capture that information right first time as a manufacturer, and everything's perfect, then that process as you manufacture, do your quality checking, you ship it, that is all going to go a lot more smoothly," he said.

Within job shops, where bespoke quoting can constrain capacity, AI-driven automation could significantly increase throughput.

"One of the biggest capacity constraints in a job shop is dealing with requests for quotes, where someone needs to estimate it, understand the cost, because you're making unique products that your customers want," said Farrell. "If all of a sudden, you can increase the volume that you can respond to, then you're going to be able to drive more throughput through the business."

ECI has already introduced AI tools including an "AI BOM builder", designed to extract bill-of-materials data directly from customer drawings.

"They can take a drawing from their customer, they just drag it into the product and it builds a bill of material for them accurately," he said.

However, Farrell cautioned manufacturers against adopting AI for its own sake. "They have to be careful they don't get suckered into the academic side of AI, where it's interesting but it's not driving any practical value."

Changing landscape

Farrell predicted mounting pressure on large, horizontal ERP providers that continue to rely on heavily customised deployments.

"I think companies that are providing software that have a traditional implementation focus, where you go and configure the product for that particular customer's implementation, I think they will struggle," he said.

He pointed to shifts in other parts of the technology industry as evidence that dominant positions can erode if platforms fail to evolve with new delivery models.

For ECI, the focus over the next year will include expanded real-time machine and device integration, alongside deeper synthesis of ERP data with industrial IoT signals.

"We're going to be releasing a lot this year about real time machine integration, real time device integration, and synthesising that together with all of your rich ERP data," said Farrell. "We'll be delivering out to our customers what we would describe as real, practical AI that's going to make a difference to them in their industries."