CREST ERP

ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning software, is a program that helps businesses effectively plan and manage their resources and processes. In organizations worldwide, ERP software is used to simplify and automate organizational activities such as project management, supply chain management, procurement, customer relationship management, and risk management. 

ERPs are widely used by organizations to take care of their manufacturing, supply chain, trading, sales, finances, and human capital. This helps businesses improve efficiency, streamline key processes, manage resources, and gain greater visibility. Statistics suggest that 95% of businesses that have implemented ERP into their organizations have witnessed improvement in their businesses process, which speaks of their effectiveness.

Today, many ERP tools are readily available for businesses to choose from. They can be generic or specialized based on your business needs and can be cloud-based or on-premise solutions, depending on your requirements. 

CREST ERP is one such solution specifically designed keeping in mind the needs of manufacturing and trading industries. This ERP software has been used by several leading brands and has won multiple awards for Customer’s Choice ERP, User Experience, Best Value, and Top 20 most popular ERP providers in India. 

Let’s find out what makes CREST ERP work well for businesses and how it helps them perform better.

Introduction to CREST ERP

CREST by Xmplar is a unique ERP solution created for the trading and manufacturing industry that helps them manage, track, and streamline multiple business operations and functions. This ERP solution can be deployed over the cloud for easier access to business functions and better data security and control.

CREST is one of the few notable ERPs with built-in integrated modules for managing Point of Sale (POS) and E-commerce functions, which are extremely useful for corporations dealing with trading and manufacturing verticals. You can have all data related to your Products, Prices, Price rules, Promo Rules, Vendors, Leads, and Clients stored within the database, which can be used directly for transactions. Additionally, it is integrated with Clear Tax, which takes care of Online Tax Compliance and ensures all local and government tax calculations are done from the system itself, saving your organization much time. 

How CREST ERP helps organizations?

CREST fosters better team collaboration and performance through its HR, Finance, and CRM functions. It features an easy-to-use user interface and mobile application. It boasts of an integrated ChatBot system that assists users in going to a specific function or gaining visibility of a particular business function/vertical from anywhere. CREST not only helps you manage your inventory, procurement, and warehouses, but it also allows you to monitor your sales teams, projects, workflow, maintenance, business transactions, and sales forecasting. Thus, all business operations, from procurement to the final sales, can be managed from a central platform using CREST. 

CREST helps managers within an organization automate the goods procurement and purchase approval processes based on their history and performance. Quotes for a particular product can be requested simultaneously from multiple suppliers, and the final supplier can be awarded a task and paid from within the system itself. It also facilitates real-time financial, asset, and stock tracking, making it a must-have for any manufacturing business.

Key Modules in CREST 

CREST contains core manufacturing and general organizational modules that help an organization manage its core and additional tasks simultaneously. You can view all sales, stocks, branches, and production data from a single dashboard based on organizational hierarchy and generate a multitude of reports based on your needs.

Here are a few key modules that take care of core business tasks:

1. Production Management

CREST offers organizations multiple options to manage their production and manufacturing tasks. Users can create standard or special production orders and allow for manual or backflush of components based on the Bill of Materials. The system allows real-time updating of stocks and financial accounts as components get issued for Production Orders.

This module also has a good receipt and issue control feature that helps issue materials manually or based on the receipt of goods. You can also have better material and capacity planning and scheduling of overall operations through the MRP functionality.

2. Procurement Management

This module has several functionalities for smoother procurement by streamlining the agreement process according to business needs. You can gain 360-degree visibility of your supplier relationships, performance, and risks and insights about the spending performance and identify saving opportunities. 

This module offers several features that help you streamline and simplify the purchase approval mechanism, source-to-contract process, and overall procurement process.

3. Project Management

One of the key modules of CREST, this section contains several tools for integrated project planning and tracking. This module ensures that you have complete control over your project issues and changes, providing real-time project status and issue management functionalities. This module contains self-service functions according to organizational hierarchy so that tasks can be added and assigned to specific teams/individuals and their progress can be measured by their manager.

By enabling better visibility into project budgets and determining their overall financial health, this module helps reduce losses and optimise resource utilization for improved profitability.

4. Inventory Management

This module helps in the real-time tracking of inventory and stock movement, thereby improving operational efficiency and warehouse optimization. Using this section, you can standardize both your technical and non-technical assets and effectively track them as they move across locations.

5. Sales and CRM

This module is immensely helpful for companies in eliminating duplication of efforts and increasing the efficiency of their ordering, packing, shipment, and sales invoicing processes. There are powerful reporting and control tools as well as alerts that help you shorten the order-to-cash cycle and manage the entire sales process from a single interface. You can also ensure accurate and effective pricing and margin maintenance through this module.

The CRM module helps you in both creating and tracking leads and helps you channel your resources to convert them. You can track all activities against a specific lead by your sales team and also get to know when they have been converted. Moreover, you can manage events and campaigns through this section.

6. Financial Management

This module in CREST comprises a flexible Automatic Accounting Schedule (AAS) feature that greatly simplifies the accounting process. You can configure multiple tenants under your organization and set up Multiple Legal Entities with their own currency and calendar. The system streamlines the invoicing and payment process by generating automatic account transactions.

CREST also provides cash and bank accounting through this module, allowing room to add complex statutory requirements. Additionally, it helps in better asset tracking and management using geolocation and calculates the depreciation for assets.

7. Human Resource Management

CREST houses a dedicated module for managing employees and carrying out daily HR activities. Here, you can maintain and manage all information about employees and their life cycles within your organization. You can view their basic profile, qualification, training details, assignments, leaves, etc.

You can also manage, track, and approve leaves based on hierarchy and track assets assigned to a particular individual.

8. E-commerce Management

This module helps you create and manage product catalogues and categorize products based on their features and attributes. You can also categorize products into Standard, Variants, and Configurable goods. The system also allows you to search and sort each facility to find products with specific attributes.

CREST also has a provision to set up multiple pricing options like list price, promotional price, geographical pricing, and pricing for specific customer groups. You can also set up promotional price rules and promotional guidelines. Additionally, it features a user-friendly checkout, payment, shipping, order tracking, and order history viewing functionality. However, the best thing is that the e-commerce platform integrates seamlessly with the sales and inventory module of core ERP.

9. Vendor & Customer Portals

CREST also has a Vendor portal that gives a comprehensive view to the vendors about the inventory the company holds and the dues from the company. CREST’s Customer portal enables customers to view the orders placed by them along with the delivery status, view the stock position for a specific item, and the Payment details (payments made by the customer to the company).

10. AI ChatBot

One of the unique features of this ERP software is that it comes with a ChatBot powered by artificial intelligence. CREST’s ChatBot Creya is a self-service bot that helps you have all your knowledge at your fingertips. Creya can be controlled by voice commands and help you get great insights in seconds. It can predict texts and speech and guide you in doing tasks and pulling out reports easily from the system.

11. Sales Force Automation (SFA)

This module is hugely beneficial for tracking sales force efficiency and improving productivity. It contains the following features: 

• Order Management: This feature provides a simple and precise order creation process with exhaustive product and price selection options. You can also edit orders and cancel the products at your convenience. This sub-module also has a flexible wild card search option.

• Lead Management: This functionality is useful for capturing leads and adding lead information to the database. There is also a lead approval process based on organizational hierarchy and the option to capture a single order for a lead.
• Activity Management (DAR): This section helps you to record and track the activities performed by each salesperson. Features like accurate time logging and activity approval process make it very useful for organizations with huge salesforces.
• Sales targets: This section facilitates a target-driven sales process by helping you assign flexible targets to sales agents and allows high-level analysis of target achievements. 
• Permanent Journey Planner: This section allows you to allocate work to employees and help them plan their work journeys. After salespersons add their journey plan for a particular period, the person they report to can approve their plans. This ensures that there is no duplication and that salespersons can work according to the plan approved.

The above features can make it much easier for an organization to manage and streamline its business operations and functions. However, we got in touch with Xmplar, the creators of CREST and they have plans to add more features and improve it even further! 

New Features to Be Added – October’20 Updates 

Effective October 31st, 2020, CREST will be adding the following features to its long list of utilities: 

• Configurable Dashboards
• The configurable Approval Workflow module
•  API – Exposing all Services as APIs to enable easier integration & extending the product using other technologies
• WhatsApp Integration
• Soler Integration for Enterprise Search
• Integration of the BIRT Reporting tool
• Service & Warranty management system  

Final Words

CREST ERP has an exhaustive list of features that come together to ensure organizational success by improving process efficiency. This ERP helps organizations manage their financial transactions, sales, purchases, clients, inventory, assets, projects, maintenance, and employees through a single intuitive portal.

Easy to use, scalable and flexible, CREST is the ideal choice for manufacturing and trading organizations of all sizes. Considering its services, the pricing is economical and can be customized too. Also, CREST offers a free trial and is easy to integrate with existing systems. There’s no doubt that CREST is a smart solution that can help businesses gain a competitive advantage and improve bottom-line results exponentially!

You can learn more about CREST ERP from its website or SoftwareSuggest Product Profile Page.