Intelligent Purchasing

Automate and reduce manual processes

Intelligent Purchasing from Blue Sky ERP brings together several features which help to automate and reduce manual processes within a Purchasing Department using Epicor ERP. These features include:

Intelligent PO Suggestions

Condenses down both New and Change PO suggestions into a more meaningful list of suggested actions. The intelligent PO suggestions do not replace the existing Epicor MRP logic, instead, new or change PO suggestions are processed through a secondary logic which then grades each suggestion in terms of a weighted priority to action taking into consideration both actual or calculated forecast demand. Thresholds can also be set in terms of order value or volume to determine whether a postponement or expedition should be actioned. Suggestions are then presented to the buyer with the most important / urgent suggestions placed first.

Automated Supplier Alerts

Provides the ability to follow up suppliers with automated emails for supplier acknowledgements and purchase overdues before you have too. Receive emailed responses back from the supplier and action accordingly.

Enhanced Time-Phase Display

The Time Phase enquiry screen is already a rich screen in terms of the information on display. We enhance this screen further by displaying additional customisation attributes within the time phase grid such as including the Customer or Supplier name, order requested and acknowledged dates. Additionally, we display the calculated part usages based upon 1, 3, 6 and 12 month usages. The part usages are automatically calculated on a nightly schedule.

Forecast Job Material Usage

Forecasting of job material usage parts are not relieved within the base Epicor product and you therefore stand the risk of over inflating demand. The intelligent purchasing solution relieves actual demand from the forecast which is placed within the forecast window. Forecasts for job materials can be entered as customer-specific where manufacturing jobs are linked directly to a sales order.

Automated Forecasting

Automated forecasting within Intelligent Purchasing leverages the historical data already stored in your ERP system including sales orders, inventory levels, job material consumption, and purchasing parameters in order to predict future demand.

Forecasts can be entered for saleable part, component parts or raw materials. Forecasts parameters can be setup at the Site, Part Class, and Part level whereby parts can be associated to varying forecasting methods and varying forecast periods. The forecasts are calculated using BAQs allowing you to modify and apply your own forecasting logic. Where a new part record has been setup to replace an existing, you can also use substitute part numbers in order to determine a parts prior usage history.