You've met people like Sally. She knows exactly where that customer's order is on the shop floor, who is working on it right now, and just how much profit the company is going to make on it. When a new order comes in, Sally can gaze around the facility, calculate how fast the current jobs can be finished and where the next one can be fitted in, tell you whether the price the customer is asking for is feasible, and remind you about the problems that came up last time a similar job arose.

What if everyone in the company had that kind of knowledge available, all the time?

A customer calls, and everyone who answers the phone -- not just Sally -- can see where the order is. The likely outcome of a change can be forecast, approvals can be arranged quickly, and communication of the changes goes to everyone whose work is affected by it.

This is the beauty of ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning. For manufacturers, combining Visual Manufacturing (VMFG) with Microsoft Dynamics CRM brings everything...