An order arrives and somebody types it into the CRM. Then somebody types it into the ERP. Production gets written on paper at the machine and keyed in at the end of the shift, shipping enters it again to print a label, and accounting enters it one more time to invoice. Norsoft builds the connections that make that happen once. We are a custom software firm in Mankato, Minnesota, working with manufacturers and distributors since 1987.

The cost is not the typing

Retyping is the visible part, and it is expensive enough. The real cost is that every one of those handoffs is a chance for the numbers to drift apart, and once they do, nobody can say which system is right. Somebody quotes from stale pricing. A shipment goes out against inventory that was already committed. The month-end close turns into an argument about whose spreadsheet is correct.

Then the workarounds arrive. A spreadsheet that reconciles two systems, maintained by one person. A standing Monday meeting to compare reports. Those are duct tape over a plumbing problem, and they quietly become somebody's whole job.

What we connect

We build the links between the ERP you already run and the systems around it: the CRM or wherever orders originate, accounting, e-commerce or your customer ordering channel, shipping and tracking, and the shop floor where production is actually recorded. Data moves in one direction with one system owning each fact, so there is always an answer to which number is right.

Older systems are part of this work rather than an obstacle to it. Plenty of ERPs in daily use have no modern way to connect, and there is almost always a path in through the database, an export, or a file drop, done carefully and with a way to roll back. We would rather connect the system you have than tell you the first step is replacing it.

If the honest answer is that the ERP itself has reached the end of its life, we will say so, and that is a different piece of work we also do, in stages, without stopping production.

Real work

An agriculture company whose divisions each had their own version of the same customer. We unified them behind a single customer record so the whole company could finally see one account instead of four. Read the case study.

A plastics manufacturer across three production lines. Connecting the front office to the floor took downtime down by more than 30%, and the clean records that resulted helped the owners at sale. Read the case study.

This is probably you if

Tell us which systems you run and where the same number gets entered twice. We will tell you what can be connected and in what order. Reach out here or call (507) 388-4748.