Blog

Inventory numbers don’t quite match. An order gets entered twice because one program doesn’t talk to another. Purchasing decisions depend on a spreadsheet or what someone remembers. And simple questions about margins, cash flow, or what’s actually on the shelf take more digging than they should.

When work piles up, most leaders do what they think good leaders are supposed to do: they push harder, jump in to fix things, stay later, and tell their teams to hang on, just a little longer. I understand that instinct. It usually comes from a place of care, not control. But after years of working with business owners and management teams through high-pressure seasons, I’ve learned something ...

At Bontrager Welding & Steel, growth came easier than expected. Within a few short years, Lonnie Bontrager went from working as a young, adolescent farm hand where he learned some hands-on welding skills, to running a business that distributes steel fencing products to cattle farms across the country. This company manufactures and distributes pipe, panels, gates, and fencing components, both ...

When choosing operational software like an ERP it is crucial to find a system that will flex and change with you over the years. Cedar Crest Equipment, a leading provider of dairy farm equipment in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, has been steadily growing since its founding in 1989. As they expanded their operations to multiple locations and increased their product offerings, they realized ...

Turtle Mountain Seed Company had the numbers. What they did not always have was the time to use them.

When Dutch Country Cheese started mapping out the next stage of their growth, they knew they needed more than spreadsheets and QuickBooks to carry the load.

Field service needs to be fast, reliable, and thorough. With multiple service technicians out in the field and jobs constantly coming in, keeping track of it all can get messy fast. For AW Machinery, that was the reality. “Everything was being tracked on a spreadsheet, and it was easy for things to get missed or duplicated,” said Isaac. “It wasn’t a bad system—it just wasn’t built for where we ...

The Caliber Metal team used to manage everything through QuickBooks and Excel. It worked fine when they were small, but as soon as they started building a larger customer base, cracks began to show.

In the early 1980s, Marvin Sensenig dismantled the engine of his lawn mower atop his kitchen table, seeking to understand the intricacies of how it works and how to keep it running at peak performance. A couple years later he turned his “hobby” into an official side business: Sensenig’s Repair and Sales. As more and more people heard about Sensenig’s, it became Marvin’s full-time job.

Donald Sauder serves as a CPA and financial consultant for all sorts of small businesses. His clients work in manufacturing, steel fabrication, wholesale and retail distribution, construction, and more. Most of these small businesses start with QuickBooks or another accounting software to manage their books and keep track of assets, liabilities, expenses, and revenue. But for many of Donald’s ...

For the team at e-Bikes of Holmes County, EBMS (Koble's ERP Platform) has long been the backbone of their operations. It holds everything they need to know about inventory, sales, customers, and more. But pulling all that data together in a way that made sense—especially when it came time to make buying or marketing decisions—could be time-consuming.

Chance Kamp kept getting asked about auto window tinting. Though focused on tinting building windows commercially, the constant questions about car windows made him realize he had to learn automotive tinting, too. Automotive window tinting turned into customers asking about car steps. Or grill guards. Chance asked a local business to wholesale parts to him, they agreed, and Allout Offroad was ...