Alere - WAC Solution Partners

Why Alere?

ALERE is ERP software designed to manage a company's financial, CRM, Manufacturing, Service, and Data Acquisition requirements. The initial and ongoing costs for ALERE are surprising affordable and well within the budget for even small operations to organizations with 200+ users.

ALERE provides all the tools that a company may need to manage their business from one vendor. In addition, it includes many solutions that are commonly thought of as "add-ons", such as Document Management, Bar Coding, CRM, Analytics, Commissions, Multi-Currency, Mobility, and on and on. The point is that a company can grow with ALERE and never need to move to another package.

ALERE was first released in 1990 as a manufacturing package. In 2001, ALERE Accounting was introduced. It is customer’s choice to run the system on in-house servers or have it hosted in the cloud.

ALERE is designed, first and foremost, with the user in mind. A great deal of effort is put into making complicated processes simple and straightforward while still providing advanced feature sets.

Case Study Alpha Measurement Solutions

Key Benefits

The all-encompassing nature of ALERE® is built around robust financials with a real-time general ledger supported by a depth of online traceability. No manual input is required for a period closing as it is automatic.

Each sales or purchase order has access to its complete life cycle, from quote to payment, accompanied by every related general ledger journal entry.

ALERE® has a manufacturing aspect that is so sophisticated that it does “synchronous manufacturing,” This means that it can tell you what list of materials to deliver to what work center for what job on what day and hour. The entire manufacturing process is transaction based for complete traceability.

Data collection and bar coding is integrated into the backbone of ALERE.

InTouch is a CRM application that places you in control of your relationships with prospects, clients and suppliers. It will log all of your interactions, keep a list of promised tasks, and manage your itineraries with real-time Microsoft® Outlook two-way links.

InTouch supports your marketing campaigns by executing and managing mass email campaigns and managing direct mail lists.

Software Functionality Summary

COMMON PRODUCT DESIGN

Real-time processing including general ledger and data collection
Automatic notifications based on defined event triggers and using native email capability
One-point entry of companies and all related information for prospects, customers, suppliers, etc. supported
Multicurrency throughout supporting exchange rates, exchange variances and rate history backed by graphs
Data archiving that provides continuous company history, with optional data reduction, for data mining
User-defined fields and notes allowing for easy customization for collecting company or industry-specific data
Screen and reporting engines that support printing, PDF creation, export to Excel, and emailing

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Manages prospects, customers and suppliers with emphasis on people rather than companies
Creates and tracks prospect quotes, which may be released as sales orders or invoices
Real-time links with Outlook and mobile devices

SALES

Online order-approval process supporting multiple authorization levels and automatic notifications
Distribution of payment to multiple invoices across company locations

PURCHASES

Encompasses quotes, purchase requisitions, purchase orders, blanket orders, recurring orders, return orders, payables and payments
Online order-approval process supporting multiple authorization levels and automatic notifications

INVENTORY

DRP (distribution resource planning) including automatic purchase order creation and sales order planning
Average, standard, LIFO and FIFO support
Inventory support for location, store and bin
Lot/serial number/trait capability with lot inspection and expiration serial numbers within lots
Bar coding and data acquisition for receiving/issuing/moving inventory

MANUFACTURING

Material requirements planning (MRP) is single pass through all BOM levels, with a choice of either time-phased data or monthly/weekly time periods, and can include pending (forecasted) orders
Concurrent work order forward/backward finite scheduling, including operation overlap and yield/scrap calculations
Graphically presented schedule of orders or work centers, with shrink/enlarge timeline scale, can be manually edited
Factory loads by order, item, customer or work center available using 3-D graphics
Advanced synchronous manufacturing techniques tie material planning to production planning, which supports real-world JIT
BOM revisions with active/inactive dates
Disassembly and return to stock, with item level editing, for BOMs, work orders and sales order line items, and return orders
Assemble/build/maintenance/rework type work orders
Preventative maintenance incorporated into material planning and scheduling
Analysis of machine downtime
Routing creation supported by library of operation steps, separate setup/operation times and machine centers
Work center capacities with efficiencies/alternates/online dates
Fixed and variable overhead costs applied using six costing methods with general ledger support
Rolled up BOM/route/overhead costing by indented level and total, including automatic updating of inventory standard and actual costs, and general ledger adjustments

GENERAL LEDGER

Automatic period closings with real-time postings provides up-to-date, on-demand reporting
Up to 99 definable periods
Alphanumeric six-segment chart of accounts up to a total of 24 characters wide and using TreeVision (an Explorer-like graphical interface) to create, navigate and drill down
Multi-company consolidation
Budgeting optionally integrated with Excel

DATA ACQUISITION

Scanning is done in real time and is interactive with the operator through a “prompt” process
Uses wedge scanners or scanners running under terminal services

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Seamless data mining of current and archived data combined into one report automatically
Analytics for customer/supplier/item/inventory movement/general ledger all supported by 3D graphical analysis
Geographic “hotspot” plotting for sales/companies/distance
Sales analysis including configuration data mining

MOBILITY

Management of mobile devices through the Cloud
Sales Call Sheet App for smartphone or tablet (Android or Apple), providing timely sales information available to sales force
Login options that permit access to filtered contact and sales data based on user permissions