The manufacturing landscape is churning. While supply chain disruptions aren’t entirely new, their sheer intensity and unpredictability have thrown traditional operational models into disarray. Input costs fluctuate wildly, tariffs add complexity, and a persistent labor shortage looms, threatening growth even as companies explore reshoring initiatives. Manufacturers are desperately seeking stability, efficiency, and foresight in this turbulent environment.
“What’s new is that you cannot predict your input costs, which is a huge portion of any kind of manufacturing profitability,” Raj Badarinath, Chief Product & Marketing Officer at Rootstock, tells ERP Today.
He notes that while policy and politics are factors beyond direct control, technology offers tangible solutions. “As a modern ERP, we are absolutely keeping our eyes on how can we help manufacturers to track landing costs, manage planning and budgeting, and find alternate local suppliers that bring costs back in line,” he says.
Born in the Cloud, Built for Resilience
A core tenet of Rootstock’s approach is its cloud-native architecture. Unlike many legacy ERP systems retrofitted for the cloud, Rootstock was designed from the ground up on the Salesforce platform. Badarinath argues that this distinction is crucial for agility and resilience.
He shares a stark example: The warehouse of one of Rootstock’s customers, a mid-sized chemical manufacturer, shockingly caught fire during ERP implementation, and everything burned down. While the physical loss was significant, their software transformation remained largely unscathed. “Because they were going with Rootstock, which is cloud-based, they were able to recover with the software transformation that they were going through almost immediately,” Badarinath recalls. “They could use distribution resource planning (DRP) to get back on track within days of the fire.” This real-world crisis highlights that cloud infrastructure is not just a modern trend but a vital component of business continuity.
Being built on the Salesforce platform also provides Rootstock with inherent advantages in configurability and usability. “If anybody’s used Salesforce, guess what? Rootstock ERP is that easy to use,” Badarinath asserts, contrasting it with older systems whose interfaces often resemble outdated technology.
Cutting Through Complexity
In a crowded ERP market, Rootstock differentiates itself with a clear philosophy: unify critical business signals on a single platform. “If you want to bring together demand, supply, and capacity in one platform, it is important that, from an ERP standpoint, all of these are on the same cloud,” Badarinath states. The goal is to minimize complex and failure-prone integrations.
Rootstock calls this unified approach the “Signal Chain.” He explains that manufacturers gain a seamless front-office-to-back-office view by keeping CRM (demand source, often Salesforce itself), ERP (supply and capacity management), and financials on the same platform. Crucially, this integration “sets the foundation for clean, consistent data, which can drive AI,” he says.
Recognizing that manufacturing ERP can be inherently complex, Rootstock is heavily investing in user experience (UX), with new features announced during its Spring ’25 release. “Manufacturing ERP is complex because there hasn’t been a real investment in simplification. But we believe it can be simplified,” Badarinath says, noting that the aim is an intuitive design where a user knows exactly what they are doing with a few clicks.
AI That Matters for Manufacturing
“Rootstock’s annual survey has found that “82% of manufacturers are going to be investing in AI technology in some way,” notes Badarinath. The company is channeling this demand into its “AIRS” (AI from Rootstock) initiative, built upon Salesforce’s Agentforce platform.
In contrast to generic AI, AIRS focuses on specific, high-value manufacturing use cases through dedicated AI agents. “Why not have an agent that actually looks at your entire data set and can determine how to help the business in a much more active way?” Badarinath explains, referencing a potential Tariff Agent that is built into AIRS for manufacturers—other planned agents target engineering, planning, production, and finance.
According to Badarinath, the company’s vision for AIRS incorporates three key concepts:
- Atomic: Modular, composable ERP functions
- Touchless: Voice-based, conversational interaction using large language models (LLMs)
- Agentic: Autonomous, intelligent agents providing foresight and decision support
Together, these concepts “create a touchless ERP paradigm where you can talk to your ERP, and you don’t necessarily need to click on things,” he suggests.
Bridging the Skills Gap with Technology
Perhaps one of the most pressing challenges is the manufacturing labor shortage—“The Evergreen challenge,” as Badarinath calls it, with potentially 2.1 million jobs unfilled. Compounding this is the generational skills gap between experienced plant veterans and tech-savvy newcomers. Badarinath notes that AI, within the Rootstock framework, offers a bridge.
“It’ll be tough to do [reshoring and bridging the gap] without AI,” Badarinath states plainly. With this in mind. Rootstock aims to build AI capabilities that help manufacturers do more with less, capturing veteran knowledge in machine learning models and using AI co-pilots and agents to guide the new workforce. “We want to have the idea of having a conversation with your ERP versus having to have a traditional training process,” he concludes, seeing conversational AI as key to faster onboarding and upskilling.
Finally, by focusing on resilience, integration, intuitive design, and targeted AI, Rootstock aims to equip discrete and project-based manufacturers to not only survive the current volatility but also build a more intelligent, agile, and future-proof operation.
What This Means for ERP Insiders
Market trends favor industry-specific cloud ERPs like Rootstock. Manufacturing is the largest adopter of ERP systems, representing 47% of the market, according to industry reports. Recent studies also indicate that around 65% of organizations opt for cloud-based ERP, with some projections anticipating over 85% of organizations may adopt a cloud-first strategy. Within the cloud, SaaS is a preferred model, and there’s growing demand for industry-specific cloud platforms – with over half of enterprise businesses forecast to rely on these industry clouds by 2028. Rootstock’s focus on complex discrete manufacturers, particularly in verticals like Industrial Equipment & Machinery, High-Tech, Aerospace & Defense, Medical Devices, and project-based environments aligns with these developments. Manufacturers in these sectors are increasingly choosing cloud ERPs built for their specific needs by evaluating vendors based on their vertical expertise and ability to deliver relevant functionality, minimizing customization and leveraging platform strengths like Rootstock’s use of Salesforce.
Ongoing geopolitical uncertainty means tariffs continue to impact input costs. Manufacturers should expect their ERP providers to offer robust tools for accurate landed cost calculation, real-time visibility, scenario planning, and potentially AI-driven alternative sourcing suggestions to overcome these challenges. When considering a hybrid cloud strategy, key decision criteria must include identifying which applications gain most from cloud versus on-prem, ensuring seamless data integration and workflow orchestration between environments, evaluating security protocols across boundaries, and understanding the total cost of ownership, including managing the hybrid complexity. An organization’s ERP strategy must directly address tariff volatility with advanced cost tracking and supply chain visibility tools.
Focus on quantifiable results and futureproofing with AI and integration. Rootstock customers like Matouk, Unionwear and Boston Dynamics have reported specific results such as 98% improvements in inventory accuracy, a 15% increase in on-time delivery rates, and streamlined processes like quote-to-cash, respectively. These examples show that manufacturers must evaluate ERP solutions not just on current features but on their ability to deliver measurable business improvements and their vision for leveraging AI and seamless data integration to address future challenges like labor shortages and increasing operational complexity.
