Beyond a doubt

One area where there has been some user resistance is procurement, which has been converted from a ponderous, "nightmare" manual ordering system into a fully electronic procurement system. Linked in with the rest of the information in Vantage, the system has been able to automate processes such as purchase order generation based on current manufacturing consumption, and forecasting based on current outputs.

Ribbons concedes that getting all the company's users to embrace the new system has been "a challenge", but believes most have moved past their initial hesitance to move into an all-online workflow. More than 10,000 online Vantage help pages, bolstered with extensive, Bedford-created business documentation, provide an invaluable resource to help employees work through unexpected problems.

By guiding users through the new system and the company's new processes, the implementation team was able to direct the project with a gentle but firm hand. This philosophy has included efforts to stop users blaming the system when something goes wrong; with a complete audit trail now available for each transaction recorded in the Vantage system, investigations into data discrepancies usually point the finger elsewhere.

"The Vantage system provides an excellent audit trail of all the transactions we conduct, and that's something we didn't have with the old system," Ribbons says. "If users came to us with a query, it was almost impossible to prove what had actually happened. With the new system, we can trace it right back - and in probably 98 percent of the issues that have been raised with us, they're not system-related issues but something the user has done."

Belief in the output of the new system reflects the extent of the change that the Epicor implementation has wrought at Bedford Industries. With its uniform database and ERP system now well and truly established, the process improvements that Ribbons' team has wrought are continuing to deliver new benefits as users find new ways to exploit the system's capabilities.

Summary

Company: Bedford Industries
Industry: Manufacturing, service provision
Size: 150/170 employees managing 600/800 people with disabilities
Challenge: Ageing information system couldn't integrate four different business divisions, forcing employees to build proprietary and often inaccurate data models.