A thorough and efficient process has ensured a strong foundation for East Metal A/S
How well does the ERP system work in your company? Is it up to speed with the developments - and does it cover the needs of your business and the market right now?
East Metal A/S had an outdated and unsupported ERP-system that could no longer support the growth of the business and the increasing demands for digitization. Users were struggling with long response times, unmanageable data islands in various formats and cumbersome information sharing. The consequences were a lack of strategic overview and transparency, cumbersome workflows as well as a labour intensive and slow bidding process, which meant that East Metal A/S often lost potential customers.
kaastrup|andersen has helped East Metal A/S with the initial work in the implementation of a new ERP-system. The work has consisted of uncovering and analysing processes, designing requirements specifications, handling and assessing supplier offers, contract negotiations with selected suppliers and preparing a comprehensive plan for the further work with the actual implementation of the chosen ERP-system.
Read the whole case about how the collaboration between East Metal A/S and kaastrup|andersen brought the results home.
Challenge
The supplier of East Metal A/S' ERP system no longer supported the solution, and all support and maintenance were now handled by a small, local IT company. This meant that the day-to-day operations were extremely vulnerable and that the opportunities for further development and improvements in the system were non-existent. The ERP-system became a bottleneck in many parts of the organization from sales, finance and production to service and support in the form of long response times, incoherent data, and lack of transparency - and it had major consequences in the bidding process in particular; the time spent on creating and calculating quotes was substantial, which meant that potential customers were lost.
At the same time, the aging ERP-system limited the strategic development of East Metal A/S, because the lack of digitization, transparency and coherence made it difficult for management to establish the right decision basis for e.g., increased focus on certain markets or optimizations in the production line.
Solution
After initial meetings with the project's sponsor, our team visited East Metal A/S' locations in Latvia. Here we held 15 workshops with participants from the entire value chain and carried out a thorough analysis and documentation of the many work processes. The focus was on the existing work processes of the users and the specific tasks that were solved in the daily work - without considering whether a new ERP system would be able to support these processes. The work was extensive, and the physical presence and the ability to familiarize oneself with the users' work gave good results and resulted in a detailed requirements specification.
The requirements specification was sent to a number of suppliers, and the tenders received were processed in kaastrup|andersen's assessment tool, which ensured a thorough and transparent overall assessment of the suitability of each tender. The assessment tool is designed based on our experience with supplier selection, and thus ensured that East Metal A/S got around all elements of the process. The structured approach to the evaluation of the offers provided a solid basis for the decision proposal that the team presented to East Metal A/S 'Board of Directors.
The team from kaastrup|andersen participated in the subsequent contract negotiations with the selected supplier to guarantee a thorough and comprehensive agreement. In parallel with the contract negotiations, plans were made for the actual implementation of the ERP-system in relation to both resource allocation, time consumption and division of responsibilities. The project plans also contains guidelines and frameworks for how the work should proceed: Here the central mindset is agile, so that the many stakeholders are involved on an ongoing basis with testing and implementation of partial deliveries, frequent meetings and ongoing expectations voting.
Result
East Metal A / S now has several concrete deliveries from kaastrup|andersen:
- Detailed requirements specification and a description of own business
- Nomination and presentation to the Board of Directors
- Financial perspective on the project
- Signed contract with supplier
- Master plan for the actual implementation process
The collaboration between East Metal A/S and kaastrup|andersen is based on a high degree of flexibility, decision-making ability, and an open, honest dialogue. More specifically, this has meant, among other things, that during busy periods we have been able to adjust staffing by involving our own, specialized consultants. The close collaboration also meant that the project sponsor from East Metal A/S always had deep insight into progress and status - and was thus able to continuously assess the need for increased or reduced resources from kaastrup|andersen.
East Metal A/S has high expectations for the benefits of the implementation of the chosen ERP system, including:
- better strategic decision-making basis based on transparency and overview
- faster and more efficient bidding process
- better control of data, including master data, customer data and production data
- more efficient work processes that make sense to employees
- long-term opportunities for further digitization
The implementation project is now underway. The consultants from kaastrup|andersen act as representatives of East Metal A/S in the collaboration with the supplier of the ERP system; the knowledge of East Metal A/S that the consultants have gained through the process is unique and ensures that the upcoming ERP system supports the business in the best possible way.
Does your ERP system need a health check? And are you agile and decisive? Then we are the right partner. We are ready with experience and expertise in all phases of the process, from needs clarification and all the way up to transfer to operation. Take a look at some of our other experiences with tendering processes (in Danish) - and also read more about our way of working team-based in kaastrup|andersen (in Danish). Contact Flemming Middelhede at fmj@kaastrupandersen.dk or +45 2018 0957 and have an inspiring talk about the possibilities for collaboration that takes your business to the next level.