ELE Advanced Technologies goes 21st Century with Epicor ERP

Martin Harrison, financial director at the company – which manufactures highly engineered components for niche applications around power generation, aerospace and the automotive sector – concedes that, while it had bought into accounting systems, production has been running on spreadsheets. He accepts that the approach can lead to inaccuracies between spreadsheets and create silos of information that hamper efficiency and flexibility. "We had to make a change that would give us the robust system we needed to drive the business forward," comments Harrison. "Accurate and timely delivery of financial information is critical to any business. To achieve this through several concurrent spreadsheets can most definitely lead to operational inefficiencies." For him, one of the biggest improvements to come from Epicor will be enabling coherent reporting, bringing together information from across the organisation. "We will be able to input information once, and it will be usable across the whole business in many ways," says Harrison. He also suggests that more robust production information will help the management team to develop the business further. And he adds that one of the main advantages of Epicor is that business rules can be updated as the organisation changes without depending on external consultants and developers.