FSL gets new ERP in 12 weeks

Fleet Support (FSL), the Portsmouth-based ship repairer for the Ministry of Defence, has agreed a 110-user, £74,000 deal with enterprise software vendor, Mapics’ UK affiliate, Open Business Solutions (OBS), to upgrade its existing Jobscope ERP software from version 5 to 7, to a Windows NT platform. And by doing this the company expects to reduce its hardware maintenance costs (by ditching its Unix servers and existing HP support contracts), improve efficiency in its planning and purchasing functions, and cut its license fees for Lotus Notes which it uses for purchasing. “Giving people at the planning level the ability to place low-order value orders will improve efficiency enormously,” says FSL’s logistics manager, Richard Burton. “It [Jobscope version 7] will cut overheads and the time wasted, making us more competitive… The nature of our business demands that we have a very diverse supply chain involving an extraordinary number of suppliers of a very diverse range of parts and materials.” Jobscope was first installed in 1998 after FSL won a five-year contract to manage the Fleet Maintenance and Repair Organisation in Portsmouth Naval Base. Originally given seven months to install the new version of Jobscope, OBS actually had it up and running in 12 weeks to meet FSL’s revised deadline.