Nexus to upgrade to next-generation Epicor ERP

Richard Gardner, head of IT at Nexus, says that when the latest version of Epicor ERP was launched, his company could see how it would help with changes in the company since its last upgrade – which had helped streamline distribution processes and improve reporting. "Our Chinese manufacturing plant, which opened [in] 2009 in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, required state of the art manufacturing features as well as Chinese localisations," states Gardner. "The latest version of Epicor ERP will address both of these issues, giving us a single view of the organisation with excellent multi-company support throughout the application," he says. Currently, Nexus Industries uses a third party manufacturing application with limited functionality to run its Chinese plant. Once Epicor is deployed in the UK and then China, Gardner says the organisation will have full manufacturing, financial and reporting integration across all its sites. He also says that the manufacturing enhancements alone will give Nexus the ability to schedule production jobs, utilise full manufacturing resource planning,= and give global visibility of stock in the manufacturing process. "The final implementation will also make our accounting more efficient," adds Gardner. "The business has grown significantly, which is why we built a manufacturing plant in China. This has increased the complexity of our accounting [but] Epicor will help improve and simplify processes in that department, and ensure a tighter adherence to GAAP guidelines." For him, key Epicor benefits include business process management (BPM), business activity queries (BAQ) and the ability to personalise screens for users. Those, he says, will enable Nexus Industries to gain tighter control and the agility to adapt process flows as the business continues to evolve. "These are excellent features that give Epicor a lot of power, without the complexity of some of the other competitive solutions," states Gardner.