Strachan & Henshaw to implement £675,000 Frontstep ERP

Nuclear defence equipment engineering firm Strachan & Henshaw has ordered £675,000 worth of ERP system and implementation services from mid market software developer Frontstep for its sites in Bristol, Stockport and Australia. The system is due to go live in November this year following integration of 17 different suites used across the sites. Applications covered include HR, payroll, training and recruitment software and project management software from Microsoft as well as Frontstep’s shop floor data collection, business intelligence, Labor Trak, Channel Center and business process management software. All applications will run from and use Frontstep’s SyteLine ERP system so that all employees access the same spectrum of data. S&H’s 500 employees work across a number of projects. S&H says the existing system has become problematic. For example, it’s been difficult to track resources. S&H project manager Clare Barrett says: “[Our] business operations are quite complex. We have a variety of different customers including the MoD, BNFL and BAe Systems. All our customers demand diverse products and different levels of post sales care. “We work on projects that last for only a few months and some that last for many years. Therefore it is critical to have accurate information to hand, to know how each project is being progressed and which staff are working on it.” Using the new integrated project management software, S&H expects to be able to forecast resources much better. Customer service is also currently an issue. S&H provides a maintenance and spare parts service, and engineers need to have access to the original parts catalogues and information on service history to ensure equipment at customer sites is correctly looked after. S&H says that using Channel Center, it will be in a better position to provide this. Frontstep’s enterprise application integration tool Active Link will be a key part of the project. And S&H says its Business Intelligence software will be used both for conventional analytics and to measure the success of the implementation.