Surgical gloves maker seeks global visibility through single system

£120m Manchester-based Regent Medical, which acquired the surgical gloves and skin antiseptics business of SSL in a £173m deal in June, is implementing £750,000 of Syspro ERP system from Information Engineering. SSL is providing providing transitional finance and distribution system services, but Regent want to manage all manufacturing and commercial processes world-wide under a single application as soon as possible. “The appealing part [of Syspro] for us was that we would be able to accomplish what we needed, using limited financial and human resources,” says Bill Mennenoh, Regent’s IT director. “We chose to work with Information Engineering because their people demonstrated they could implement the system within tight time frames – we have access to SSL’s system until the end of November at which point we need to be fully operational.” He also notes that the company won’t need a big IT department to run the system. “We only have 20 IT people across three departments globally, and we only need one in each department to support the Syspro system.” Implementation will involve a two-phase programme, with Regent initially implementing a 40-user finance and distribution system to support its UK and European network. Financials are targeted to go live in August and distribution in November. Implementation will then begin on a 50-user system in the USA, which will go live mid next year.