Torotrak selects Epicor ERP to drive manufacturing

Jeremy Deering, finance director responsible for IT at Torotrak, explains that over the past 10 years, the firm has built up a collection of systems and bespoke software, covering everything from financial management to time reporting and project management. The problem, he says, has been that these do not allow Torotrak's project teams or its management easy or reliable access to information. They also don't support the generation of systematic information to assist with decision-making. "Our biggest problem is getting timely, useful, validated information that can flow up to the management level and across departments to ensure we are making informed business decisions," says Deering. "We need to be able to view our entire business and the projects we are working on from a single data repository." Epicor, he says, will enable the manufacturer to address several problems with a single solution. It will, for example, allow the company to address the inefficiencies and pain of moving information across different systems, while giving detailed real-time project reporting, as well as features such as CRM. "The current systems, which are fragmented, do everything to frustrate, rather than help, our desire to have greater empowerment throughout the organisation," explains Deering. "Empowerment and accountability go hand-in-hand with joined up processes and connected information, which is essential to foster confidence at all levels of the organisation," he adds. "The way our systems work has to reflect the work ethic of the company – otherwise it becomes nothing more than an ideal that can't be reached." Deering also says that Epicor ERP will be linked directly into Torotrak's design and engineering software to aid project management and procurement, and will also allow users to move seamlessly between the system and Microsoft Project. "It's about ensuring everyone can get the information they need, when they need it, and that we don't duplicate effort in terms of data input and retrieval," he says.