Mention ERP and thoughts tend to turn to a solution from one of the software industry's major players – SAP, perhaps, or Oracle, or Microsoft. Yet, quietly and with little fanfare, a British ERP provider has built up an enviable customer base of small, medium, and large-sized manufacturing businesses spread across 20 countries, with each of its many customers happy to endorse their satisfaction with the vendor in question.
And now, in 2015, that same vendor is celebrating its 30th anniversary – no mean feat in the rough-and-tumble environment of the enterprise software industry. The company's name? Exel Computer Systems, founded in 1985 by Dr John Ellis, Exel's current chairman, and who back then was a PERA researcher who had spotted a need among manufacturers for improved capacity planning systems.
"The world was a rather different place in 1985," dryly observes Jonathan Orme, Exel's sales operations and marketing manager, and himself a 22-year Exel veteran. "Televisions had four channels, a house cost £25,000, and it was also the year that the very first British mobile phone call was made."
And it's not just house prices, hair styles and fashions that have changed, he points out. There have been huge changes in computer technology, for instance – developments that are more than hinted at by the changing appearance of Exel users' screens over the years.
Yesteryear's traditional text-based 'green screens', for instance, have given way to full-colour multi-windowed multi-application desktops, each providing an information-rich insight into the customer's business operations. Moreover, users are no longer tied to those same desktops: today's smartphones and tablet computers can provide users with access to their Exel ERP system wherever those users happen to be – on the factory floor, on the road, or working at home.
That said, stresses Orme, Exel's longevity is down to much more than an ability to bring emerging hardware technologies to its users. Right from the start, with its early focus on capacity planning, Exel understood that what manufacturers were looking for was competitive advantage, and not just, say, easy-to-use sales order entry and finance applications.
"We've still got customers who signed up with us in our first couple of years in business," he explains. "And we've huge numbers of customers who've been Exel users for 10, 15, or 20 years. Take President Engineering Group, winners of the 'National Manufacturer of the Year 2014' award, who have been with us for over 20 years and who credit their upgrade to the latest version with providing them the ability to become more proficient in their processes through the adoption of workflow, audit trail and document management functionality. Customers don't stay that loyal unless you're really delivering cutting-edge functionality that doesn't just meet their needs, but exceeds them."
And while many ERP vendors would probably like to say the same, the facts are that Exel's development team has a long track record of cannily tracking and anticipating businesses' evolving expectations and requirements. Now in its third major generation, Exel's EFACS E/8 system boasts not just core ERP functionality, but also tightly-integrated CRM, Field Service Management, Business Intelligence and Workflow capabilities.
Moreover, adds Orme, more than a decade ago, those same developers adroitly re-wrote the system in Java, making it entirely browser-based. As such, Exel was among the very first in the business to make that move, a move that not only enables EFACS E/8 to deliver a more tightly-integrated web functionality and workflow, but also sharply reduces its IT footprint and total cost of ownership.
"The point is this: when you buy an ERP system from us, you're buying directly from the company that wrote the system, and which maintains and develops it," he stresses. "But when you buy an ERP system from a competitor, you're generally buying from a reseller, who may or may not have good links to the system's developers."
As such, he explains, Exel's developers are not only closer to users' needs and requirements than are many developers in the ERP software industry, but are also strongly attuned to how British companies approach business, which can be very different from how, say, American and German companies approach business.
"Buy Exel's EFACS E/8 system and you'll often spend a lot less on implementation consultancy and support than you would with many competing systems," he sums up. "Out of the box, it tends to work the way that you work, and so needs less configuration and tweaking."
As a result, says Orme, Exel very much regards EFACS E/8 as offering just as much rich industry-specific functionality as best-of-breed 'niche' systems, a development not without irony given Exel's roots as a niche specialist capacity planning system.
"There's no need to go down the best-of-breed route at all, along with its complex IT integration, support and upgrade requirements – the functionality that manufacturers want is these days built into EFACS E/8, available right out of the box," he explains.
And, just as importantly, tailoring the system to a business', or user's, own specific requirements and preferences is a very straightforward affair: EFACS E/8 contains extensive customisation capabilities, allowing manufacturers to change screen layouts, automate processes, and specify workflow.
"People tend to underestimate the impact that such tweaks make to users' productivity," he notes. "But presenting users with just the information they need, in just the format that suits them, can be an important boost to user productivity. It's same with workflow: users no longer have to go looking in the system for the tasks they must perform – everything that requires their attention is presented to them in their in-box."
Best of all, he adds, customising an ERP system in this way shouldn't create problems for subsequent upgrades. Exel, for instance, delivers such customisation by building a development layer on top of the system, called 'ADAPT'.
"This allows manufacturers to take the basic software process and add their own 'tweaks' to it, and still keep to the standard software product, and the standard upgrade path: the customisation is in the development layer, and not the core product," enthuses Orme. "It means that the IT function is making changes just once and having them automatically re-applied with each upgrade."
So what do Exel's original designers, developers, and customers make of the 30 year journey that Exel has been on, and the way that the original inspiration in respect of a capacity planning solution has evolved into a feature-rich, full-blown ERP system?
"Well, no one's complaining," enthuses Orme. And certainly, he adds, Exel and its customers are looking forward very positively to whatever the next 30 years delivers by way of change, and challenge.
"From small beginnings, we've worked hard to deliver something that helps our customers to grow, improve, and operate their businesses," he sums up. "And if you listen to our customers, the message that you'll get back is that we've succeeded."
