Electronics manufacturer Elmdene International selects Epicor to streamline operations

Epicor Software Corporation, the business software solutions provider for manufacturing, distribution, retail and services organisations, has announced that Elmdene International Ltd, a UK-based manufacturer of electronic products for the Security, Access Control, CCTV and Fire Industries that are used around the world, is to implement the Epicor next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to replace its existing manufacturing and finance systems, and improve operational efficiency.

Distributing throughout the world, Elmdene manufacturers a variety of power supplies, sounders and detection and hold-up devices.  With a turnover in excess of £10m (GBP), and operating in a highly competitive market Elmdene's management team wants to ensure it provides customers with the best possible value, whilst closely monitoring margins and its supply chain performance.

"Our existing systems have served us well, but we are now at the point where they risk holding us back," said Rick Hellaby, procurement director for Elmdene.  "As we continue to grow it becomes even more important to keep a tight control on costs and have full visibility of what is happening across sales, manufacturing, finance and the supply chain."

Currently Elmdene has to manually extract information from its systems in order to prepare management reports that are key to the business, such as margin analysis on production runs and stock-level projections.  Additionally the finance team has to regularly rekey information or manually intervene in processes in order to keep the business running smoothly.

"Extracting data to then manipulate, means it is out of date as soon as the extraction is complete.  Also, wherever our teams have to rekey or manipulate data, there is always the chance for human error," explained Hellaby.  "By replacing our outdated systems with a fully integrated ERP system, our staff can focus on higher value tasks that are rewarding for them, customers and the business, rather than fighting with systems."

Elmdene will be using Epicor to replace all existing systems including a number of spreadsheet-based reports and processes, giving the company full visibility and control of all business operations in one place.  Epicor is based on a single unified data model and has been architected from the ground-up using service-oriented architecture (SOA).  This gives customers complete control over the way they define business processes to meet their individual business needs, while also providing industry specific 'best-practice' processes out of the box.  Customers can also easily integrate with other legacy applications where needed without needing to make code-level changes to the software.  

"Visibility is at the heart of improving operational efficiency," said Malcolm Fox, director, product marketing for Epicor. "Buying software is not enough, it has to be implemented and integrated properly, so that it gives a single up-to-the-second view of the whole business. Only then can management truly understand what is happening and make decisions that improve customer experience and the wider business."