Epicor Software Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of Global 1000 companies, today announced that ACDC Lighting, the global manufacturer and distributor of LED and cold cathode architectural lighting, has selected the Epicors next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution as the company undergoes a complete review of its systems and business processes.
With a turnover of 11m (GBP) and 100 staff at its Lancashire-based site, ACDC Lighting has seen significant growth year-over-year of 40-50% for three years runningit now distributes products to over 50 territories. Over the next two years it has ambitious aims to reach a turnover of 20m (GBP) for which it expects to employ between 120-150 staff. Our continued growth plans for the future mean that we need to unify and integrate the systems that underpin our business, said Ian Clark, financial director at ACDC Lighting. We started as a relatively small company with 20 staff and didnt have a need for an ERP system, but the time has come to get the systems in place that will help, rather than hinder, our expansion. Our transaction sizes and volumes continue to grow and we have more staff then ever beforeour current systems and processes are starting to creek under that weight. The Epicor deployment will replace all systems within the organisation, including a number of commercial products for specific business functions, databases and scores of
spreadsheets. By doing this, ACDC Lighting believes it is giving staff the tools needed to focus on higher value tasks that make them more motivated and effective, and deliver improved service to customers.
Our current systems are very labour intensive; staff can spend a lot of time moving between different spreadsheets, which is frustrating for them and makes the business less agile, added Clark. They have a huge amount of experience that is wasted on fighting with cumbersome processes to produce reports, or tasks that we know can be automated. For example, we want people in our procurement department to be focused on extracting the best from our supplier partnerships, not chasing paperwork.
ACDC Lighting will be re-engineering its business processes as part of the Epicor implementation to get the perfect balance between software controlled automation and the best practice processes for the business. One of the greatest benefits the management team expects to see is the ability to properly understand the business at all levels, with timely reporting and dashboards that will enable them to react quickly to changes in order books, the supply chain, or manufacturing complications.
Twenty ERP solutions were reviewed before Epicor was selected. The management team was particularly impressed with Epicors Microsoft Office integration, customer relationship management (CRM) and remote salesforce features, intuitive interface and Configurators. The company has a core set of 50 products, but last year produced over 2,500 variants on them.
The Epicor Configurators will allow our sales teams to easily specify the customisations on our core products to give customers accurate quotes. These customised orders will then seamlessly move through Epicor to manufacturing, distribution and finance, saving huge amounts of time and unnecessary complexity, concluded Clark.
As companies move into the next stage of their growth, finding an ERP solution that balances the needs of the business now, and in the future, without being too complex can be a real challenge, said Craig Stephens, director, product marketing for Epicor. Solutions that are too complex can bring an organisation to its knees either through technical issues, or users simply not being able to get to grips with them. Weve worked very hard at Epicor to ensure our products put the power of the solution into the hands of customer, so it can be customised to reflect their changing needs, and users can work with an interface that is familiar and intuitive.
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