M3 Technology Group, a company that designs, builds, and installs turnkey audiovisual systems, was facing growth challenges due to its outdated Everest finance software. The software was slowing down sales and finance operations, making the creation of customer quotes a laborious process. The software was also slow when run over a VPN, which was problematic as the company had grown from one location to multiple branch offices. Additionally, the software couldn't handle project cost accounting for new lines of business, requiring a lot of manual entry. The company needed financial software that could display project-cost profitability in real time instead of waiting until project completion.

Kelly Products, Inc. is a holding company for 13 diverse agribusiness brands. The company was operating on a legacy ERP system, with each new division having its own instance of the ERP. These instances were not connected and were managed by different people among the various businesses. This led to inconsistencies and difficulties when someone was out, as others were often unfamiliar with the specific business system’s coding and transaction process. Tracking inter-company transfers was also a challenge, as many transfers between businesses were paper-based and physically mailed from one company to another. This held up monthly reporting and increased chances for manual-entry errors. With its ERP solution nearing the end of its life, Kelly Products began looking for a new software solution.

Power Storage Solutions, a company that provides engineering, fulfillment, installation, and maintenance of DC-power backup systems, was spun off from Interstate Batteries. The company had a 9-month window to continue operating on Interstate’s financial systems, leaving little time to choose and implement systems of their own. They had previously implemented Salesforce.com, Steelbrick CPQ, Concur, and Workday with the belief that implementing best of breed software would make the startup efficient and data rich. However, they faced tremendous problems connecting the software. They compared Oracle NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage, and Microsoft Dynamics but found them either too expensive, cumbersome, or lacking the functionality they needed.

Premier 1 Supplies, a retail and e-commerce company specializing in agricultural and farming supplies, was using an aging Sage MAS500 system for its operations. However, when credit card companies notified the company that it had to upgrade its payment software to remain compliant, CEO Ben Rothe began looking for a new B2C ERP system. The company's software was so old that no one knew how to upgrade it, and the cost of keeping Sage alive was estimated to be almost like starting over. Rothe wanted a modern, easy-to-upgrade solution from a provider poised for growth. He researched cloud-based SaaS software firms and considered a custom-made solution. However, he found that many B2C solutions only offered pieces of what Premier 1 needed.

Ask Afrika, a market research company with over 23 years of experience, was facing a logistical challenge in keeping track of project costs, budgets, employee allocation, invoices, and profitability due to the large number of projects they manage at any given time. The accounting team was spending up to eight hours to create a snapshot of company profitability. The existing systems were no longer suitable for Ask Afrika’s requirements, prompting the search for an ERP system that could reduce the time it took to create reports, verify data, and maintain accurate project budgets.

State Bank of India (SBI) UK, a branch of the largest commercial bank in India, was facing challenges in managing their customer communications due to their rising customer base across ten branches in the UK. The bank needed a system that could streamline their services, consolidate customer information, and offer a rapid and effective service to increase customer retention rates. The system also needed to be flexible to fit the unique needs of SBI UK and offer a high degree of control. The bank wanted to implement the CRM solution in a short time frame and required ongoing support and guidance throughout the implementation process.

Universal Forest Products operates 130 facilities worldwide, with each location acting as an independent operation. Initially only one plant had a CMMS/EAM system, a few locations had paper work order systems, but most had no system in place at all. Maintenance staff at the sites varied as well, ranging from one or two individuals to a team of 15 to 20. The lack of a formalized preventive maintenance system was having an impact on productivity in the plants. Unexpected breakdowns were causing costly repairs and overtime expenses. There was no precise method available to management to identify maintenance expenditures. With more sophisticated equipment being introduced in the plants, it became vital that the equipment be maintained to the manufacturers’ recommendations in order to preserve warranties and realize the expected increases in productivity.

In 2009, three separate Janome subsidiaries — Janome America, Jamac and Elna — consolidated under the Janome America banner. This consolidation presented a challenge in terms of managing the operations of the three entities efficiently and cost-effectively. The company needed a solution that would streamline processes, minimize hardware needs and associated consolidation costs, and manage the new entity without increasing IT staff. Additionally, many of Janome America's trading partners required electronic data interchange (EDI) compliance as part of their customer contract, making it a crucial component of their business agreement.

PEZ Candy Inc., an international manufacturer of brick candies, was facing challenges with their outdated technology which was impacting productivity. They were unable to work on multiple tasks at once within their distribution center. The company was in need of an upgrade to their mobile devices whose operating system was no longer supported by the provider. The purchase of mobile computers was a substantial investment, so the company felt they needed to provide a solution that looked beyond new devices and offered operational improvements that would boost productivity as well.

PEZ Candy Inc., an international manufacturer of brick candies, was facing challenges with their outdated technology which was impacting productivity. They were unable to work on multiple tasks at once within their distribution center. The company was in need of an upgrade to their mobile devices whose operating system was no longer supported by the provider. The purchase of mobile computers was a substantial investment, so the company felt they needed to provide a solution that looked beyond new devices and offered operational improvements that would boost productivity as well.

American Tubing, Inc. (ATI) was facing a significant challenge with scheduling. Their customers were demanding shorter lead times and ATI’s existing ERP system was not capable of providing the necessary information to respond quickly. As a result, ATI was losing business. Additionally, ATI was transitioning their equipment from manual operation to automation, and they required a system that could schedule efficiently and had machine loading capability. It was crucial for ATI to view their shop floor load at any point in time, allowing them to identify potential problems and create corrective solutions on the production line before slowdowns occurred.

Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of electromechanical switches for radio frequency (RF) and microwave applications, was struggling with its existing ERP system. The company had implemented Made2Manage ERP in 1996 but failed to take advantage of the full functionality within the system, leading to a lack of confidence in the system and a proliferation of spreadsheets, databases, and sticky notes. Employees would come to meetings, each with his own spreadsheet, and spend the meeting time trying to decide whose information was correct. Reporting requirements and audits by government customers and the imperatives of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance placed additional burdens on a company awash in often conflicting data but starved for real, reliable information.

Aurora Organic Dairy, a supplier and packager of private-label store-brand organic dairy products, was facing significant operational inefficiencies. They were not effectively analyzing their downtime data, which led to missed opportunities for improvement and cost savings. One of the major issues was the resin loss team losing about $25,000 a month. The company lacked the necessary software and processes to properly track this loss, leading to a significant financial drain.

Plymouth Tube Co. identified the manual nature of its product pricing process as a serious weakness during one of its annual off-site managerial meetings. Each customer service representative (CSR) prepared quotes based on price sheets, knowledge of the markets, the customers and other often undocumented “tribal knowledge.” The process itself was cumbersome, which led to frustrations for both Plymouth and its customers, especially when a back-up CSR was covering for one who was out of the office.

St. James’s Place Wealth Management, a FTSE 100 company, was struggling with managing their financial crime prevention cases. They were using a combination of Excel spreadsheets and email to manage their case workload. The case data was spread across multiple spreadsheets, making it difficult to find critical information. The manual process of logging and tracking cases was inefficient and prone to errors. The team had limited ability to control access to sensitive information, which was not ideal for storing the sensitive information found in financial crime cases. The team needed to pull Management Information (MI) and reports based on the data in their spreadsheets, which was time-consuming, subject to human error, and resulted in inconsistencies.

Fuba Printed Circuits Tunisie SA (Fuba) is one of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of double-sided, plated, through-hole and multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs). As a fast-growing manufacturer of PCBs, Fuba found it increasingly difficult to keep up with a growing flow of orders and production using only spreadsheets and manual processes. They needed an integrated system to bring business information together. The company was also looking for a system that could link production with engineering and support the implementation of best practices.

Michael Angelo’s Gourmet Foods, a leading manufacturer of premium frozen foods and refrigerated products, operates on a just-in-time production methodology, ensuring that fresh ingredients are received and products are cooked, packaged and shipped to customers within 24 hours. However, the company faced challenges in maintaining this process due to its rapid growth through sales and acquisitions, and the need to compete effectively in meeting the consumer-driven demand for low-carbohydrate prepared foods. The company needed to improve its inventory management, visibility into production data, and more effectively manage all aspects of its growing business, including the acquisition of a new facility.

Hammond Group, a global specialty chemical company, was facing challenges with its existing ERP and CRM systems. The company was dealing with lengthy implementation times, growing overhead costs, and continuous battles with vendors. The company had initially turned to tier one suppliers of Ross ERP to handle their financial operations and a large CRM vendor to handle customer care. However, the long implementation time, growing overhead costs, and continuous battles with vendors led them to look for alternatives. They had two unsuccessful CRM system migrations and even had to sue for damages in one case.

Berner Food & Beverage, a leading private-label manufacturer of premium, processed cheese sauces, spreads and toppings, faced several challenges. As a food manufacturer, Berner needed to meet evolving regulatory and customer requirements for food safety and quality. Increased scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other government agencies necessitated a proven system to ensure compliance with numerous different regulations, such as the Bioterrorism Act of 2002. In addition, the company needed a broad-reaching technology infrastructure with the flexibility to help the company enter new markets, such as consumer packaged goods, all while supporting Berner’s lean manufacturing practices. As a private-label manufacturer, Berner constantly battles tight margins, necessitating maximum efficiency, visibility and productivity in its manufacturing operations.

Gehl’s Guernsey Farms, a leader in specialized aseptic food products, faced challenges in communication and integration between different departments within its 230-person headquarters. The company's growth led to stretched resources and the need for additional support to keep up with customer needs. Information within one department was often not visible to the rest of the organization, leading to inefficiencies. The inventory tracking system experienced frequent shutdowns, requiring significant time from the IT manager to keep it running. Gehl’s lacked an enterprise system with sophisticated reporting technology to support its growing business lines and overall expansion. The company also needed a system to comply with emerging technology standards. Without a company-wide inventory management solution, Gehl’s was forced to conduct manual physical inventory, which became increasingly time-consuming as the company added new product lines.

Dreco Incorporated, a manufacturer of injection molded plastic parts, was struggling with an outdated ERP system that was not designed to account for sales orders in real time or effectively manage data on prospective sales. The system required constant updates and was not user-friendly. Dreco needed a software solution that could handle the unique requirements of a plastics processor, including accounting for parts weighing as little as a few grams. The company also wanted a system that could seamlessly integrate all its business operations.

Tek Pak, a manufacturer of packaging for the electronics industry, was struggling with its bar code data collection system for shop floor reporting and inventory. The system was not interactive and provided no feedback, leading to errors, missing and incomplete transactions, and a general disinterest among the workforce. The reporting was not reliable, and the data was often a day behind, making it of no real value. Material usage was logged only once per week by supervisors based on hand-written notes from operators, so material issues went generally unnoticed until it was too late. Inventory accuracy and visibility were lacking.

The Phoenix Group, a conglomerate of three businesses servicing manufacturing and retail companies worldwide, was struggling with an outdated, manual system for managing orders. Orders were taken on paper forms and entered into spreadsheets, leading to multiple data entries, errors, and significant delays. The company needed an integrated system to deliver up-to-date information to improve the decision-making process. The Phoenix Group also needed a system that could manage its diverse products and services across 15 remote facilities and provide a web solution for remote users and customers.

Vita Health Products, a leading manufacturer of natural health products and OTC medications in Canada, was struggling with its aging AS/400 system that could not meet the company's growing business demands. The company was having difficulty maintaining inventory control, keeping product on the customer's shelf, and managing cost inputs. Without forecasting capabilities, Vita Health was forced to carry more product inventory, thus increasing carrying costs and the potential for waste. The company was also suffering serious customer service problems and losing a substantial amount of business. The lack of a real MRP environment meant that forecast demands and work orders were determined and managed primarily through an extensive manual analysis via spreadsheet. This was time-consuming and costly, and it was clear that the company needed to make a change from 'business as usual'.

Reading Bakery Systems, a company that designs and builds processing lines for snack products, was facing several challenges. The company was relying on home-grown programs that were unable to provide the information and control needed for effective operation and growth. The company's old business system lacked the necessary functionalities to run the business, leading to the development of their own procedures and programs to address these deficiencies. The new system needed to include scheduling functionality capable of tracking complex production jobs, as well as multi-job projects, keeping all activities coordinated and properly scheduled. Costing and financial management also needed to recognize both individual jobs and entire projects for proper control and accounting. Given the need to engineer, build and test lines, planning and scheduling were also critically important requirements. Reading needed a fully indented bill of material (BOM) as part of an integrated CAD and ERP system. Moreover, when scheduling and releasing jobs and sub-jobs to production, Reading wanted to flatten the BOMs. This challenging combination of requirements would all need to be a part of the system Reading ultimately chose.

In 2012, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK announced that it would hand over its powers to a new regulatory body in the Financial Sector - the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). With stricter regulations surrounding complaints management on the way, RSA used the opportunity to overhaul their Customer Relations function. The goal was to make RSA the market leader within complaints handling by restructuring the teams involved, changing the accepted norms and giving their staff the right software to get the job done. RSA implemented what was known as The Complaints Handling Integration Project (CHIP), a full scale review of RSA’s complaints handling at a root and branch level. This consisted of three separate parts: People, Processes and Technology. While reviewing people and processes, RSA re-designed how they handled complaints to comply with the new regulations, and also to comply with their own internal best practice system.

Boston Centerless, an industry leader in supplying precision ground bar materials and grinding services, was using an outdated custom application based on the Pick database and operating system. The software lacked the analytical features needed in today's manufacturing environment and support for the software was very limited. The company also faced challenges with the manual preparation of complex specification documents and needed to reduce the lead time for processing orders.

San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind (SALB), a not-for-profit company providing employment to individuals who are blind, faced a significant challenge when sudden changes in market conditions threatened the loss of as much as 60 percent of their business. This forced them to move quickly to find new distribution channels to reach their customer base. Additionally, to stay competitive, they had an urgent need to reduce order-to-shipping time for their core products. In light of the changing competitive environment, time was of the essence. SALB knew the implementation of an ERP system would help them turn around products and services to customers at the speed they required and keep SALB in the ballgame.

Northland Fishing Tackle, a leading producer of premium quality fishing gear, was facing challenges with its distribution system. The company's supply chain was not fully integrated and the information they needed to make decisions was not readily available. They realized that in order to maintain their growth they needed an integrated back-end supply chain management system that was as great as their front-end products. They were looking for a system that had proven the ability to provide a fast ROI for their customers so that Northland could quickly see the benefits of upgrading their supply chain software. More specifically, they wanted better tracking of both their sales and expenses in order to better understand how the company was performing. They sought to be able to track both sales and expenses by customer, product, and salesperson. On the inventory side they wanted a better way to manage and track their SKUs and inventory costs to get a better gauge of their true costs and total inventory counts.

AXA Insurance, one of the largest insurers in the UK, was facing challenges in managing customer feedback. The company was receiving approximately 1,200 complaints per month across various business units. They needed a reliable system to manage this feedback and use the data for the operational benefit of the company. The company wanted to adhere to its internal service level targets, which included a turnaround time for acknowledgment of complaints within 24 hours. They also wanted to track the resolution of complaints at the 20 or 40-day point to see how many have been resolved within the target period.