Midwest spring manufacturer accelerates into ERP vendor negotiations and implementation planning with Baker Tilly's software evaluation project approach
Client background
A world leader in the manufacture of highly engineered springs, specialty fasteners, machined parts and other precision components for OEMs and after market customers in aerospace, medical, electronics, energy, agriculture/construction, and consumer products/power tools industries. The company has 1,000+ employees in 22 locations, $350M+ in revenues, and serves 23,000 customers in 35 countries.
The business challenge
- Business acquisitions that were driving additional software needs
- Aging ERP applications and infrastructure at new acquisition sites that were not scalable to the company’s business growth goals
- Lack of process efficiency and standardization across the company’s locations
- Inability to scale for future acquisitions
The Baker Tilly approach
- Identified the key business drivers and strategic objectives that provided overall direction for the software evaluation process
- Defined a core set of critical and unique business requirements common across three separate locations to evaluate software functional and technical fit
- Recommended a short list of vendors quickly and accelerated the evaluation process through our up-to-the minute knowledge of software vendors, their capabilities and focus industries
- Conducted detailed scripted and day-in-the-life demonstrations with software vendors to confirm level of functional/technical fit and identify solution gaps
The business impact
- Determined early in evaluation process that the incumbent ERP vendor provided the best fit for the business
- Adapted the project approach, and reduced the project timeline and budget, by accelerating into vendor negotiations and implementation planning
- Developed a detailed Total Cost of Ownership model, including hardware, software and preliminary implementation costs over a 5-year time horizon