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Over
almost a decade, EADS North America Defense saw
its business model shift from a combination of
“assemble-to-stock,” “assemble-to-order,”
“build-to-order” and “configure-to-order”
to “engineer-to-order,” which now
comprises roughly 50 percent of its business.
Moreover, this leading commercial and military
test and measurement equipment manufacturer’s
business was not only rapidly expanding on its
own, it had a mandate to expand further through
key acquisitions.
But
as change flowed throughout the business, its
business information system couldn’t keep
up, much less help meet future goals. With over
1,000 modifications, it was impossible to upgrade
the old system to a new version (which could not
have met the company’s needs anyway). And,
with its disparate applications and islands of
automation, it was not extendible to new acquisitions.
According
to Greg Cuzan, Vice-president and Chief Technology
Officer for EADS North America Defense, “We
were doing tons of work-arounds and essentially
running on Excel spreadsheets when it came to
ETO. It was inefficient, hard to use, error-prone
and it made it very difficult to be competitive.”
The
company needed a comprehensive, scalable, flexible
and highly usable solution that would work seamlessly
with its ETO model. They found it with Enhanced
Systems and Services’ Finesse ERP solution.
Using
TechnologyEvaluation.com’s questionnaire,
the company created a data-driven selection process
to score vendor capabilities against its needs
to determine a short list. Working with eight
finalists, particularly ESS, they then created
200 additional questions relating specifically
to ETO. ESS topped the list. “ESS outperformed
every other vendor for functionality and outscored
them all on demos,” says Cruzan. “We
have the entire package and the technology is
excellent… it really meets our needs.”
With
all the pieces in one comprehensive solution,
Cruzan is looking ahead. “We’ve lost
business because of long quote turnaround times.
Now, with our data collection and quoting capabilities,
instead of taking two to three weeks, I expect
to turn quotes in at least half the time with
much higher accuracy and far fewer losses due
to undercharging or business lost due to overcharging,”
he said.
He
pointed to other improvements as well. Deep integration
eliminates the need to re-enter information, which
should save huge amounts of time and money and
increase accuracy across the board. Growth is
simplified because Finesse scales with ease. As
for acquisitions, Cruzan expects capabilities
such as A/R, A/P, time and attendance and payroll
to provide immediate savings with the potential
for far greater results due to the ability to
seamlessly share information. And with its inherent
ease-of-use, even casual users will be able to
use Finesse.
“With
Finesse, we have twice the capabilities we would
have had if we had used someone else,” says
Cruzan.
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