After five months of planning, development, implementation and training, AW-Lake Company recently deployed a new company-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that integrates business processes to streamline operations throughout the entire company including finance, customer service, procurement, production, quality and shipping.
Two separate and incompatible legacy systems were previously used together to support operations. This required a lot of manual processes, with employees exporting and manipulating data into spreadsheets to create different reports outside the system. The new EPICOR business system automates all business functions across different departments, providing employees with one source of truth with information accessible from one database. All customer touch points, from quote generation to product delivery are streamlined within the one system. The new ERP system provides powerful reporting capabilities across the organization, with employees gaining visibility into customer and product activity to better collaborate among themselves as well as customers.
EpiCenter, a third-party Epicor Solutions partner, helped AWL implement the ERP system within a very tight timeline by providing assistance in helping the core AWL team with training, configuration, proof of concept, end-to-end testing, UAT and development.
“Even with assistance from EpiCenter, the move to the new ERP system was a big undertaking that required hard work and weekends to meet different deadlines of the project,” noted Peggy Hartwig, ERP Project Manager at AW-Lake Company who worked as project manager on the new ERP installation. “Only through the commitment, positive attitude and intelligence of the core AWL team did the project succeed.”
“A special and deserved mention goes to Tracy Wright, Production Manager, Tammie Steiner, Accounting SME, Tracy Simpson, Accounting Manager, Teri Kulis, Customer Service Manager, Chris Husson, Quality Manager and Kevin Swanson, Purchasing Manager who went beyond expectations to tackle the many challenges of the ERP program without losing a customer or their sense of humor.”
While most of the changes resulting from this ERP upgrade will be transparent to customers, documentation produced from the system such as quotes, order confirmations, and invoices have a new streamlined look.
“This powerful automated business system supports our long-term growth strategy and strong commitment towards excellence,” explains AW-Lake General Manager Mark Iverson. “By automating and integrating operations and data, AW-Lake has the ability to work more efficiently, with greater responsiveness with customers, suppliers, and partners.”