“We now use fewer resources to ultimately generate more work”
Herman Pacific (Hermpac) is a leading provider of high-quality timber products for the building industry, serving clients throughout New Zealand via regional offices. As a long-standing customer of Adaptable Consulting for over 25 years, Hermpac has received ongoing support for their ERP and Order Management solutions for several years.
The Problem:
As technology and the business needs for Hermpac evolved, they continued to face a number of challenges around their reliance on the existing on-premise ERP and bespoke Order Management software that had undergone several upgrades over the years.
Although both pieces of technology were somewhat dated, the Order Management system was showing the biggest signs of problems with issues occurring around stability, security and accessibility of real-time data. This, coupled with limitations in operational functionality meant it became apparent as to how much it was holding the business back and the various risks associated with it. These concerns prompted Hermpac to start a digital transformation journey that could help them modernise their systems to be cloud based, address a number of inefficiencies the business had evolved over time to incorporate and better future proof the business.
Collaboration with Adaptable Consulting:
Despite the long-standing working relationship, Hermpac Director, Mark Ericson, says “As we were looking at a completely new system it wasn’t a given that we would stick with Adaptable, as internally this was an opportunity to overhaul many aspects of our operational, sales and finance processes.”
“The initial scope and foundation work Adaptable provided, showed us they had a really in depth understanding of our business and were clearly the right partner to work with again for the development of our new Order Management system”, adds Ericson.
Adaptable Consulting Director, Fergus Gahan, says “The primary concern revolved around the complex order entry application, prompting us to collaborate on a solution to redevelop the quote – order - credit entry applications, whilst seamlessly integrating it with their existing on-premise ERP software, yet keeping future changes in the ERP system front of mind.”
The Solution:
After various scoping and project planning sessions, Hermpac and Adaptable Consulting decided to develop a new automated and integrated system, using Microsoft Power Apps platform. “Being a mainstream product, the choice of Power Apps offers ongoing and regular updates that progress with us, ensuring not only scalability, but also flexibility to customise to meet our unique needs,” comments Ericson.
“This new solution, aptly named “Elevate,” allowed us to surpass a simple like-for-like replacement” says Gahan. “It delivers enhanced automation and integration capabilities, allowing users to create quotes with ease, select various combinations of timber types and lengths, configure pre-painting options and efficiently manage logistics, complete with accurate delivery cost calculations. Furthermore, when needed to save double handling, quotes can be easily converted to orders across the various business units, and if required, functionality exists for credit requests and approvals.”
Benefits and Results:
Since deploying Elevate in July 2022, “The resulting benefits for Hermpac have been both numerous and significant with the main one being we now use fewer resources to ultimately generate more work,” comments Ericson.
“We have experienced a noticeable reduction in time required for generating quotes and prices, improved order processing and accuracy across our various business units, centralised customer correspondence and now have automated data flows to eliminate double handling and unnecessary administration” says Ericson.
The implementation of Elevate as a cloud-based Microsoft Power App, alongside integration with the on-premise Dynamics SL ERP solution, sets Hermpac on a journey to in the future migrate their on-premise systems to the cloud, further mitigating business continuity risks.
“The key objectives set for the project have all been achieved”, comments Ericson. “Hermpac now have access to real-time data and reporting, improved efficiencies across all aspects of its business units and functions, better customer service performance, a higher degree of professionalism and improved portability on the road for the sales team.”
Working with Adaptable Consulting:
When asked what the key aspects were of working with Adaptable Consulting, Ericson comments, “I really liked working with a smaller team. They have to wear multiple hats which I see as a big advantage as they remain across all the detail needed to keep a project progressing. In the past I’ve worked with larger firms and I often found it’s not uncommon that you start and finish the project with different people involved. This can easily mean you lose a lot of the cohesion, project rhythm and if not careful clarity
around the core objectives” says Ericson.
“We found the Adaptable team listened to our needs whilst providing all the necessary expert advice to ensure the viability of any future plans. They were highly responsive, efficient and took the time to foster a good working relationship”, adds Ericson.
As far as the roll out of Elevate, Ericson mentions, “We had a really successful launch which is a testament to both our teams given the complexity and moving parts involved. Talking to other companies who have done similar projects, I had positioned my expectations to have more speed bumps and for some things to not go smoothly, however thankfully this wasn’t at all the case.”
In summary, Ericson finishes with, “Since deploying our new order management system we have continued to utilise Adaptable’s support services, including doing a number of custom dashboards, and when the time is right, we are now well setup for scalability in the future, to move away from our on-premise ERP software into a full cloud based solution”.
Mark Ericson
Director
Hermpac