Gilwood Fabricators powers up on Epicor ERP software

The £2.7 million firm, which designs and manufactures bespoke stainless steel plant, including pressure vessels, scrubbers and skid-mounted package units, says the new ERP system is key to improving efficiency. "We have to do a lot of double-data entry to transfer information between applications, or use complicated import/export procedures, which adds a big overhead to the business," explains John Gilmartin, IT manager at the company. "It also slows us down and means there is a lot of margin for error. This is complicated even further by having no consistent way to audit data and its movement through applications," he adds. Gilmartin says his team looked at more than 10 ERP solutions, before selecting Epicor, stating that it stood out as having all the cutting edge features, but at a price much more competitive than tier one ERP vendors. In particular, he points to "the end-to-end SOA [service-orientated architecture] in Epicor [which] will enable extraction and manipulation of data in XML format". And Gilmartin also indicates that the firm will be using Epicor to manage its processes through its Business Process Management and Service Connect applications. "We were particularly impressed with the intuitive visual way Epicor allows you to create, edit and examine business processes and workflows throughout the application," explains Gilmartin.