Salt Separation Services Ltd. was established in 1990 and provides engineered water treatment solutions to worldwide markets. Over the years, they have gained a reputation for manufacturing high quality and reliable equipment, as well as excellent spares, consumables and technical support.
Salt Separation gears for growth
After years of sustained growth, the business felt the time was right to enhance their processes and adopt new systems that would complement Salt Separation’s future ambitions.
Technical & Commercial Director, Daniel Shackleton said: “Initially, we started as a micro enterprise with three people, but the business has evolved and the number of employees has grown over time to 75 people.”
“Historically, everything has been based on spreadsheet systems, but we’ve probably reached the limit of what a spreadsheet can do for us. We’ve also got the issues of user access, multiple data entry, and too much reliance on the users to input accurate data repeatedly.”
“So what we’re finding is that, if access to a particular register is inhibited because someone else is using it, that work doesn’t necessarily get backtracked, leading to incomplete data.”
“A reliance on spreadsheets was also producing challenges when it came to reporting. Therefore, for a long time it’s been one of our priorities to reduce the work burden so that people are freed up from data entry and can focus on other things.”
A need for better reporting
Sarah Grindrod, Managing Director, echoed this while highlighting the visibility benefits that an ERP system would bring: “One of the reasons we decided to take this step is the reporting structure that comes out of an ERP system. What I need is to open my laptop and see everything I need on one screen, all the information collated in the same place. In some ways, it’s like we’re operating blind because our data isn’t always easy to see.”
All of this led to a feeling that if the business was to achieve its future ambitions, it would need to move away from manual data entry and into the world of ERP.
Daniel added: “I think we realised that we’ve got as big as we could get without an ERP system in place. We were doing fantastic as a business, but I think to grow even bigger, we couldn’t do that without all of the dots linked. So that’s why we made it a priority. In order to make the next step, we recognised that we needed better systems and processes. We needed to automate our systems.”
Once those within the business had agreed that an ERP system was the best way to improve productivity and visibility, the search for an appropriate ERP solution began.
A successful demo
During the demo and interview processes, it was Epicor and CBO that stood out.
Sarah explained, “the reason for our choice was the feeling that these people have the details and they’re committed. They also told us they can start straight away. We felt that this is what we needed, nd so far, six weeks into the project, we’ve got much further than we expected when we started out.”
Of course, there was also the capability of the software itself, and Epicor seemed like a good fit, especially when it came to usability.
Daniel said: “of the different software we were looking at, each had a unique set of capabilities but one thing that swung us towards Epicor was that we preferred the way it looked and the way it seemed to operate, it seemed a lot easier to use than some of the other ones that we looked at.”
Cloud-based systems
Finding a solution with cloud capability was also a major consideration.
Sarah added: “We’ve never had anything cloud-based before but we realised that cloud is the future. We were aware that if we went server-based and something happened, then our data would be lost. We also wanted to benefit from the support we would receive from choosing cloud. Whereas if we had it on in-house servers, we’d be relying on our own, in-house IT staff to fix it.
After a comprehensive selection process, he project has now been live for several weeks. While the proof is in the eating when it comes to measuring the positive impact of the investment, so far, the signs look positive.
Sarah said: “We’ve now finished our initial meetings and have gone through each stage. We’ve put our design team together and the CBO Project Manager has been coming in each day to go through work with different members of the team to keep things on track.”
When asked for a final word on why Salt Separation selected Epicor and CBO, Sarah added: “we chose Epicor specifically due to the overall look and feel and because it is easy to use. We were also impressed by the effort that Epicor and CBO put into the demo and the commitment that has been shown to us so far.”
With the project up and running, Salt Separation Services are looking forward to it continuing to progress in the same positive direction and building a long term partnership with Epicor and CBO.
