Multinational company Selex implements EFACS with 600 users worldwide

Thursday, 23 October 2008

SELEX Communications, a Finmeccanica company, is a communications systems supplier for military and civil customers. Uniquely placed to lead the delivery of Network Centric Communications, the company's capabilities encompass solutions for joint land, sea and air applications, secure and mission critical communications.

SELEX Communications' Business Systems Manager, Kym Morris, was at the forefront of its search for a new system. A steering committee was established and - in June 2002 to March 2003 - a systematic and highly rigorous selection process was executed.

The company's most high profile customer, the Ministry of Defence, dictates the way contracts are managed, so the IT system that was best able to accommodate this would earn most recognition. Ultimately, EFACS was better equipped to manage SELEX Communications' demanding contract requirements, and was deemed the best overall fit. The ease of customisation and ability to define the company's own system parameters also helped tipped the scales in favour of EFACS, as Morris elaborates: "The fact that we could adapt aspects of the system's operation to meet our specific requirements was a distinct advantage over the competition."

In October 2004, the York site went fully live with end-to-end EFACS, from Sales Orders to Despatch and Invoice, including MRP and standard Timesheet entry. This first implementation was closely followed by the Liverpool site in February 2005, the main Marine site and 21 regional offices with Purchasing and Goods Receipt in June 2005, and the main Chelmsford site with full EFACS in October 2005. In January 2006, EFACS was rolled out across all newly acquired sites, and today a total of 600 users across seven sites and 21 regional offices have access to EFACS.

The company's entire EFACS network is now supported by five people including two developers. Morris explains: "A team of five run a first-line support service for the group, and they only forward queries to Exel that they're unable to resolve themselves." Amongst the many benefits EFACS has brought is accessibility of data in terms of the ability to drill down and tap into previously imperceptible data sources. In particular, Morris applauds the reporting tools within EFACS: "The use of reporting services within the SQL Server is an excellent way of looking at data. For the first time, we have common processes across the group with system-wide visibility and access to data." The power of EFACS enables SELEX Communications to run applications in real-time, generating current data from the shop floor.

Looking forward, the next main area of development is to migrate to the latest version of EFACS to take advantage of its browser-based capabilities. The company already has a five-user Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system running on the latest version of EFACS and, if the promise of this is anything to go by, SELEX Communications can expect continued benefits from its EFACS ERP system.

Exel Computer Systems

Exel Computer Systems is the leading UK owner & author of EFACS, a fully integrated browser-based ERP solution built using…

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