Epicor Software Corporation today announced that Ocean Yacht Systems has signed a contract to implement Epicor 9, the next-generation Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system from Epicor, giving the company a centralised system for all processes from sales to production planning, inventory and warehouse management and finance. Ocean Yacht Systems is the global market leader in the design and manufacture of superyacht rigging and hydraulics – a position it has held for ten years.

The new implementation will allow Ocean Yacht Systems to streamline its processes, remove errors and duplication of tasks, control costs and achieve great efficiency across the organisation. Real-time access to information will enable project managers to cost projects “on the fly” and monitor spend against budget on individual jobs. In addition, field sales teams will be able to quote for clients with access to live data on a wide range of mobile devices, update clients on the status of orders, or check product availability.

“We chose Epicor because it provided the best overall performance and benefits for us in the long-term,” said Wayne Shatwell, commercial director at Ocean Yacht Systems. “It was by far the most flexible modular-based system – I liked the notion that you can start out with a small set of modules and scale or expand at a later date with great ease. It was also the only solution presented as ‘futureproof’ in that all upgrades are included in the standard support contract.”

The Epicor solution will replace a number of disparate applications and manual processes that came into being over the years since Ocean Yacht Systems last major systems overhaul. Epicor won the contract following a three-way review of competing solutions, which included the customers’ incumbent vendor.

Shatwell added, “Epicor was by far the most versatile system offering users greater control to self manage, administer and program their own system, through business process management and reporting tools. Most of our former systems programming was entirely hard coded, meaning that any modifications to a module or report would require costly consultancy fees, for work that was not supported by our service contract.”

Staff at Ocean Yacht Systems use Microsoft Office applications such as Project and Outlook daily, and integration with these was an important consideration during the review process. Epicor offers seamless integration with Outlook for tasks, reminders and e-mail notifications linked to actions in the system. Ocean Yacht Systems project managers will be able to export production plans to Microsoft Project, make changes to them, and then import them directly back into Epicor, updating the production schedules.

“Epicor is very pleased to be working with Ocean Yacht Systems to streamline their operations,” said Roy Shooter, vice president sales for Epicor. “The level of integration they needed with their existing information worker environment made Epicor a natural choice, along with our cost effective maintenance programme.”

For more information contact: Duncan Gurney, The PR Network
+44 (0)7912 495630, [email protected]