Accelerate to Great

Continued

The system is completely scalable; as the company grows, eZono’s staff can add modules and expand the databases without additional training—and without losing time to a future data migration. Jaekel says that when he considered the cost of doing a future transition, the JD Edwards system was cheaper than any off-the-shelf alternative. The beauty of the early implementation is that eZono was able to migrate all of its data in just two days.

Jaekel says that the company already had accounts payable and general ledger procedures in place, since it had to pay bills and meet payroll before it could roll out its ultrasound imaging product. But that was it. When the company went live with the product, eZono’s staff would need to be able to manage procurement, inventory, and sales. “We don’t have a hundred years of warehousing experience,” Jaekel says. “We still want to have the best practices.”

Pyxis had worked with one other startup client using its Oracle Accelerate solution (Oracle Accelerate is an Oracle program that allows midsize customers to reap the benefits of Oracle software through a growing ecosystem of partners that offer clients solutions developed with Oracle Business Accelerators.) Pyxis CEO Sonja Röttcher thinks it makes a lot of sense for others. With Oracle Business Accelerators, companies can start following best practices from the beginning and save a lot of time and money on implementation. “One of the great things about startup companies is that they have no predefined processes,” Röttcher says. “They want to be supported in running the day-to-day business.”

Another advantage to implementing ERP early on is that it gives the company more credibility with regulators, customers, and even potential investors. eZono, for example, is certified under ISO 13485. “One of our biggest benefits, in addition to the software, is all the documentation for validation,” Röttcher says. It shows stakeholders that despite its modest size, a startup is serious about its growth and its financial integrity.

Many businesses of eZono’s size might have chosen a hosted option, but Oracle On Demand, Oracle’s hosted solution, was not yet available in Germany when Jaekel and company were considering their options. That elevated the role Pyxis played. “The availability of partners is crucial for smaller companies,” says Kroon, who notes that the choice of partner may be at least as important as the choice of software vendor, especially for companies that don’t have in-house staff to do the work themselves.

Creative Cabinet Systems: Smooth Implementation

Creative Cabinet Systems manufactures custom millwork and case goods for libraries, sports stadiums, and hospitals and store fixtures for national retailers. The pieces are custom designed for specific needs and then manufactured by the hundreds or thousands. Whether it’s 150 luxury suites for a new football stadium or millwork and fixtures to improve a retailer’s efficiency and reinforce its brand image, Creative will come up with the fixtures needed.

For years, the staff at Creative used a DOS-based program developed to manage construction projects—the company founder’s original business before it evolved into a specialized furnishings maker. The old system couldn’t handle much in the way of detailed financials, but few affordable software packages could back then. Before long, though, CFO Tom Frederick and his team knew that Creative needed a high-end ERP system to manage inventory and track billing. In 2007, they chose Oracle and Oracle partner Zanett.

Many of Creative’s customers are national retailers and construction management companies that expect all vendors to have big-company capabilities. The products often have to meet exacting specifications, such as matching wood grains that require all the veneer on a project to come from the same log—an inventory management challenge. The new Oracle system generated improvements from the start because now Creative could bill customers accurately and monitor payment times. It could also better ensure that its vendors were being paid in a timely manner, which was important because some of its suppliers are the sole source of certain woods and hardware. “We went from riding a bicycle with a flat tire to driving a Corvette,” Frederick says.