Steatite designs, manufactures, and provides extremely dependable expertise to be used in harsh situations, the place failure just isn’t an choice. Working in each the US and the UK, Steatite caters to a variety of consumers, from SMEs and authorities organisations to giant multinationals.
The issue:
The corporate’s legacy system, a extremely customised on-premises ERP, was changing into more and more sophisticated in accordance with Jonathan Jackson, Operations Director at Steatite. The system had advanced by means of numerous iterations from Vantage to Epicor, and the amount of customized code made updates troublesome and useful resource intensive.
The answer:
By transferring to the cloud, Steatite sought to resolve its operational challenges whereas unlocking entry to revolutionary options obtainable solely by means of the cloud-based model of Epicor Kinetic. “Epicor’s improvement path was a consideration level for us,” Jackson says. “Remaining on-premises risked obsolescence, whereas transferring to the cloud made certain we stayed with the newest and most safe product.”
Moreover, Steatite’s progress required a sturdy and scalable answer. With further enterprise models situated in several websites, a few of which lacked technical capabilities, the cloud provided dependable entry from a number of areas.”We wanted scalable, versatile, resilient entry for a number of events, all with various ranges of connectivity and inhouse experience”. The cloud-based answer addressed all these necessities, streamlining the onboarding of recent websites and customers and eliminating the complexities that had as soon as hindered growth efforts.
The transfer to the cloud was designed to ease the load on Steatite’s IT workforce. With a rising workers base, managing updates, backups, and licensing was consuming sources that may have been higher used for strategic tasks. By consolidating these processes within the cloud, Steatite aimed to free its IT workforce to prioritise innovation and long-term enhancements, shifting focus from routine upkeep to enhancing operations.
The challenges:
However it wasn’t solely plain crusing. To change from a extremely customised on-premises system to a cloud-based ERP, Steatite wanted to streamline its present system to a “vanilla model” that may work with the brand new cloud-based SQL database. It was essential to rigorously resolve which core capabilities to maintain when stripping down the product.
On prime of that, creating new interface components was one other problem. “We needed to develop new types, stories, and dashboards from scratch, utilizing completely different toolsets and environments,” Jackson explains.
Migrating to the cloud meant embracing utterly new instruments and environments, demanding important time and specialised data. To navigate this, Epicor assigned a devoted mission supervisor to collaborate with Steatite’s inner workforce and supply steady assist in the course of the migration course of. This collaboration ensured that every one operational necessities had been met by the transfer, giving precedence to essential options and lowering downtime.
The migration was phased over six months, with cautious planning and implementation for testing, piloting, coaching, and rollout. “This structured strategy eased the transition and ensured workers had been ready to make use of the brand new system successfully,” Jackson stories.
The outcome:
Steatite has benefited enormously from the transfer to the cloud, which in the end reworked its enterprise and IT operations.
“The best profit is the discount in burden on our IT workforce to handle backups and restoration. We not must spend time on patches and redevelopment as that is taken care of centrally,” Jackson shares. This permits IT to give attention to progress initiatives moderately than routine upkeep.
Scalability has additionally improved, streamlining onboarding and facilitating growth. “We all know that the system is versatile sufficient to accommodate further necessities from new websites or workers, no matter location or obtainable bandwidth, making onboarding fast and simple,” Jackson notes. “Having day-to-day performance situated within the cloud and centrally managed works extraordinarily effectively for a enterprise comparable to ours, which is comprised of very completely different enterprise models with distinctive necessities working globally.”
One other important development has been safety. Multi-factor authentication and different safety applied sciences are built-in into the cloud system, guaranteeing adherence to business requirements like ISO and CEP. In line with Jackson, Steatite has “reached the identical stage of safety within the cloud as we’d count on from an on-premises platform.”
AI-driven predictive upkeep has additionally been made attainable by way of cloud integration. This characteristic allows the enterprise to increase asset lifecycles, cut back downtime, and proactively handle tools—all of that are important for preserving dependability in harsh situations.
A future-ready platform
With Epicor’s ongoing assist and a sturdy cloud infrastructure, Steatite is now well- positioned for long-term progress and innovation. The organisation has decreased IT overhead, enhanced safety, and elevated operational effectivity by switching to a simplified, scalable cloud answer. The enterprise has established a strong foundation for its future by welcoming change and addressing obstacles head-on whereas remaining each creative and aggressive.
When requested in the event that they’d take into account returning to an on-premises system, Jackson’s response is unequivocal: “No thanks!”
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