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S&P Coil Products Ltd (SPC) is a specialist manufacturer and supplier of heating and cooling equipment to the public and private sector and is based in Leicester, UK. Its product portfolio includes heating/cooling coils, fan convectors, trench heating, radiant panels, radiant conditioning sails, heat pipes and air curtains. In addition to its UK business, SPC has sites in Dubai and Qatar covering the Middle East.

When replacing its old enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, SPC avoided the traditional approach of installing new software onsite. Instead, the company selected a tailored, hosted and managed SYSPRO ERP system from K3. The cloud delivered ERP solution is provided as a fully managed solution by K3 Hosting. This approach offers many advantages over an onsite installation. These include state-of-the-art hosting, disaster recovery, security, scalability, regular updates and enhancements, plus the benefit of K3 Hosting providing a one-stop-shop, single point of contact for SPC's business software needs.

As a world leader in heat exchange and heat recovery, SPC is able to provide bespoke solutions and help customers with special requirements and tight project deadlines thanks to its flexible manufacturing approach. IT plays a critical role in the organisation and is necessary for its growing business, hence why the company replaced its old ERP system.

"We needed a solution that would enable SPC to move forward and it was important that the software would adapt to the evolution of the company. We've seen our work volumes increase and SYSPRO will allow us to scale up and improve our efficiencies. This is particularly important as we operate just-in-time (JIT) business processes and we need these to be effective," says Neil Hudson, Information Technology & Communications Manager, SPC.

There are two important data security reasons for opting for a cloud solution, reports Neil Hudson: rapid data recovery, as SYSPRO can be fully restored within 24 hours, and limited data loss, because the system backs up automatically every 15 minutes. System failures are rare but when they happen K3 Hosting responds immediately to get the system restored to full operational status. Therefore, system up time is maximised by the virtue of its resilience and the expertise of K3 Hosting.

Neil Hudson adds: "I wanted to get away from the blame culture associated with ERP systems whereby a problem results in a non-productive situation where the user's IT department blames the vendor and vice versa. By having K3 hosting and managing the SYSPRO deployment for us, we can monitor how effective it is for our business. If there is a problem, we know that K3 Hosting will resolve it for us. We have 24/7 support and this frees our internal IT team from general system and network management and troubleshooting, which allows them to concentrate on developing our products."

As a growing business, the decision to deploy SYSPRO in the cloud fit in well with SPC's company strategy. As a growing business, SPC is looking to expand even further over the next few years adding workforces in a number of overseas countries. Adding new users to the company IT network is an easy and fast process when using a cloud solution.

The idea of having mobile access to the business IT network is another aspect that appealed to SPC. Thanks to having SYSPRO deployed in the cloud, staff at the company can access the network on the go, from their iPads and smart devices.

"By having SYSPRO deployed in the cloud, we are able to easily add new sites to the solution," enthuses Hudson. "It just makes our whole working infrastructure so much easier. Staff can access the cloud from anywhere on a multitude of devices so it helps us to continue to move forward without having to constantly return to the office for menial administrative tasks."

SPC is constantly updating its stock and adding new products. The company's sales team sells products to HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) contractors. Sales staff use a custom product configuration tool that integrates with the company's cloud-based SYSPRO ERP system. This integration allows product developers to update the dimensions and costs of the products that the customer wants. This approach gives SPC a development sandbox that allows the product developers to use the data for prototyping outside of SYSPRO and then transfer it to the system once the work and quote is completed. This retains the integrity of the original data held within SYSPRO.

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