Driving Cohesion during an Acquisition: Integrating Acquired Operations onto a Single JDE E1 Instance
JDE EnterpriseOne Acquisition Rollout Success Story
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Technologies
The Client
This client specializes in the manufacture and distribution of highly engineered cryogenic equipment that is used to separate oxygen, nitrogen, and noble gasses from air, as well as the processing of natural gas.
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The Goals
- Improve operational efficiencies
- Have all business units run on the same ERP system
- Increased visibility into individual business unit operations
- Standardize business processes
Key Results
Increased financial analysis capabilities
Coached branch companies through go live
Increased cohesiveness between branches
Project Highlights
The Challenge
When this client grew by acquisition, they acquired a small manufacturing unit that was running their own ERP system. The client wanted to bring this operating unit up on JD Edwards, which was the ERP system the client was already running corporate-wide.
The acquired operating unit was running an ERP system with homegrown engineering and manufacturing processes, and teh financial applications were in Macola. This disparate system meant that the parent company only had insight into what the operating unit was doing through end-of-month reports.
In order to achieve more timely communication, our client wanted to roll JD Edwards EnterpriseOne out to the newly acquired branch to bring the entire company onto a cohesive ERP.
The Solution
To quickly integrate the acquired entity, we executed a focused, phased rollout of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, bringing the new unit onto the corporate standard ERP platform. The primary goal was to replace the existing, limited ERP with JDE, focusing immediately on manufacturing and financial processes. This implementation was crucial for standardizing business processes across the entire organization, eliminating inconsistent workflows and data reporting.
By leveraging JDE EnterpriseOne, the corporate office gained immediate, real-time visibility into the acquired unit's operations, inventory, and financial performance, ensuring a cohesive business strategy and the elimination of reporting bottlenecks caused by disparate legacy systems.
The Result
After the EnterpriseOne rollout, the parent company can now monitor the branch’s inventory levels, sales order backlog, manufacturing backlog, vendor relationships, and financial performance throughout the month. This increased visibility helps these two formerly disparate operations function as one cohesive business.
Companies can gain better access to key operational performance indicators on a timelier basis with standardized business processes on a single ERP platform.
The Details - How We Did it
Our team has developed a strategy with common steps for JD Edwards rollouts, but of course, no two rollouts are the same. For this project, our team:
- Visited the new branch of the company for a discovery session to learn how this newly acquired business operated and what they required for an ERP system
- Designed a configuration in JD Edwards that would achieve what the branch needed without negatively impacting the parent company’s implementation; essentially, melding the new branch’s business processes with the parent company’s business processes to make everything consistent
- Stood the branch up as a separate company in JD Edwards and go through the standard implementation procedures such as version configuration, loading master files, etc.