|
View from the Top - Part
1 | Part
2
|
PROFILE
|
 |
|
|
|
Ervin Davis
|
Company: Dudson Group.
Interviewee: Ervin Davis.
Job Title: Strategic support director.
The Subject: Ceramic products
manufacturer Dudson has completed a dramatic overhaul
of its enterprise IT systems, in order to meet the demands
of its customers and, crucially, regain confidence in
itself.
PERSONAL FILE
NAME: Ervin Davis.
BACKGROUND: After studying
languages, Ervin embarked on a sales career within the
pottery industry, working for the Wedgwood Group, Steelite
International and Royal Doulton.
He established a subsidiary company
in Germany for Steelite, then stayed in Germany for
seven years, moving to Royal Doulton during this time.
In 1996 he joined the Dudson Group
as export sales director. Then in 2001, the Dudson Group
restructured and Ervin accepted the role of commercial
director with a particular focus on improving customer
service.
Over the next five years, he took
on responsibility for warehousing & distribution and
IT and assumed the title of strategic support director,
running the company’s primary sales, production and
finance functions both in the UK and its trading subsidiaries
in the US, Australia and Spain.
He then took on the project manager
role when Dudson decided to buy its SYSPRO, Microsoft
CRM and Equator payroll and time & attendance software
from K3.
|
Q: WHAT WERE YOUR REASONS FOR LOOKING FOR
A NEW ERP SOLUTION?
A: When I took over the responsibility for IT in the company,
I soon became extremely worried by the risks the existing
IT system was posing to our corporate well-being. It was 18
years old, no longer supported by the manufacturer and running
on a Unix box that was on its last legs. We had to make a
change to remain competitive as a business.
With operations in Australia, USA and Europe we needed to
bind the group together as all the overseas subsidiaries were
operating on different software and trying to get consolidated
information was a nightmare.
We were also perceived as rather backward by our customers
who were requesting information we couldn’t provide and also
wanted information in electronic format, which was not possible
with the old system.
We needed to take ourselves to a new level as a manufacturing
company. For instance, we didn’t have any MRP (material requirements
planning) software – our system just threw out numbers based
on sales and stock replenishment, and the manufacturing planning
was all done on spreadsheets with a great deal of manual adjustments
being made.
Our objective was to create an integrated system that spanned
everything from CRM at the front end of the business, through
ERP into payroll and time & attendance systems.
More...
If you are not registered with the site, please register now to read the rest of this page.
If you are registered, please sign in to read the rest of this page.
Conspectus 2009
|
Copyright © 2009
|
 |
|
