Novameta chooses Epicor
One of the world’s largest manufacturers of custom stainless steel solutions for commercial kitchens chooses Mindbox’s bid for the implementation of the Kinetic ERP production management support system.
Novameta, a Lithuanian company, manufactures specialized custom-designed kitchen equipment for customers around the world: islands, work tables, carts, food serving systems, dishwasher equipment and many, many other solutions that are needed in a commercial kitchen. Founded in 1997, the company now employs more than 250 people and makes more than 4,000 products a day in 4 factories.
Novameta is growing dynamically, is open to new developments, is not afraid of change and is investing in innovative technologies. The new ERP system is expected to facilitate accelerated growth and further geographic expansion.
Preparations for the selection and implementation of the IT system had been going on at Novameta for several years. To this end, a specialized consulting company was hired, which developed a very detailed set of requirements that the solution should meet. The project began with documenting all the processes that were being carried out in the organization. And it was only on this basis that requirements were created for individual areas, including finance, purchasing, production, and quality control. In total, the list of requirements that Novameta presented to bidders included 2,000 items. Each of them referred to a specific function in the system, which was not only named but also described in detail.
The very development of an offering in response to such a detailed and extensive inquiry was a challenge. It required checking which of the functions described by Novameta were available out-of-the-box in Epicor’s Kinetic ERP system, and which would need to be custom developed. An additional challenge for the team working on the proposal was the requirement to provide approximate pricing already at this initial stage, which had to take into account the scope of the implementation and work on custom solutions. This required asking the client many additional questions.
Based on the preliminary bids received, Novameta drew up the short list of suppliers it invited to the next stage – detailed presentations.
“At this stage, we conducted several presentations of the system, each lasting several hours, during which we demonstrated the available functions and answered additional questions from the potential users. Sometimes additional meetings dedicated to specific areas had to be organized. We convinced the client to our bid not only with the solution itself, its openness allowing virtually unlimited integrations with other systems but also with the quality of the answers provided to these additional questions. The company’s representatives admitted that hearing them gave them confidence that they were dealing with experts who were very knowledgeable about the individual functional areas. Thus, they were persuaded that Mindbox was able to implement the project at the top level, according to their expectations,” – said Piotr Krzysztoporski, Vice President and ERP & RPA Practice Director w Mindbox.
“At the same time, the company understood that they could treat us as a partner to advise them on how to use the system in the best way. The implementation of an ERP system is not just about fulfilling the client’s expectations, but also providing suggestions as to how to achieve their goals more efficiently. In the end, as is the case in many projects, during the final negotiation phase we jointly decided with the client to scale down the project. Novameta decided to implement standard functions in several areas, instead of customization. The company, which is growing rapidly in global markets, decided that although it had previously been executing a process differently, it was willing to check out the industry ‘best practice’ proposed by Epicor,” – added Piotr Krzysztoporski.
Kinetic ERP is an ERP system used around the world by many manufacturing companies. Based on the experience Epicor gathers from these customers, standard functions are developed. Novameta decided that in certain areas it wanted to see if a change made to a legacy process would bring some benefit or at least not have a significant negative impact on the functioning of the company as a whole, reduce the quality of service or decrease the bottom line.
Thus, the number of planned customizations has been reduced. Despite this, the implementation of Kinetic ERP at Novameta is still a very complex project, which will involve building several hundred custom functions.
“This approach, where we focus on the most important items at the first stage of implementation, postponing the final decision on the less important customizations, works perfectly in the projects we implement. Customers do not understand exactly how the system works right from the very beginning. However, after using it for a few months they do come to the conclusion that, although initially they thought customization was necessary, in the end the standard solution works perfectly. What’s more, they sometimes discontinue the customized solutions they were using before,” – said Piotr Krzysztoporski.
“Our implementation and consulting competencies are evidenced by the references,” he added. “Novameta’s representatives have contacted our clients, including those in Lithuania and other countries of the region, and have received excellent reviews. This is something to be proud of – we are a reliable partner not only technically, but also in businesswise.“