We Have An ERP Suite and We Are Not Afraid To Use It!

My partner in Severn Delta, Martyn Shiner, has written a further back-story post on our ERP project on the MAX Usergroup blog here.

Essentially we wrote our own ERP suite using open source tools because we could not find a right size right cost solution elsewhere for our c. £7m turnover consumer goods manufacturing business which supplies the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Boots & Waitrose (to name a few) with a mixture of private label and our Sarah Smith and PitRok branded goods.

Severn Delta has been fully operating on the system which we have branded uzERP since Jan 1 2009. We have posted two years full accounts from it and and 8 months into our third fiscal year. All without hitch.

At the end of 2010 we spun uzERP out into an LLP with the two guys who with Martyn had done all the heavy creative and code work taking a stake.

We have three other clients using uzERP the largest of which is a c £5m Turnover specialist motorcycle parts manufacturer. These were all brought in via our close local network. So far we have kept pretty low on the radar and have not made any effort to "go live" or start selling.

But we are coming to the crossroad and we need to decide what next. Both Martyn and I are conscious that we will need to dedicate more time to uzERP and having put a solid team in place at Severn Delta who essentially run the company on a day to day basis we are certainly in a position to do that, splitting our time between the two companies.

It is more the how and when that is on my mind. Should we look for some funding to pump it up and go loud and start to build awareness of the uzERP proposition with SME manufacturing businesses? or should we stick with the softly softly slowing building clients model?

Some may say but if it is not "in the cloud" it will never fly. That to me is nonsense. As a manufacturer I am not concerned whether it is on site, in the cloud or on Mars. Which one is right size, right solution, right cost? That is the one for me. The beauty of uzERP is that we can pretty much deliver it any way you prefer and you can control the cost. We will charge you for the time we spend putting it in for you but once you are live if you never need us again well good for you, just tell all your friends what a killer deal we gave you!

Maybe that is a crazy plan but we have confidence that we can build a decent business here. The mission is not to have stratospheric sexy trendy braggable buzzy product that a million people have played with and no one uses. We aim to build a solid, profitable specialist business that delivers the lowest cost ERP system to SME manufacturing.

Lots of questions still to answer, lots of questions still to ask. We will let you know how we get on.