Implementation
With the contract signed, DIAM didn’t lose any time. A project room was quickly established, containing six workstations linked to a test server, and a project team duly began work.
Right from the start, explains Chris, DIAM was determined to make full use of Exel’s customisation and implementation support toolsets, and made heavy use of Exel’s ADAPT capability, which allows users to surround screens and forms with programmable logic, permitting it to auto-populate and auto-complete data entry fields, based on earlier user input.
The business also had extensive workflow aspirations, he relates, and engaged Exel to undertake this programming for them. “We felt that we didn’t have sufficient spare in-house SQL resources,” he notes. “Given the productivity benefits, it made sense to have the code developed for us.”
Also vital to the project’s success, explains Chris, was EFACS E/8’s ability to mirror functionality that DIAM had developed to automatically allocate and de-allocate components and materials for particular projects.
“We used what we called a ‘virtual warehouse’, termed CloudWIP, to bypass the need to allocate against specific works orders, and we did a lot of work with Exel to build the allocation and de-allocation logic that we wanted. It’s really reduced the complexity of how allocation and picking take place.”
In August 2018, after three test data uploads had successfully taken place, DIAM’s new EFACS E/8 ERP system went live.