Steatite designs, manufactures, and provides extremely dependable know-how to be used in harsh circumstances, the place failure will not be an choice. Working in each the US and the UK, Steatite caters to a variety of shoppers, from SMEs and authorities organisations to giant multinationals.
The issue:
The corporate’s legacy system, a extremely customised on-premises ERP, was changing into more and more sophisticated in response to Jonathan Jackson, Operations Director at Steatite. The system had developed by means of numerous iterations from Vantage to Epicor, and the quantity of customized code made updates troublesome and useful resource intensive.
The answer:
By shifting to the cloud, Steatite sought to resolve its operational challenges whereas unlocking entry to progressive options accessible solely by means of the cloud-based model of Epicor Kinetic. “Epicor’s growth path was a consideration level for us,” Jackson says. “Remaining on-premises risked obsolescence, whereas shifting to the cloud made positive we stayed with the most recent and most safe product.”
Moreover, Steatite’s development required a strong and scalable answer. With extra enterprise models situated in several websites, a few of which lacked technical capabilities, the cloud provided dependable entry from a number of areas.”We would have liked scalable, versatile, resilient entry for a number of events, all with various ranges of connectivity and inhouse experience”. The cloud-based answer addressed all these necessities, streamlining the onboarding of recent websites and customers and eliminating the complexities that had as soon as hindered enlargement efforts.
The transfer to the cloud was designed to ease the load on Steatite’s IT staff. With a rising workers base, managing updates, backups, and licensing was consuming sources that will have been higher used for strategic initiatives. By consolidating these processes within the cloud, Steatite aimed to free its IT staff to prioritise innovation and long-term enhancements, shifting focus from routine upkeep to enhancing operations.
The challenges:
But it surely wasn’t fully plain crusing. To modify from a extremely customised on-premises system to a cloud-based ERP, Steatite wanted to streamline its present system to a “vanilla model” that will work with the brand new cloud-based SQL database. It was essential to rigorously determine which core features to maintain when stripping down the product.
On high of that, creating new interface components was one other problem. “We needed to develop new varieties, reviews, and dashboards from scratch, utilizing totally different toolsets and environments,” Jackson explains.
Migrating to the cloud meant embracing utterly new instruments and environments, demanding important time and specialised information. To navigate this, Epicor assigned a devoted challenge supervisor to collaborate with Steatite’s inner staff and supply steady help throughout the migration course of. This collaboration ensured that each one operational necessities had been met by the transfer, giving precedence to mandatory options and decreasing downtime.
The migration was phased over six months, with cautious planning and implementation for testing, piloting, coaching, and rollout. “This structured strategy eased the transition and ensured staff had been ready to make use of the brand new system successfully,” Jackson reviews.
The end result:
Steatite has benefited tremendously from the transfer to the cloud, which in the end remodeled its enterprise and IT operations.
“The best profit is the discount in burden on our IT staff to handle backups and restoration. We not must spend time on patches and redevelopment as that is taken care of centrally,” Jackson shares. This enables IT to deal with development initiatives fairly than routine upkeep.
Scalability has additionally improved, streamlining onboarding and facilitating enlargement. “We all know that the system is versatile sufficient to accommodate extra necessities from new websites or workers, no matter location or accessible bandwidth, making onboarding fast and simple,” Jackson notes. “Having day-to-day performance situated within the cloud and centrally managed works extraordinarily effectively for a enterprise resembling ours, which is comprised of very totally different enterprise models with distinctive necessities working globally.”
One other important development has been safety. Multi-factor authentication and different safety applied sciences are built-in into the cloud system, guaranteeing adherence to business requirements like ISO and CEP. In keeping with Jackson, Steatite has “reached the identical degree of safety within the cloud as we might count on from an on-premises platform.”
AI-driven predictive upkeep has additionally been made doable by way of cloud integration. This characteristic permits the enterprise to increase asset lifecycles, scale back downtime, and proactively handle gear—all of that are important for preserving dependability in harsh circumstances.
A future-ready platform
With Epicor’s ongoing help and a strong cloud infrastructure, Steatite is now well- positioned for long-term development and innovation. The organisation has decreased IT overhead, enhanced safety, and elevated operational effectivity by switching to a simplified, scalable cloud answer. The enterprise has established a stable foundation for its future by welcoming change and addressing obstacles head-on whereas remaining each creative and aggressive.
When requested in the event that they’d think about returning to an on-premises system, Jackson’s response is unequivocal: “No thanks!”
Need to be taught extra about cybersecurity and the cloud from business leaders? Take a look at Cyber Safety & Cloud Expo happening in Amsterdam, California, and London.
Discover different upcoming enterprise know-how occasions and webinars powered by TechForge right here.
