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Secure Software and Improved Service is Key For Hucknall Steel Metal Engineering

Hucknall Steel Metal (HSM) Engineering was founded over 40 years ago and manufactures parts for the aerospace, commercial and engineering industries. The company didn’t have a production control system and wanted to implement software to improve its on-time delivery performance to its customers.

The company required a system that was secure, user-friendly and could improve its business processes. HSM Engineering chose ProgressPlus as it ticked all the boxes.

Problem

Needed Better Control

HSM Engineering didn’t have a manufacturing system and needed to take control of their business processes. The business wanted to improve supplier performance and ensure materials arrived on-time and to specification as well as meeting delivery dates for customer sales orders.

Claire North, Finance Controller at HSM Engineering said “The business processes and systems were not integrated. The company uses Sage for accounting but the purchase orders were written on pen and paper and entered into Sage.

Sales orders were added to Sage but this was only used for basic admin tasks of creating delivery notes and invoices.”

Solution

Evaluating – Software and its Security

Claire commented: “We evaluated three software providers. Sage manufacturing, a cloud-based provider and ProgressPlus”.

Sage Manufacturing

Claire said “Sage is perfect for finance but we didn’t feel it was as strong for manufacturing. We ruled out Sage for Manufacturing because we didn’t want to make the same mistakes as we were doing in Sage accounting.  We wanted to start from scratch and make sure we do things properly.”

Cloud production control software

Claire continued: “We reviewed a cloud-based tool but we didn’t take it further due to the lack of security of cloud software. We have contracts with aerospace manufacturers, such as Roll Royce and we aren’t allowed to use cloud products as everything has to be secure.

For instance, we make parts for Rolls Royce and all employees have to sign confidentiality agreements to keep their intellectual property safe. The cloud software provider assured us it was 99% safe but we couldn’t take the risk.”

ProgressPlus

“We were very impressed with how user-friendly the software is and that it is matched by a great team. From the demonstration of the software, it was clear that it does exactly what we needed it to do.”

Results

“Improved customer service – Previously, on occasions, we were late on deliveries and ProgressPlus resolved this. The reporting functionality has helped improve our customer service by enabling us to get our products delivered on time.

More secure – the software is installed at our premises and not on a public server reducing the likelihood of hacking.

User-friendly – It is very user-friendly, the whole team picked it up very quickly and learned how to use the tool. We love how you can drill down and keep going into things. The reporting has helped us all immensely by improving our customer service.

Saving time with a simplified invoice process – before we used to take a couple of weeks to get invoices out, now it is instant. It saves time and cost of postage; before we were sending invoices out by post but now everything is done electronically on the same day. We are no longer waiting on the post, so we’re getting invoices out quicker meaning we get paid quicker.

Exemplary Support team – Customer support is excellent and have always sorted any issues out. You don’t get put through to a call centre!

Overall, we are very impressed with Berkeley Myles Solutions and ProgressPlus is exceptional.”