Case Study
Aspin Kemp & Associates
The Company
Aspin Kemp & Associates (AKA) experienced rapid growth since 2006, from just over 10 employees to about 150 employees in 2016. The company started as a documentation and field integration company and then grew into system engineering, manufacturing, integration, and R&D.
With the increase in growth and expansion came an increase in the complexity of the products and projects. To add, most of the products were becoming more unique for each project which made the recording and remembering of these individual products more difficult since an integrated resource management system did not exist within the company structure.
It became more obvious that adding more managers or having more meetings was not an effective way to communicate between departments and between projects. AKA was experiencing the typical growing pains of a small business.
AKA reached out to us to help them solve these growing problems and our team got to work.
Challenges
- Too little time
- Too few good managers
- Constantly “putting out fires”
- Lack of direction or information in order to guide decision making
- Unproductive meetings
- Inconsistent financial data reports between finance and operations
Together with i2t2’s help and experience, AKA realized the needs to define the business processes and create standard operation procedures. With the push of achieving ISO9001 certification, the Quality Management System (QMS) was established which included structured procedures and work instructions that involved all departments from sales to manufacturing and accounting.
However, the inefficient IT tools at the time became a roadblock for the information flow between departments. Each department was using multiple different off-the-shelf software which increased waisted time transferring data in the format needed for the next department. For example, QuickBooks was used by Accounting, AllOrders for Inventory, DOVICO for Timesheet recording and there were no tools for recording engineering processes and change in management except via sending emails back and forth. Too much time was being spent post processing the data to piece together the reports.
It was obvious that the company needed an all-in-one software solution to have one database for all and eliminate the painful integrations steps.
Solution
Odoo stands out in the research of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools with its open source, user-friendly, and cost friendly features. It covers all scopes of business processes from sales, manufacturing, warehouse, logistics, to accounting and reporting.
The implementation of Odoo in AKA started with the core processes of Sales, Manufacturing and Accounting, including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), inventory, warehouse, and delivering. After much success and satisfaction with these, AKA decided to expand their Odoo modules to support functions such as HR, payroll, quality, Project, etc.
Benefits
Information flow: the information submitted will automatically trigger downstream activities. This means there is no need to have meetings or send emails regarding information added to the system.
Information sharing: one data entry will be shared with all involved, so everybody knows who is doing what and the status of each tasks. Each user has all the information they need at the time and place they need it.
Focus: each person has a clear dashboard to focus on the tasks relevant to them. Deadline reminders can be generated by the Odoo system with customized rules.
Approval and check point: mandatory fields and request can be generated in one click. This approval process ensures quality work and products. The check points are integrated in the process to reduce the chance for error thus reducing the cost of poor quality and take little to no time to complete.
Reporting: one button click report makes it extremely easy to generate reports of all kinds in all different formats. The dynamic project summary report with budget, POC (percentage of completion) status, cost, and profit allows users to generate reports on any status in the way they want. Odoo’s integrated system also allows for generating invoices and other documents with little effort, as it will enter all necessary information automatically.
Regulatory compliance: financial statements meet the generally accepted accounting practices. Odoo’s recording and history features ensure all information is recorded and filed neatly and is prepared for audits.
Maturity: The company has transformed from chaotic to organized with managed operations.
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Contact
+1 (902) 201-5010
[email protected]
Address
546 Main St
Montague, PE, C0A 1R0, Canada