Hammond Power Solutions
Customer Success Story
In 2018 OnActuate created, implemented, and supported a strategic rollout of Microsoft Dynamics AX for Hammond Power Solutions.
Key results
75% faster
physical inventory
50% faster
month-end closing
1 cake
to celebrate a successful go-live
A Global Dynamics Rollout to Streamline Data Sharing
BACKGROUND
Established in 1917, Hammond Power Solutions (HPS) has grown from a small family-owned business to an industry leader in magnetic transformer design and manufacturing. Innovative engineering capabilities, high quality products, and responsive customer service have established HPS as a technical leader in electrical and electronic manufacturing. Their products can be found on every continent, every ocean and have even orbited in space!
SYSTEMS CHALLENGES
The Devil is in the Details
In 2010, HPS was running numerous disconnected, smaller Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. All the data had to be manually consolidated and the solution didn’t handle multi-currency or multi-entity. HPS decided to move to a new ERP platform that was multi-currency, multi-language, multi-entity, and housed within a single instance.
HPS formed a team of 40 functional leads who completed detailed scripting exercises to evaluate hundreds of smaller feature sets. Paul Gaynor has been the Director of Information Services at HPS since 2010. He manages the technology and business systems for all their facilities globally. “We were trying to put a scientific approach to selecting the product because ERP is so vast. It’s quite difficult to go through a single demonstration and pick which one is going to be the best for your organization,” said Gaynor. “You’ve got to get as many of those checkboxes checked as you can for it to be successful.”
HPS chose to move forward with Dynamics AX 2012 and began plans to roll it out to its manufacturing facilities around the world.
Gaynor’s Top Tips
Find the product that best suits your organization.
Get as many of your internal subject matter experts involved as necessary to analyze in as much detail as you can. In addition to the product features, consider the culture of your organization and the type of business that you’re in.
Involve post-sales during the evaluation stage with your partner.
Find a partner that you are comfortable with and align expectations between pre- and post-sales. This will ensure the sales team and the implementation team responsible for delivery are on the same page.
Take ownership of the product.
Your partner is an expert in the ERP, not in the nuances of your organization. Take responsibility for making sure sensitive processes aren’t being disrupted and anything important to your organization is being addressed in a way that your organization can handle.
Taking Back Control
In 2015, HPS acquired a company in Hyderabad, India. At HPS India all the products were custom engineered and custom built. Staff had to price the product and commit to a delivery date before the product had even been engineered. Besides the challenge of the engineering process, HPS also needed to manage the build and delivery cycle.
From the start, HPS India had difficulty with accurate reporting and data sharing. It didn’t have any form of system automation – all reporting was manual and paper-based. “We had no visibility into their inventories. Due to system limitations, they couldn’t report what their monthly sales were,” said Gaynor. “We struggled to get month-end closing to consolidate into the corporate financials.”
HPS decided to leverage AX 2012 to make HPS India more efficient. Gaynor began looking for a partner to help with the global ERP deployment.
APPROACH
Creating a Global ERP Team
Initially HPS had trouble finding an implementation partner with the centralized, global project management they were looking for. In 2016 Gaynor connected with OnActuate, a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner, at a Microsoft conference. Soon after, he met with a member of the OnActuate executive team at their branch in India to do a diagnostic exercise and come up with a plan.
“Right out of the gate, I knew OnActuate was the right implementation partner for us,” said Gaynor. “I was impressed with the team’s knowledge and respect for our business. We built a solid relationship from the start.”
(L-R) Amit Varshney, Paul Gaynor, Ashish Sharan, Praveen Kumar, and Tanuj Goel at a site visit before project kick-off in 2017.
The OnActuate strategy was to build a global ERP project team at both the client and the partner level. This cross-functional business unit team was organized around the primary business objectives for HPS and followed a process-centric, collaborative approach with ample communication. This helped to drive ownership and accountability of the new solution throughout HPS. The hands-on project activities increased competency in the project team and improved the quality of the implementation, leading to optimal results.
“The OnActuate team is very trustworthy and adaptable. Some of the tactical work is done from their global delivery center, but it’s not beyond your reach. They give you direct contact and information when you need it,” said Gaynor. “They learned our logging and auditing process, and our ticketing system. They even give the code back to us in the same manner that our internal developers would have done it!”
RESULTS
HPS India went live with AX 2012 in February 2019. At the end of March, it did a fiscal count for year end and was able to provide an accurate physical inventory count for the first time. Since the global rollout, HPS India can complete physical inventory 75% faster and perform month-end closing in half the time.
(L-R) Paul Gaynor and Ashish Sharan cut into a cake to celebrate a successful go-live in 2019.
What’s Next
With more than 100 years in business, HPS continues to evolve to best support their customers. As of March 2021, they are working with OnActuate to deploy AX 2012 at their facility in Quebec, Canada.
HPS and OnActuate’s next project together is a global upgrade to cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365. This 2-year project will include 8 manufacturing locations and follow the same process-centric and global project team approach.
Global ERP rollouts are complex, but OnActuate’s proactive planning, extensive knowledge, and People First philosophy set Gaynor at ease. “OnActuate is a really good company. They have a strong commitment to making the customer happy. It’s not all about the bottom line,” said Gaynor
