Success Stories

 

 

 

 

 

Company:                           Spirent Communications – Subsidiary of Spirent PLC, London, England

 

Market:                               Manufacture and assemble testing equipment for the telecommunications industry

 

Annual Revenues:             $700 M

 

 

Problem:

 

In 1999 Spirent Communications acquired 5 companies in 5 different locations: California, Hawaii, Canada, New Jersey, and London.

Adtech, the Hawaiian company was growing at 100% a year and was operating on a number of Tier III disparate systems. They were in desperate need of upgrading their information system.

A vendor selection team was formed and began to look at vendors for a new ERP system. The President and the team realized quickly that they were overmatched and overwhelmed. They were having a difficult time managing the vendors and getting information to make an accurate decision. At the same time two of the other companies launched similar searches and began encountering similar problems.

 

Ultra Solution:

 

In January 2000, Adtech retained Ultra to guide their team through a selection project. In March, the CFO of Spirent Communications asked Ultra to expand the project to include all 5 companies and expand the scope of the selection to include CRM and PDM. The goal as stated by the CEO was to bring all companies under a single system so as to show one face to the customers, which means one information system providing one invoice to the customer for all products by January 1, 2001.

The selection project was completed in July with the selection of J.D. Edwards for ERP, Siebel for CRM, and Agile for PDM. Deloitte Touche was retained to assist with the implementation. Ultra was retained as the Global Project Manager for the first phase, which included the implementation of all 3 components in 2 companies and the newly formed sales division.

The implementation project was launched 1 week after the contracts were signed. A five-month implementation plan was established with project teams in each location. In that five-month period the teams went through design, configuration, test, convert, train, and cutover phases. At its peak the project team included 100 client and consulting personnel. All three systems were successfully implemented on January 2nd in all three locations. The objective of one invoice for all products was achieved.

 

Benefits: