Forterra

Forterra, one of the UK’s largest building products manufacturers, recently determined that their hard-to-support business systems had begun to limit the growth of the organisation and so began the search for a new ERP system.

With a busy and growing workforce of over 1,800 staff across 18 sites, Forterra knew they needed to choose a system that would both consolidate and modernise their core systems, reduce business risk and better support the aims of the business. So, after a process of evaluation, Forterra selected Oracle JD Edwards as their new ERP platform, allowing consistency across the business and the various product lines.

Matt Day, IT director at Forterra, knew that the user adoption phase would be a huge consideration during the implementation, as some users had been utilising the same legacy system for decades. So, he opted to enlist the services of Optimum to provide a bespoke ERP end-user training programme for the JDE rollout.

“We selected Optimum as our training provider and to assist us in the change management generally. It was really important to us, that from the early outset, what we wanted was the best in the change management space,” he said.

At the start of the engagement, Optimum completed their RapidScope® process, an exercise which scoped the end-user training phase, providing a clear plan with resources assigned for the development and delivery.
This methodical, organised approach was welcomed by the business, particularly Business Change Manager Kim Walker, who said: “Right from the beginning we were able to sort out what we needed and what the deliverables would be.”

“So, in selecting Optimum, what we were really looking for was the value-add as a service provider,” said Matt Day. By weaving core business messages in to training,

Optimum provided added value by ensuring there is consistency across the company and increasing the end users’ level of understanding of the ‘bigger picture’.

After creating deliverables for the Finance, Manufacturing, Inventory, Logistics, Procurement and Sales workstreams, Optimum provided skill the trainer sessions to Forterra super users, before delivering the sessions in tandem with the internal team.

Kim Walker said, “We have had fantastic feedback from everybody about the trainers. It was delivered in a really good way. Optimum were very flexible with us, very professional with it, and were very quick to come back and make suggestions for us.”

And, while cost wasn’t a principle driver for Forterra, Matt Day said they were “certainly very happy with the return on investment they received from the programme delivered.”

Finally, during go-live of each business location, Optimum provided onsite floor-walking to provide customer support and stabilise the launch.

“They were brilliant – all the way through,” said Kim Walker. “It was quite sad to see them go really because they had become part of us, and part of the project and our training.”

Matt Day concluded, “Consistently, we’ve had good reports from our end-user base about the quality of the training materials and the training delivery and we’ll certainly be looking to select Optimum again for our future programmes. I wouldn’t have any hesitation in recommending Optimum to anybody who is implementing an ERP solution.”