Concentric AB

System Selection Support

The Client

Concentric AB has a long history of providing innovative solutions for oil pumps, water pumps, fuel pumps and hydraulic systems to its customers around the world. Today Concentric has analyst projected sales revenues for 2022 of £320m and over ~1300 employees in 10 manufacturing facilities across its engines and hydraulic divisions, predominantly in the USA, UK, Germany, India and China. Although Concentric AB is a Swedish registered group of companies, its group headquarters are in Redditch, UK.

The Problem

Concentric wanted to confirm how the global business could operate more efficiently and effectively should it decide to replace over 8 different ERP systems with a single and modern cloud-based ERP system.

Several ‘heritage systems’ were heading for sunsetting by the vendors and that too influenced the timing, potential choice and prioritising of any roll-out of an ERP across the group.

The Solution

We selected Gradient to help us with that journey because their team demonstrated a wide range of experience and knowledge that we believed we needed to make the right decision for the business and its shareholders.

In addition to a ‘group’ strategy review, Gradient conducted 6 site visits in the UK, USA, Germany and India to discover and confirm the as-is and potential to-be processes. From this, a gaps and opportunities analysis was produced to aid the senior management team in deciding on the next steps based on budgets and an outline ROI.

Following a review of the findings and understanding the critical success factors for the project, Gradient produced a Statement of Requirements that reflected the transformation path that the project team would follow.

What the Client Says

“We highly recommend Gradient for any company that needs help figuring out how they might transform their business through the selection of an ERP system.”

Concentric AB

Actions

Based on their experience and findings from the site visits, Gradient liaised with a longer list of potential vendors to decide and agree with Concentric to whom the Statement of Requirements would be sent.
On completion and analysis of this, including outline budgets and implementation considerations, 3 vendors were asked to demonstrate their capabilities to key project personnel from the UK, USA and Germany and who attended the demos in person in the UK.
A focused agenda from Gradient and their management of this process ensured maximum value was derived from the 3 full days of demos. All the vendors had an equal opportunity to demonstrate both their capabilities and domain knowledge in the automotive market space.
After selecting a preferred supplier, we then engaged in a couple of focused workshops to address some outstanding questions about their capabilities arising from the demos.
Commercial discussions were had to ensure maximum value and maximum flexibility on a rollout would be achieved to ensure the planned ROI would be achievable. Gradient provided invaluable support in providing feedback and suggestions on the vendor’s proposed terms and conditions for the final agreement resulting in signatures at the end of June 2022.

The Result

The selection process took a bit longer than had been initially planned, not least because Covid intervened and Concentric also acquired two more businesses in the meanwhile in the USA, one of which increased Concentric’s group revenues by more than 50%. As a result, a re-evaluation of the scope, timing and costs was needed as there were another 2 ERP systems and over 300 additional personnel to consider. However, Gradient were both responsive and helpful in ensuring this was done in an acceptable timescale before the short list of vendors was agreed upon for the demonstrations.
We made the right choice of partner in Gradient and they have helped us to make our decision to implement Infor’s CloudSuite Automotive solution.
The team thought Infor’s solution provided more ‘out of the box’ capabilities for an automotive supplier compared to the other two vendors and also demonstrated their understanding of the challenges that the business will have to overcome in order to deliver the savings that we all anticipate.
The UK will be the first to embark on this project in August 2022 and provide a proven framework for the wider business to streamline our processes further and help consolidate Concentric’s market position to grow the business as EV technology further develops and further impacts the automotive industries.