More than £100,000 is being spent by the Group on new computer equipment, software and training from Epicor for an ERP solution that is designed to streamline the firm’s entire data operations, from manufacturing to administration and customer service.

While initially customers will not notice any difference to the excellent level of service already offered by the lock manufacturer and coating and electroplating specialist, the group believes that consolidating all its information on a single database makes financial and production sense as it will enable them to analyse and interrogate data for strategic purposes much more efficiently.

There are three different platforms currently in use by Pickersgill-Kaye, which designs and produces locks and safety products for the rail, security and custodial industries, and metal finisher Pickersgills. When fully implemented, the new joined-up system will free up staff and enable them to carry out more productive tasks within the company.

In addition to providing just one point of data entry and computerising areas within the company that do not have software systems in place, the ERP solution will also provide new features such as product configuration, which could be beneficial for customers.

Group managing director Peter Murphy says this major commitment to improving its internal processes will bring efficiency savings and help the company serve its target markets even better.

He commented: "Investing in ERP will free up decision making within the business and help us to grow. It will allow staff to do more productive things rather than processing and computer inputting. We will start to see benefits almost immediately in terms of manual input, where at the moment we have to make multiple entries and re-enter data.

"This investment gives us a much more joined up administration and production planning structure throughout the group of companies. It will provide a modern software system that will serve us for the foreseeable future. We may even decide to use product configuration and allow customers to access that part of the system so that they can configure their own products."

Pickersgill-Kaye’s locks are designed on state-of-the-art CAD software and are subjected to extensive and challenging testing on key operation, lock construction and overall durability and resistance to attack, in order to satisfy the operational requirements of national and international market sectors.

While Pickersgills offers a wide range of metal finishing solutions for items in small and large quantities, including pre-treatments such as chromating, phosphating and blasting, electroplating processes with zinc, nickel and chrome, anodising and polishing steel, copper, brass and aluminium all completed entirely in-house to ensure a complete and consistent finish.

The group is confident of strengthening its presence at home and breaking into even more markets overseas in the future. This substantial outlay on new computer systems is testament to its commitment to achieving that growth.

For more information, please contact Pickersgill-Kaye.