Case Study — Manufacturing
Before the ERP decision, a harder question: is the organisation ready?
A century-old family manufacturer wanted to modernise its systems. The diagnosis found the real blocker sat one level up — in how the business was structured, not in what software it ran.
100+
Years in Operation
4
Business Divisions Diagnosed
3
Governance Tiers Established
01 — Challenge
The Challenge
The client is a century-old, family-owned manufacturing business based in the North of England, operating across several engineering sub-sectors. Management of the business had long relied on paper records and disconnected spreadsheets — beyond a basic finance system, there was little to no digital tooling, and information rarely flowed cleanly between departments.
Leadership recognised the need for an ERP system to drive digital transformation, but was clear-eyed about the risk: rolling out a new system without a matching shift in culture and mindset was likely to fail.
02 — Approach
The Approach
The first phase focused on a full current-state review. Core processes across four business divisions were mapped as-is, one by one, surfacing the key efficiency bottlenecks, data inconsistencies and process breakpoints.
In parallel, interviews and on-the-ground observation assessed employees' readiness for digital change and where resistance was likely to come from — identifying the real barriers at the cultural level, not just the technical gaps.
Those findings fed into a phased transformation roadmap: criteria for evaluating system options, the organisational capabilities that needed building, and a plan for a network of "digital champions" to sustain frontline engagement through the execution phase that would follow.
03 — Outcome
The Outcome
- Completed full as-is process mapping and a digital maturity assessment across four business divisions.
- Identified the core cultural barriers holding back digital adoption, and translated them into an actionable set of interventions.
- The process mapping done during diagnosis surfaced a misalignment between the existing organisational structure and the target operating model — a finding outside the original scope of the engagement, which directly informed a C-level decision on organisational restructuring, and became a precondition for the transformation to succeed.
- Delivered a phased digital transformation roadmap, giving leadership a clear basis for subsequent system selection and implementation.
- Established a three-tier cross-functional governance structure (Steering Team / Core Team / Wider User Group) to keep transformation decisions accountable and evidence-based.