4th August 2008

K3 Business Technology Group (K3) has won a contract to supply a tailored IT solution to Petrel, the specialist manufacturer of electrical equipment for the petrochemical, oil and gas industries. The contract includes an innovative SYSPRO ERP (enterprise resource planning) system and a K3 Network Infrastructure Solution; supplying back-end hardware, a data security solution, the Microsoft operating platform and a Microsoft SQL Server solution. Petrel’s new SYSPRO solution will provide improved product traceability, enable full visibility of management information and boost accuracy in order-picking and despatch. The system will go live in October 2008.

Petrel is expanding and therefore required a replacement for a 10-year old ERP system to support its current business and growth plans.

“We chose SYSPRO from K3 as our ideal solution from among a range of other systems and providers. The K3 team members were very responsive to our questions and they provided answers to all our concerns. They demonstrated to us that they understood our business and wanted to help take it forward,” says
Peter Maclean, Managing Director, Petrel.

With SYSPRO the company will gain the benefits of a fully-integrated, user-friendly system that will provide a wide range of functions and features that cover the whole operation from quotations, through planning and manufacturing, to final despatch. Importantly, the system will provide complete traceability to meet the legislative requirements governing authorised suppliers of equipment used in hazardous environments.

“We have several requirements of SYSPRO that will help to improve our operations and ultimately benefit our customers. For example, traceability is a must as we provide products to be used in potentially explosive environments. Therefore, all of our products carry unique serial numbers and with SYSPRO we will be able to use these to quickly trace any problems right back to source,” says Peter Maclean.

In addition, Petrel wants easy access to management information via its SYSPRO system. K3 will finely tune the SYSPRO system to cover every part of the operation so that it will assist with driving internal improvements.

“Our current system does not provide the levels of information we need. With SYPRO we anticipate that this will radically improve access and visibility of management information. Indeed, the new system will make information more readily available at our fingertips,” continues Peter Maclean.

Peter Maclean also highlights that the system will improve accuracy in order-picking and despatch.

“SYSPRO will streamline our picking and despatch operations giving us heightened levels of accuracy. Our current system is a little restrictive and our new system will help us to improve internally, with the benefits of improvements in accuracy passed on to our customers,” he says.