ERP Upgrade Supports Plan for Growth

The Northwest Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center was an excellent resource for Whirley to use on this project. The IT infrastructure put into place was extremely beneficial to operations. Whirley has made a significant investment be able to track and provide real-time information that can be accessed by all personnel, which was not possible before. It helped to solidify our sales forecasts and future growth.

Whirley's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system had been in place for 35 years. It was no longer supported by the original provider, and had several individual data silos which affected efficiencies and increased operating costs. Whirly was already working with the Northwest Industrial Resource Center (NWIRC), a NIST MEP network affiliate, when they determined that the existing system would not allow the company to grow in alignment with the company’s business plan. Several key domestic and international customers demand functions like real-time SPC (statistical process control), which the legacy system did not support.

NWIRC determined that the best way to augment the company’s IT infrastructure was by facilitating the implementation of an integrated ERP system to support operations. The new ERP system includes many best practices to help improve productivity and satisfy operational and customer needs. Key employees now have access to new dashboards, and the company’s worldwide sales force has access to a customer relationship management (CRM) system that interacts with the new ERP database, as well as the use of a new interactive product configurator.

NWIRC helped Whirley to secure funding assistance for the project through the Broadband Outreach and Aggregation Fund (BOAF). Whirley also increased its broadband utilization of desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and wireless access points to interface with the new resource planning system. The software upgrade helped the company to retain and increase sales and improve process flow.