The Move to Cloud Pays Off with Modernization, Savings, and Speed
Pharmapac has been designing, manufacturing, and producing premium plastic packaging solutions for more than five years. The organisation remains family-run to this day, focused on the same core values since day one: delivering exceptional quality and service.
The business, a leader in sustainable and ethical packaging manufacturing is committed to improving how packaging is designed and manufactured, with state-of-the-art production facilities and technology playing a significant role in quality management, sustainability, and R&D.
Driven by innovation, Pharmapac keeps a keen eye on evolving technology to introduce new and better ways of doing business. The company’s partnership with Epicor dates back to 2017, then deploying Epicor Kinetic in 2021 to support manufacturing, financial, and warehouse operations.
“It hit home that on-premise servers aren’t immune from problems—cementing our decision to shift ERP to the cloud,” Steele explains. “We wanted to take measures to improve our security posture and knew the time was now.”
The organisation also wanted to be up to date on the latest Epicor Kinetic features, eliminating the need to outsource upgrades, which were costly and time-consuming. Steele made the recommendation to migrate, qualifying the savings that would be generated by taking platform upgrades and server maintenance off the table, and gaining the peace of mind that the ERP system would be secure and always available.
Steele admits migrating Epicor Kinetic to the cloud wasn’t a decision the company took lightly, conducting extensive testing on the platform for approximately a year in preparation. To help support a successful adoption and maintain ease-of-use for employees, Steele had teams use the browser UX for Epicor Kinetic within their on-premise implementation as an interim step. This helped to provide a more straightforward stepping stone approach for the users when they moved to the cloud-enabled Epicor Kinetic, as they were looking at screens they were already familiar with.
In addition, the company’s on-premise deployment was as standard as possible, providing a future-proof cloud migration path. Steele created an internal cloud migration checklist, using Epicor Support as needed during migration activities.
Epicor Kinetic is used across the business, supporting end-to-end processes from initial order quote through to product shipment. For example, with Epicor Mobile Warehouse, employees use the handheld application to bring new levels of simplicity and accuracy to shipments—knowing exactly which products to select and where they are located.
There’s no doubt Epicor Kinetic makes us more agile, with the ability to quickly pivot based on customer requests or market demand.”
From there, labels and packing slips can be printed directly from the mobile scanners, eliminating manual steps. And when customers are on-site on the production floor, data in Epicor Kinetic can quickly be accessed to show the real-time status of orders.
“There’s no doubt Epicor Kinetic makes us more agile, with the ability to quickly pivot based on customer requests or market demand,” adds Steele.
Pharmapac uses back flushing as part of inventory management, helping to simplify the tracking of materials and components by deducting materials from inventory after the production process is complete. With Epicor Kinetic, the company create burden rates for the machinery, enabling the financial management team to closely monitor and action cost rollups, supporting real-time data on the margins of the products that are produced.
The Sales teams are also heavy users of Epicor Kinetic, analysing customer data to better meet the needs across various product, industry, and customer segments.
The team at Pharmapac is committed to putting measures in place to make production methods and products as environmentally friendly as possible. Having accurate business intelligence plays a critical role in helping customers understand they are purchasing from a company with an ethical approach to manufacturing—and Epicor Kinetic helps support that mission.
“We recently conducted carbon calculations with a company and the team extracted information from Epicor Kinetic,” Steele says. “Having accurate data about the path a product takes after production helps us better understand our Scope 3 carbon footprint.”
In addition to reduced ERP management because of moving to Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud, Pharmapac has experienced some unexpected, added bonuses, shares Steele. “Our IT team was recently running performance checks and was impressed with the speed. And our employees can now access ERP resources anytime, anywhere, logging into a mobile device like an iPad from home or on the road.”
Since we moved to the cloud, we have more time to focus on other business activities since we’re not worried about Epicor Kinetic upgrades and patches. And now we’re in a better place to tap into other parts of Kinetic and Epicor for a more connected, powerful ERP system.
“Since we’ve moved to the cloud, we have more time to focus on other business activities since we’re not worrying about Epicor Kinetic upgrades and patches,” says Steele. “And now we are in a better position to tap into other parts of Kinetic and Epicor for a more connected and powerful ERP system.”
