Partnering for Impact

Through their synergistic partnership with specialized third-party solutions, Encore and To-Increase ensured a tailored and thorough financial solution for manufacturing leader, Electroimpact.

Electroimpact Inc. (EI) is a world leader in designing and manufacturing aerospace tooling and automation. As a company founded to be the “ultimate engineer’s company”, their operational philosophy of removing any technical barriers that might slow performance ushered an explosive 15-year growth period which gave rise to considerable production and financial process strain.

The company needed the agility that cloud solutions provide along with the industry-specific tool sets and expertise that immediately impact both production and strategic decision making. They quickly landed on Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations as the major financial solution since its innate purchase order, invoicing, AP, and payroll processes would streamline execution time and reduce labor costs. However, EI saw that it was short of the manufacturing process tools that they knew would drive sustainable success.

EI chose Encore as their implementation partner because they approached the process as if they were a member of the EI team, not an outsider who brought assumptions to the table. From the initial conversations, Encore worked closely to align EI’s business workflows to the software’s best practices. They explained that Microsoft intends their platform to meet 80% of any company’s needs, covering financial and operational functions. For the remaining 20%, their network of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) fills in the gaps that inherently come with each company’s unique methods. The ideal solution should be a synergy of the core ERP with specialized manufacturing solutions that work seamlessly within it.

Backed by more than 30 years of partnering with both competing and complementary relationships, Encore’s impressive list of connections within the Microsoft partner community and their successes when working in concert with third-party solutions brought many options to the table.

Encore has always believed that partnerships founded on the basis of mutual success are beneficial for everyone: the partners and customers. The integrated effort between Encore and To-Increase fosters a strategic and collaborative approach designed to find value for the end customers. In this case our customer, Electroimpact, found value in the simple, unified, and scalable solution offering through our partnership.

The obvious choice emerged when Encore introduced EI to To-Increase and their suite of elegant and easy-to-adopt manufacturing tools for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. After discovering EI’s root goals, To-Increase’s Advanced Project Management (APM), PLM-ERP Integration Framework and Connectivity Studio were perfect fits.

To-Increase’s Dynamics 365 APM solution provided the EI manufacturing team with additional visibility into each customer’s project—from initial quotation, capacity planning, and work breakdown structure through to costing and materials supply chain. This essential project information enabled EI to provide better overall project management, control costs, and improve profitability.

Their PLM-ERP Integration Framework and Connectivity Studio software enabled seamless PLM to Dynamics 365 integration, allowing them to create configurations between various systems, saving time, expensive customizations, and additional implementation costs. As a bonus, the maintenance of these integrations is part of the overall Microsoft release schedule, which will save the company extra maintenance costs as well.

Throughout the evaluation and implementation process, Encore, To-Increase, and EI worked well together. The Encore and To-Increase teams reliably collaborated to work as a single implementation unit which alleviated EI’s need to manage both partners. The partners balanced their own requirements and expectations with the other’s while preserving the overall timeline. This gave rise to a unified, simplified solution. The result was a true partnership between all companies that led to a successful digital transformation project and quick adoption by the EI team.

Speaking of this partnership, Jon Phipps, To-Increase’s North America Channel Director, said, “The foundation of our partnership with Encore is built on our shared values and the mutual success we’ve already seen with our clients. Encore has unique subject matter expertise in the discrete manufacturing space, and we are confident of their strong go-to-market strategy, especially in the Pacific Northwest.”

Within an hour of go-live, the EI shop staff clocked into production orders and were making parts. By day 3 post-go-live, all open POs were cut over. By the end of the first week, 75% of the EI salaried staff had created and entered time in the new system, assigning labor costs to appropriate projects. By the end of the second week, EI had successfully paid vendors and invoiced customers. And just over three weeks after go-live, the company conducted payroll completely out of the new ERP system, depositing paychecks into employee accounts. Thankfully, support tickets dwindled. EI did not need to push a single patch or update to their production instance in the first month post-go-live.

Implementing a modern and scalable solution to prepare the organization for the future was the ultimate goal of this project. Through tight collaboration, mutual respect for the other’s expertise, and working tirelessly toward the same goal, both Encore and To-Increase delivered a single, sophisticated solution that is a core system and process-driver for EI’s business functions. Throughout the entire project, both partners found the exponentialized power of working as a combined team to be the key to not only the project’s success, but also to forging a long-term synergistic relationship that will benefit the entire manufacturing market.