There’s nothing simple about building authentic parts for the original Mini, Austin-Healey Sprite, Triumph Stag, Morris Minor, and other British classics. “We produce all the parts that go into the complete MGB body shell,” says John Pollard, business systems manager at British Motor Heritage. “And we do it in the same handcrafted way that it was done in the 1960s and 1970s, with the same press tools and jigs and the same reliance on highly skilled people.”

Its dedication to craftsmanship has made British Motor Heritage the largest classic automotive components manufacturer in the world, and the world is clamoring for more.

Unfortunately, the company was rapidly outgrowing the legacy systems supporting its operations, which provided little visibility and control over financial, accounting, sales, purchasing, and manufacturing processes. “It was difficult to keep track of our growing inventory,” says Pollard. “And we never had an up-to-date picture of our financials.”

British Motor Heritage wanted real-time reporting and analytics that could help it optimize inventory levels and better plan and monitor production activities in order to stay in sync with customer demand. “We knew that with the right software solution, we could stay on top of our cash flow, and we wouldn’t have to spend days completing our monthly and yearly financial reporting,” explains Pollard.

Ensuring that everyone experienced a smooth transition from business processes built around the legacy system to the processes of SAP Business One that support best practices was a critical challenge for British Motor Heritage. “To ensure rapid staff adoption and to avoid any business disruptions, we customized a lot of user interfaces in SAP Business One to match our legacy processes,” explains Pollard. “We could then slowly pull back those interfaces and bring everyone in line with the software’s bestpractice functionality.”

To help deploy SAP Business One, British Motor Heritage met with a number of SAP partners. “APH Computers Ltd. was the most successful in demonstrating its SAP Business One expertise as well as a full grasp of our business requirements,” says Pollard. APH worked closely with staff at all le vels of British Motor Heritage to enable a rapid four-month implementation. “The team at APH really understands that it’s our people that make British Motor Heritage so special,” says Pollard. “And they share our passion of getting more parts for more British classics back into manufacturing.”

SAP Business One is empowering people across the company with the self-service tools they need to do more on their own. The application’s built-in SAP Crystal Reports® software has revolutionized the company’s business reporting, which makes Pollard’s team very happy. “Prior to the implementation, our small IT staff was spending a lot of time compiling reports for everyone in the company,” he says. “With SAP Business One, reporting is a piece of cake, and the software lets my team focus on the core mission of delivering innovation.”

The company has eliminated the days of effort required to complete its financial reporting. “Monthend and year-end reporting? No problem, you just run it,” says Pollard. “We no longer have to put holds on builds or orders just to ensure reporting accuracy; and even our auditors love it because now it’s so much easier for them to find information.”

SAP Business One is saving time and eliminating complexity across the company, and it’s enabling British Motor Heritage to put more focus on optimizing manufacturing operations and customer service. “Our agility and service levels have definitely improved since implementing SAP Business One,” says Pollard. “Our daily fill r ate is going up, and we can take advantage of customer trends in a very costeffective way.”

Most recently, planners at the company are gaining a better understanding of required production resources as well as the component inventory levels they need to maintain. “SAP Business One provides us with the look ahead that we didn’t have before,” says Pollard. “So we can better anticipate demand and keep inventory levels low.” Planners can create different production scenarios to determine impacts on production resources, component and finished inventory, and cash requirements.

“We’re using SAP Business One to improve production planning for the core products that make up about 90% of our sales,” says Pollard. “We can analyze the entire sales history to forecast demand over the next weeks, months, and years and then determine our specific production requirements over the same time period. It’s absolutely fantastic!”