Our annual customer day took place on 7th November, customers, industry experts and thought leaders came together at the Jaguar Visitor Centre in Castle Bromwich. The customer day has always been a highlight of our events calendar and the annual gettogether gives impetus to the entire NexSys community It gives us a chance to celebrate our Movers and Makers, keep up to speed with the latest industry trends and look ahead at how building digital resilience can help drive economic growth.
We’re in a climate of doom and gloom, but anyone working with UK manufacturers knows that there’s plenty to celebrate. The sector is thriving, and our annual Customer Day offered the ideal platform to celebrate innovation and explore the transformative powers of ERP. The event has always offered a great opportunity to network, build product knowledge and benefit from the insight of sector specialists. Our manufacturers, engineers and logistics companies keep our economy ticking and their thirst for innovation gives everyone around them cause for optimism. At NexSys, we want to take every opportunity to come face to face with these businesses and explore how best to support them on their digitisation journey.
The day was kicked off with networking and a welcome speech from our Managing Director, Nick McGrane. We then handed over the stage to SYSPRO’s Chief Innovation Officer, Kevin Dherman and Dashnee Shah, Product Manager at K3. Kevin and Dashnee talked through the new developments of SYSPRO 8 and explained how these updates can make a real and effective change to manufacturing and logistics businesses. For example, SYSPRO is now compatible with MAC computers, and the web browser app Avanti has undergone further development in an effort to make the system more environmentally friendly – the data has been compressed by 72% to make information download and transfer faster, meaning less energy is used.
To put the latest ERP advancements into context, we invited Charlotte Horobin, Membership Director Midlands & East for Make UK, to talk about how the UK’s Movers and Makers are faring. Charlotte took us through the facts about where the UK’s manufacturing industry is currently and what Brexit could mean for the sector. However, she also pointed out some key examples of manufacturers pushing the envelope in terms of implementing environmental policy and supporting their local communities. Manufacturing is the corner stone, not just of the UK economy but also our society. Charlotte’s experience meant she cut through the rhetoric and painted an accurate but uplifting picture of what’s going on within the manufacturing sector.
We also heard from Mark Cooper, IT Manager and Management Accountant at long term customer Rocket Medical, who shared how the business has been using SYSPRO for over 15 years. Mark outlined how SYSPRO and K3 had supported the growth of Rocket Medical who now operate in seven countries including the UK. Mark was a great speaker and really articulated the power that an integrated ERP system can have on the growth prospects of a manufacturing business.
During a busy afternoon session, our customers were able to access technical expertise and tips and tricks in the afternoon workshop sessions, to enable them to get the most out of their ERP. Visitors also dropped into a range of support sessions on topics including AI, cybersecurity, leveraging financials and accelerating IT performance.
It’s an exciting time to be working at NexSys and supporting customers in embracing the opportunities afforded by Industry 4.0. In this uncertain and complicated economic and political environment, events like our customer day are more important that ever. Learning together and sharing best practice empowers Movers and Makers to make the best business decisions possible to continue pushing forward, to stay ahead of the game, together. Because when our manufacturers thrive, so does everyone else.
