What’s in a name?

The secret’s out of the box – K3 Syspro Limited has become NexSys Solutions Limited. The change in name and brand identity was announced during our recent Customer Day at the Jaguar Experience Centre in Birmingham in front of over 150 customers and partners.

The reception we received for the rebrand was highly encouraging, with everyone in agreement that our new name and identity better reflect what we bring to our customers as a solutions partner with SYSPRO ERP at our core. But why change at all? Why is a different name and identity so important to driving our company forward? What’s in a name?

To answer this question, it’s always interesting to understand how many people have heard of the company BackRub. As is most often the case, the answer is very few. Yet this company is one of the largest in the world, used by millions of consumers every single day. It’s become the beating heartbeat of the World Wide Web and owns 92% of the global online search market – or rather, it did – once it changed its name!

BackRub was the founding name for what we know today as Google. It was named after what the company does – referring to its extensive backlink library – but that only told half the story. Hence, the change of name in 1998 to Google – a new name that reflects the true capability of the search engine giant. The name Google comes from a mathematics word called googol, the name for a number that has 100 zeros. What better way to describe what the company does?

What’s Next?

At NexSys, we’ve been through a similar journey. Known for 10 years as K3 Syspro, this name only reflects part of what we do, while the name NexSys says that we are a proven solutions provider.

Our Finance Director, Catherine Oakley explains: “NexSys is the perfect name to take us forward because it brings together past and future. ‘Nex’ comes from the word ‘Next’ and the ‘Sys’ comes from SYSPRO. Our name quite literally says that we reflect on what comes next, with SYSPRO ERP at the heart of our offering.”

NexSys is a vision of the future; it’s a statement to our customers that we are dedicated to going beyond SYSPRO to improve their operations and it’s a signal to all our people that there is always something coming “next.”

Prior to settling on our new name and brand we did a lot of work to revisit our values, purpose and mission and every time we spoke to a customer, colleague or partner the same words were banded around: family, trust and expertise.

At our customer day, Anthony Dickson, Managing Director of our partner Anota, echoed the sentiment. “It feels like a family,” he said. “Whenever I come to these customer events, I feel like I work for NexSys. All the partners get on and we are all focused on the same thing – delivering maximum value to the customer and making SYSPRO one of the best ERP products in the world.”

Family values

Almost everyone we spoke to at our customer event mentioned family and this ideology is at the heart of our renewed values: to be creative, challenging, customer focused, capable, caring, and collaborative. Good families support each other, they work together, and they care for one another. NexSys is no different and we have carried these values over from our rich 40-year history. NexSys represents what is possible not just for ERP, not just for our customers, but for our people too. Just ask our Managing Director Nick McGrane who has spent close to thirty years in the business.

“I originally joined when we were called McGuffie Brunton in 1993. I started as a Support Analyst, then became a Consultant, Senior Consultant, Project Manager, Operations Manager, Technical Director and five years ago, Managing Director,” he explained.

“Throughout that time, I have been part of a team that is passionate about solving problems for our customers. We’re a solutions business and a partner. Our team works really hard for our customers – they really are our calling. That is as true today as NexSys as it was 29 years ago when we were McGuffie Brunton. That’s why people, customers and partners stay with us for so long – they are part of the NexSys family.”

The customer’s perspective

Of course, NexSys is nothing without our customers. That’s why it was great to reveal our new name in front of so many of them, and to hear their own stories detailing SYSPRO and our other integration solutions have helped them overcome their own business challenges. In an article that reveals what’s in our new name, with the customer at heart, it’s only right that one of our customers has the last word – on this occasion, Martin Harrison, Manufacturing Director at Samuel Heath,

“We’ve been working with NexSys for 12 years since implementing SYSPRO and continue to rely on their support today. The next step for us is to implement Manufacturing Operations Management into SYSPRO so we can capture data from machines live and see what they are doing. This will enable us to predict if a machine may go down, understand why a failure may have happened and implement preventative action. It will help improve efficiency further.

“I think the rebrand is great and the big reveal today was really good. It makes sense. It perfectly explains where the company is heading as an ERP+ solutions provider. We know they’re not just about ERP; they’re about what’s next for SYSPRO – pulling in complementary solutions to help solve the business challenges we face.”

What’s in a name? For NexSys, the possibilities really are endless – for SYSPRO, for our partners, for our colleagues but most importantly, for our customers!