SSR on the right track with Epicor ERP

Established in 2003, it has flourished under the entrepreneurial leadership of the company's owners. This is despite the many challenges that face a new start-up in a capital-intensive industry.

A key to this success has been the diversification of the business across a number of distinct but complementary revenue streams.

SSR's operations include short haul rail services, supply of rail crews, leasing of rolling stock and emergency field repairs. Maintenance, repair and overhaul services (MRO) are provided at the Bendigo Railway Workshop where SSR also manufacture and refurbish rolling stock and components for customers and their own fleet.

To manage all of this meant SSR had to maintain a myriad of spreadsheets and add-ons to their legacy business system. Time consuming, inflexible and lacking integration, SSR could see that this set up would restrict their plans for further growth.

Supported by IT industry experts, Pitcher Partners, SSR set about a thorough review of their business requirements, matching them against the best available solutions in the market.

After an exhaustive process it was clear Epicor stood out as clearly superior to all other offerings.

"The thoroughness of Epicor's response along with the number and relevance of their references was quite impressive," Brent Nally, SSR's general manager said.

"The work they put into the demonstration showed that Epicor was keen to understand and meet our business requirements. The Epicor software could clearly do all that we needed now and its advanced design showed the flexibility to handle our future requirements as well."

They also got to see the Epicor implementation team in action, whose skills and experience were evident.

The company is looking forward to the next stages of the project, Nally says.

"We are really excited at the prospect of working with Epicor to transform our business to better sustain our growth and deal with the challenges and opportunities it is bringing us."