Lionweld Kennedy Case Study

About Lionweld Kennedy

Lionweld Kennedy is a leading manufacturing company with a history dating back over 100 years. They are the largest manufacturer of open mesh steel flooring and handrail systems in the UK, and since their acquisition by Hill & Smith Holdings Plc in 2004 the business has continued to go from strength to strength. As a world-class provider of steel and GRP grated flooring, handrails, stair treads, and other associated access solutions, the business also provides guidance, technical support and education on product selection, sustainability, planning, design, and installation.

Lionweld Kennedy is a forward-thinking business, committed to sustainability and leading change within their industry. These efforts have been recognised with the honour of having obtained the world’s first Environmental Product Declaration for steel grating, with their infinitely recyclable Safegrid products cementing their commitment to their ESG plan and minimising their impact on the world.

Challenges

Lionweld Kennedy had been using various on-premise software solutions to manage their business, with an Australian system called Online Advantage having been in place for twenty-five years. It was implemented in 2000, and according to Karl Wrightson, Operations Director, “it looked like an old system even then.” Too many manual processes, a lack of accurate, timely business reporting, and integration with a CRM system, as well as the need for a warehousing scanning solution and improved shop floor work scheduling and inspection were key drivers in the search for a new ERP solution.

Solution

Lionweld Kennedy chose to implement SAP Business One on Amazon Web Services to support their future growth. The decision was led by their Financial Director and IT Manager at the time, and SAP Business One stood out as the most readily available and common within the industry. It fit the bill most for what they were looking for at the time, which has been proven throughout the implementation and now that the system is live. The business lived and breathed the previous system, so it was really important they made the right choice for their new system. Karl says, “the thing I really liked about SAP Business One was that it’s so user friendly. It’s a modern looking system and you can find your way around it really easily. It’s made life easier for a lot of people, and it has given us the ability to get our controls back in place.”

Benefits

SAP Business One has brought many benefits to Lionweld Kennedy, which include how easy it is to use and the depth of information they can get from the system. They have embraced the use of SAP Business One across the company from the very start as a true business management system. It’s an operations system that feeds finance, and everything is related across the business, from enquiries to sales orders, procurement, production, invoicing and dispatching. Everything goes through the system to give them a single source of truth. Karl says, “we’re getting so much more data out of SAP Business One. As everything is in one place, we’re only just at the tip of the iceberg in what sort of information we can get out of SAP to make decisions on the business. It gives us quick and easy tools to make the big decisions.”

They have also found that it's much easier with new people coming into the business as it’s so much easier and more consistent to train them. There was nothing documented from a training point of view from the previous system but with SAP Business One, it’s all documented with strict training per role, which can be delivered the same way every time, ensuring that new starters can quickly get up and running in their new roles.

Having SAP Business One hosted on AWS was extremely important for their parent company to give that level of reassurance about the security of their systems. Karl says, “the system being based on AWS was a big driver from Group as they are very nervous about potential attacks and were adamant that AWS was the way they wanted us to go. From the Group point of view, having the ERP solution on AWS is more secure so it’s easier for us to achieve the required level on our internal audits for IT and system security.”