© 2011 Project Tardis 18 November 2011. Page 2 © 2011 Hillier Nurseries Established in 1864 Largest grower of trees and shrubs in the UK Turnover ~ £30.

© 2011

Project Tardis

18 November 2011

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Hillier Nurseries• Established in 1864• Largest grower of trees and

shrubs in the UK• Turnover ~ £30 million• 66 consecutive Gold Medals at

Chelsea flower show

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Sales divisionsGarden Centres• 15 garden centres selling plants and gardening products

Wholesale shrubs• 50 acres including 5 acres of greenhouses• Shrubs sold in virtually every UK garden

centres

Trees• 500 acres; 650,000 trees• 5000 semi-mature trees to Olympic Park• International Grower of the Year 2010

Landscape Collection Service (LCS)• Trees and shrubs for medium sized landscaping

projects

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Big trees

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make things happen

Thinkers are experienced business and software consultants. We help you think clearly, decide what to do, and then do it. We help you make

things happen.

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Thinkers & Hillier

Project Hercules• EPOS System for Garden Centres Division

– Choose system & vendor– Pilot, roll out to all centres– 2008 - 2010

Project Tardis• Replace production control system for

the Nursery divisions– 2009 - 2012

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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Hillier's old systems• Customer contact information in many different places• Accounts system - Chorus

– Green screen but effective

• Inventory and sales order processing system– 25 years old– Bespoke software running on unsupported IBM System 36

emulation– Green-screen, ineffective– Ancient, pre-email

• A thousand spreadsheets– Some quite sophisticated, but majority for simple reporting– Information always manually re-keyed from main system– Hard to change, hard to control change

• A million phone calls, faxes & emails asking for information• A billion pieces of paper

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Issues• Functional inadequacies

– Many!– Inventory quantities not held per-location

• Multiple systems– Hard to look things up because they aren’t all in one place

• No single source of information, so no ability to provide meaningful reports

– Except manually.

– Business is slow to change due to multiple system interfaces

• Paper based– Pieces of paper – and people’s scribbled notes on them - were a

key part of the system.• Annotated papers often had to be transferred between locations, e.g.

between Dispatch and Sales Admin in Head Office, to raise invoices• Problems occur when these papers go astray.

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Customer feedback: documentsThe key thing that you could improve is the paperwork. We want less paper

that’s more informative

You must thin out the paperwork and improve it. It is too cumbersome, it wastes both time and paper. It’s not as efficient as that from other companies.

Hillier’s information is dire. It’s uninspiring and unusable.

The systems that are in place don’t really help.

Hillier spreadsheets are a nightmare to manipulate. It’s a real pain.

Your system is awkward. We can’t just hit reply – we have to copy & paste into a new email

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Just a production control system?

Budgeting & planning

Performance

Monitoring

Accounting

Invoicing

Lifting & Delivery

Selling

Quote & 0rder

Purchasing

Planting & Potting

Growing

Stock Take

Core System

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Project Aims• Respond better to customers• Create a more efficient company• Create a more agile company

– A company that can change its customer offerings and services more quickly and easily

• We expect to achieve these by:– Cutting down paperwork– Eliminating data re-keying & reconciliation– Streamlining the company’s processes

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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Clarify what we want and how to recognize it when we see it

Vendor selection process

Clarify High-level Requirements

Assess vendors

Decide

Search Market

Long list

Workshops

Request for Information

Assess responses

Short list

Develop business scenarios

Vendor Workshop briefing

Vendors prepare for workshop

Write RFI

Vendors respond

Structured Demos

Medium list

Demos

Design work-shop

Scenario detail

Customer

survey

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Vendor selection

• Long list– 41 vendors assessed– RFI sent to 26 vendors– 21 responses received

• Medium list– 8 Vendors

• eMerge, Exel, IBS, IFS, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Oracle JD Edwards, SAP Business One

• Finalists– eMerge, Infor– 3 day workshop with each vendor

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Polling day: 6 May 2010

Today, as well as the small matter of electing a new government, we also face one of the most significant decisions affecting our future. Which system should we choose to run our business for the next decade or more? Changing governments in 5 years time will probably be easier than changing systems!

Please come to a hustings at 15:00 - 16:00 today to hear the final debate between our two leading contenders, and to cast your vote.

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Ballot papers

Vote for no more than one Company

1 Infor2 eMergePlease put a cross against your preferred Company

Spoilt papers will be disregarded

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Why eMerge?

• Close decision• 3 main factors

• Priority is easily adaptable to suit Hillier’s unique needs– Designed and engineered not only for maximum

flexibility, but also to put that flexibility into the hands of the customer’s project team, not the development team

– Layout of customer documentation easily under your control. Easy to email customer documents as PDF attachments.

• Users like it• We believe in the people from eMerge

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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Timescales• 10 May 2010: Decision ratified by Project Board• Reference customer timescales: 15 – 24 months from decision to go-

live• What has to happen before go-live?

– Contract negotiation & signature– Select & procure servers– Choose scope & phasing; plan project– Learn Priority system– Configuration

• Configure chart of accounts• Import customers & suppliers• Define & create product matrix• Import transitional accounts data e.g. unpaid matched invoices

– Implement customizations– Produce customer documentation– Test

• Financial year runs 1 Sep – 31 Aug• Hillier go-live target: 1 September. Which year?

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Project name: TARDIS

• It will enable us to achieve amazing things in surprising timescales

• It’s bigger and more complicated on the inside than it appears from the outside

Timely And Radically Designed Information System

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Platform

• Entirely leased virtual machines– Live web-server & database server– Test web-server & database server

• Hosted somewhere in docklands• Very cost-effective

– ~£1000 per month compared to ~£40,000

• Managed service– Reduces need for internal expertise– Excellent backup regime

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Actual timetable

• 1 Sep 2010: Go live– Accounts for whole company– Sales from Landscape Collection branch

• Few customizations

• Oct 2010 - Jan 2011: Prepare for Wholesale shrub division – Actual footage

• 31 Jan 2011: Wholesale go-live• June 2011: Purchasing• 1 September 2011: Tree division go-live

– September & October: Potted trees– November 15: Field-grown trees

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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System in action

• Product definition• Stock availability & location• Sales order processing• Customer documents• Lorry Loads

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Product definition

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Stock availability & location

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Sales Order processing

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Customer documentation

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Lorry Loads

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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Perspectives• Accounts

– We began on 1 Sep 2010 having had no training, but our users managed to adopt the system without business interruption – it is easy to use

– Many things are easier & quicker• Bank reconciliation, documents scanned into system, Excel export & import

– Invoices much easier to create• Now done daily• Improved cash-flow

• Wholesale– Record breaking year

• Sales during this spring’s busy season up 25% up on previous year• Able to re-plan and bring forward sales • Would not have been possible on old system

– Excellent feedback about customer documents

• Trees– It’s superb!

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But these challenges haven’t stopped us• Respond better to customers• Create a more agile company

– A company that can change its customer offerings and services more quickly and easily

• Create a more efficient company

• We expect to achieve these by:– Cutting down paperwork– Eliminating data re-keying & reconciliation– Streamlining the company’s processes

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Topics

• Introductions• Hillier's old systems• Vendor selection process• Implementation project• The system in action• Challenges & results• User Group

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What is the point of a User Group?• A community of companies who use the same product

– Independent of the vendor / software company

• To apply collective pressure on eMerge & Eshbel– To address common problems with greater urgency

• To share experience– To learn from each other so that we can apply each other’s

experience to our own situations• Make better use of the system – improve the Return on our

Investment• Solve problems more quickly

– Two examples

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Default queries• Priority default queries are a great feature

– When you open a form, it automatically fires the query, returning an appropriate working set

• Live Lorry Loads• Year-to-date transaction sub-level of chart of accounts defaults to show

transactions from the current month– Makes this sub-level respond much faster

• Very fast• Good user experience

– The working set is “right there”

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Puzzle: Inventory for bare-root trees • Beech tree (Fagus sylvatica)

– Standard shape– 16-18 cm girth– Possible root types: Bare-root or Rootball

• Both products are defined on the system– A1023976 FagSyl Sta BR G 16-18– A1024081 FagSyl Sta RB G 16-18

• The only difference between these is how they are dug up from the ground.

• All inventory is put on the system as Rootball

• How can we sell bare-root trees?– There is never any stock – order lines never go green…

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Conclusions from the Chairman• It’s remarkable what’s been achieved in just two years• The implementation has gone very well, and the business

hasn’t been threatened at any point– At this stage last time the business had ground to a halt and we

were just about in court

• The customizations have cost us a lot more than we anticipated

• We are already getting benefits in places, but it’s still early days and there are lots more to come as we bed the system in

Robert Hillier OBE

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Questions?