Auto parts maker Inteva Products LLC has 800 employees in 18 countries, and they all rely on data from one ERP system. Three years ago, when the Troy, Mich.-based company was spun off from its parent firm, it needed to either dive into a $15 million ERP upgrade or move to a cloud-based service, reports Sandra Gittlen at CIO magazine.

The choice was made easier because Inteva did not end up with IT staff from the parent company, said CIO Dennis Hodges. To deploy the new infrastructure, the company would have had to hire a whole new support team. "We made the logical choice and chose the cloud," Hodges said.

Moving from stand-alone servers deployed at sites around the world to a cloud-based system was not a simple sell, however. Company officials raised concerns about security, performance and disaster recovery. Hodges said he made arguments in favor of a flat monthly fee, an end to upgrades, and the ability to stay on the latest application, and he made performance, security and disaster recovery priorities in the search for a service provider.

Hodges ended up with Plex Online Cloud ERP service from Plex Systems. The migration began with moving master data and some transactional data out of the legacy system. Plex Systems worked with Hodges's team to figure out how business processes could be replicated in the cloud service. Hodges phased the system in gradually, applying lessons from one migration to the next. "Rather than integrating thousands of suppliers at once, we did small chunks so we could test and use what we learned to improve," he said.

Now, Inteva's users access their ERP system via the Internet. The head of the ERP project has a background in analytics, reporting and data warehousing rather than network and systems administration. "He doesn't have to know the infrastructure, hardware and operating system," Hodges said. "He can focus on how to leverage analysis to manage the business better and drive costs down."

For more:
- see Sandra Gittlen's article at CIO

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