IN a marriage connecting two businesses at the ultimate age extremes, a 270-year-old Co Derry firm has turned to a relatively new Craigavon software company to revamp its IT systems and take it to the next level of its growth.
William Clark, situated in the rural village of Upperlands at the foot of the Sperrin Mountains and which has specialised in the manufacture of traditional fabrics since 1736, has awarded the contract for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) services to IT infrastructure specialists Fuel.
William Clark has been operating a semi-bespoke financial/manufacturing software for more than 15 years, but the system has outgrown its functionality as the result of the continual growth by the company.
At the heart of a three-year business plan at Clark, developed in partnership with Invest NI, it needed to put in place an ERP solution that could develop as the company continues to grow and reach its target of increasing in turnover by 60 per cent and bringing staffing levels from 35 to 50.
Kevin Devlin, production director at William Clark, said: “We have set enterprising growth targets for the next few years and needed a stable IT Infrastructure platform.
"Managing and keeping control of that growth is key to the company’s success and therefore great emphasis was put on the management to find the best IT infrastructure and software management solution to deliver the required results.
"And FUEL, in our opinion, was the company that demonstrated to us the required expertise, tenacity and determination to partner us on our journey."
Following a rigorous assessment of the top ERP solutions in the market, the directors awarded Fuel the contract to implement a complete IT infrastructure refresh including a new cutting edge server running the SAP Business One software.
Fuel director Joe Walsh said: “I'm delighted, having embarked on this journey with William Clark, that Fuel and the SAP Business One solution has been recognised as the solution best suited to support the directors and management team plan and build for the future of the company.”
Mr Devlin added: “We’re delighted to acknowledge the advice and financial support of Invest NI in putting together our solid business plan for the future.”
Whereas William Clark has been around for the best part of three centuries, Fuel ((www.itfuel.com) was only formally incorporated in 2014 after if was rebranded from its previous incarnation of Micro Computer Solutions (MCS), founded by computer science graduate Paul Trouton in the early 1990s.
