Allegis Corporation

Allegis Corporation has been on quite the ERP journey. In 2019, the company deployed NetSuite and faced significant challenges right out of the gate. From a longer-than-expected integration to endless third-party add-ons that degraded system performance, Allegis realized the company had a major problem on its hands and needed to make a change.

Dave Shannon, CIO with Allegis, shares how the company righted the ship with Epicor Prophet 21—deploying in record speed in the cloud, shipping high-volume orders on day one, and leveraging out-of-the-box functionality for warehouse management, demand planning, and just-in-time inventory.

Shannon reflects on how Epicor jumped into action to help the company move to Prophet 21, and how the platform—built for distributors like Allegis—contributes to ongoing business growth.

Uptime and Reliability a Must

Almost everywhere you go, you’ll likely find a product manufactured by Allegis. The company’s components, such as latches, handles, hinges, and locks, are used on emergency vehicles, heavy trucks, buses, and industrial tractors. Daily production and distribution volumes are extremely high, managing 12,000 SKUs and upwards of 500 purchase orders per week.

Shannon explains how an ERP system in the cloud plays a key role in supporting their customers’ own design and production success. “If our ERP system doesn’t perform to our requirements and we don’t get orders out the door, our customers can’t build their products,” he says. “They rely on us to have the perfect parts they need when they need them, and our business depends on that level of reliability and trust.”

Addressing Gaps in Functionality

Allegis was on Epicor Eclipse for 15 years and the platform served the needs of the business. However, Allegis was ready to move to the cloud, and at the time, Eclipse was solely on-premise. This kicked off an evaluation of ERP solutions at Allegis, starting with a list of 80 vendors, and ending with the selection of an alternate solution.

While the selected platform seemed to address most of the company’s business requirements during the evaluation, those beliefs were short lived. Allegis soon realized the platform was missing key ERP functionality, such as demand planning, order replenishment, and support for a centralized warehouse, leading to many third-party integrations.

“There were significant gaps in the solution we initially selected, requiring us to take matters into our own hands with custom scripts and integrations with third parties,” Shannon explains. “And every time we added customization it had an adverse effect somewhere else in the platform.”

Digging Deep Into Prophet 21

After three years of trials and tribulations with a competing ERP, Allegis wanted a long-term ERP partner, not just a software solution. Shannon was methodical, digging deep into what out-of-the-box functionality was delivered within the cloud environment and pushing for insight into platform configurations. He also had Allegis business users in the room, including CSRs who take orders and manage inventory, knowing exactly what the ERP platform needed to deliver.

“Everyone at Epicor was ultra-responsive. The commitment from the team really made the difference in our decision, our deployment, and our continued success with the platform,” Shannon adds.

Deployed On Time and Under Budget

Allegis needed to deploy Epicor Prophet 21 quickly and the company couldn’t risk business interruptions. “The Epicor integration was outstanding. We not only deployed Prophet 21 on time, but at a much lower expense than initially scoped, coming in 26% under budget,” he said.

Epicor Prophet 21 is created for distributors like us, delivering built-in, sophisticated application logic that allows us to manage our supply chain with precision.

The company went live on April 1, 2024, and was replenishing inventory and filling orders exactly as needed. Taking lessons from their deployment with the other ERP provider, Allegis decided to go live with Prophet 21 out-of-the-box functionality before considering modifications. “Prophet 21 is created for distributors like us, with built-in, sophisticated application logic that allows us to manage our supply chain with precision.”

Running Like Clockwork

With back-to-back ERP deployments, Shannon naturally compares the before and after, highlighting the many improvements that came with the move to Epicor Prophet 21 in the cloud. For example, the company has seen performance increases tied to wireless warehouse management, with employees armed with scanners to quickly and easily pick parts and process orders.

“Every 15 minutes, Prophet 21 looks for new orders to pick, pushing requests to a workstation in the warehouse and assigning picks to personnel,” he shares. “The entire solution runs like clockwork, is significantly faster than our previous platform and required zero warehouse management customization.”

Demand planning also works exactly as expected out of the box, eliminating the need for third-party integrations and associated license costs. As a result, Allegis has desired control across regional distribution centers, able to direct demand when and where the company needs it.

Tight Management of Just-In-Time Inventory

With Prophet 21, Allegis is no longer chasing stock items and has complete confidence in inventory levels with forecasting modeling and real-time insights. Having tight control of component availability is vital, Shannon goes on to explain.

“We often get long lead forecasts from customers, for example, knowing how many tractors are slated to build this year. Therefore, we pay attention to metrics daily to ensure we have the parts ready to go to meet specific demands.”

Other customers rely on Allegis for engineered hardware for one-off products or specific models. For those requests, while Allegis may get an order two months in advance, the customer may not  want the parts on their dock until the day before they need it. “Our supply chain has to perform at peak levels, requiring constant business visibility to manage just-in-time inventory. And Prophet 21 delivers on all fronts.”

‘Metrics We Can Trust’

Allegis also takes advantage of Epicor Grow, utilizing data within Epicor Prophet 21 for an instant business snapshot. With real-time metrics and dashboards tied to sales, inventory positions, and booking reports, information can be digested quickly and used across the business, including in Quarterly Business Reviews with customers.

Had we not made the move to Prophet 21 from NetSuite, we’d likely be losing business because our inventory wouldn’t be where it needs to be. Instead, we’re growing and going well beyond delivering parts on time with supply chain innovations to best serve our customers.

“We now have metrics we can trust. We know our business and our customers’ businesses well, and if something is off in the bookings, we reach, out,” Shannon shares. “And by optimizing inventory positions, we can serve customers’ needs with less inventory, able to apply that cash to other areas of the business.”

Onward and Upward with Prophet 21

With Prophet 21, Shannon is enthusiastic about having a stable and solid ERP foundation in place to meet the needs of the business today and in the future. As a CIO, he’s now able to focus on other areas of the company rather than being bogged down with ERP frustrations and customizations.

“Had we not made the move to Prophet 21 from NetSuite, we’d likely be losing business because our inventory wouldn’t be where it needs to be. Instead, we’re growing, going well beyond delivering parts on time by making innovations across our supply chain to best serve our customers.”