About Rearo Laminates
Rearo Laminates is renowned as one of the leading providers of commercial laminate surfaces in the UK, with over 30 years' experience of manufacturing and distributing laminate goods across the nation.
Rearo began working with PDMS because they needed a local technology partner who could provide technical support for its existing ERP product and advise on options for modernisation or replacement.
Our bespoke solution to modernise Rearo’s ERP system reduced potential costs and risk for the organisation, preserved the investment in the existing system, and improved efficiency and user experience.
Bespoke platform upgrade
Rearo initially considered implementing a brand-new ERP system to replace the existing legacy application. However, it quickly became apparent that this approach would result in expensive license fees and the work required to transfer business rules to an entirely new application would be substantive.
PDMS suggested an approach to modernising the existing application and carried out a pilot project to prove the concept. The original product was written in Visual Basic and was on an unsupported version of Microsoft .NET. Therefore, PDMS migrated some of the application to a supported .NET and translated the code from Visual Basic to C#.
After carrying out several legacy bug fixes and the successful pilot migration, PDMS highlighted the benefits of a bespoke upgrade. This approach compared favourably with the cost and risk of implementing a new ERP product, with substantial costs savings on licencing alone.
Ongoing support and improved UX
Once the full migration was complete, the product was rebranded and improvements were made to the user interface, resulting in a more positive user experience for those using the system.
PDMS now provides ongoing support, focusing on functional improvements to the system and fixing legacy bugs to improve day-to-day business functions such as product dispatches and invoicing.
Overall, the project has improved the business’ efficiency and reduced both the potential risk and cost of implementing a brand-new ERP system. The bespoke approach taken meant that PDMS could modernise and upgrade the client’s current system to meet their needs and requirements within a reasonable budget and with limited risk.
Migration facilitates new e-commerce website
With the core product now on fully supported software, Rearo was then able to implement a new and improved third-party e-commerce website enabling seamless stock updates. As part of this, PDMS created an overarching Azure synchronisation job that pushes all current stock data at regular intervals to ensure stock information is accurate at the point of sale. A new warehouse management system also allows the stock sync to incorporate warehouse closures to further improve organisational efficiency.
A click-and-collect functionality was also built for the client. This means that items can be purchased by customers online or in-store and then collected at a convenient time, helping to further improve the customer experience.
These changes not only improved the organisation’s efficiency but by having up-to-date stock data, there was less risk of over-ordering stock, so product waste was reduced.
Client Testimonial
Stuart Hutcheson - IT Manager, Rearo
“PDMS really stepped up to support Rearo in our hour of need. Our outdated bespoke Azure ERP application - that drives both the manufacturing and sales processes – remains critical to all aspects of our business. However, when we first engaged with PDMS, our previous third-party support agreement had expired and we were truly exposed, should the application encounter issue or outage.
PDMS quickly mitigated any pending risk by ensuring we could recover should disaster hit. They then provided various options to future proof the platform, including the eventual code conversion to C# option. This project was a resounding success and achieved all key metrics of on time, on budget with zero disruption to the business. This allowed Rearo to gain back confidence in the application, maintain BAU and ultimately advance the platform.
Thanks to the PDMS team we now have an up to date and supported app, that conforms to current industry development trends. As a result we are now at the continuous improvement stage, adding further functionality aligned to business requirements. We will continue to consult, value and trust the PDMS technical recommendations, as the application evolves and the business partnerships grows.”
