Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1411055
26 PCB007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2021 We had a vision of our website being a sin- gle point-of-use quote form rather than mul- tiple quote forms, benefiting the customer be- cause now you don't have to know which of Sunstone's products fits your needs up front. We will tell you what the product turns out to be at the end once you go through the process. Pointing them to a single quote form with all the features available required us, again, to im- prove our database structure, securities, and shop floor communication to be able to sup- port it all in one place. We developed a project to real- ly explore everything that was out there off-the-shelf, PCB- specific systems, manufac- turing tools, some of the big ones, the SAPs, and the other household name systems. But we had a special set of condi- tions, just the way we like to manufacture things, aggregating pieces togeth- er onto a single manufac- turing panel. Most of the off- the-shelf databases, ERP sys- tems, didn't have a good support mechanism for that nuance. We were pretty limited in our choices, and the choices we did have still required custom- ization. So, we embarked on that project and in January 2017, we were able to take an off-the- shelf ERP system that was highly customized, and integrate that with our new e-commerce website, pricing, and quoting, connected with all the APIs and web services, and launch that to the public. It's been a stable system for us overall. e learning curve out of the gate was pretty high. We had a lot of additional customization and improvements that needed to be done over those first six months of service. It has been a good product for us and has allowed us to be out there in front of our customers with an e-commerce model that Sunstone has been known for over the years; it supports that part of our business effectively. Is it perfect? No. Does it have limitations? Yes. Is it going out and needing an upgrade? Yes. Johnson: Do you feel that Sunstone has achieved a complete return on investment for that soware? Has it paid for itself ? Stevenson: at is a difficult question to defini- tively answer. On one hand, I have a hard time seeing a true return in absolute dollars, but on the other hand, I think we can make a pretty strong case that, overall, we did benefit from undergo- ing this extensive process. e benefits to our custom- ers through the consolida- tion of quote forms, data- bases, scalability, securi- ty, and the projects that it's made easier since its implementation in terms of cost and increase to the ROIs on those projects where they wouldn't have ei- ther been possible or profitable to do under the old scenario. Johnson: I guess a comparison might be to ask if it would have been cheaper to continue to roll out your own and just pay soware de- velopers to write soware specifically for you. Would that have been cheaper? Stevenson: at was exactly the mode we were in prior to this project, and we made the con- scious decision to pivot and go off the shelf, but looking back on it today, we may have saved a few dollars and gray hairs had we chosen to stay the course with the path we were on. Johnson: Oh, really? Stevenson: ere were several factors at the time that really pushed that decision forward: