Digital Transformation Programme
Butterfield Signs is a privately owned business with in excess of 90 years in supplying signage to a host of high-profile world brands.
Overview
Butterfield Group appointed Rich Material to help answer an important strategic question: "What should happen moving forward with BOSS?" Their internal ERP system.
BOSS is a bespoke internal system that has been developed over many years and supports almost all of the business operations, from enquiries through to accounts. When Rich Material first became involved, it was unclear whether BOSS should be extended, replaced or rebuilt.
The first stage of the project was to understand and document the existing system properly, creating a clear foundation for future decision-making.
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Documentation
Comprehensive documentation of the existing BOSS system and technical environment.
Process Audit
End-to-end process and system audit across the business.
Strategy
Future strategy for rebuilding BOSS as a modern cloud-based operational platform.Testing
Pilot project delivered with a trusted third-party supplier to test the strategy before full implementation.
The system had a lot of functionality. Still, it did not cover every operational requirement. Staff often used workarounds, spreadsheets or third-party systems to complete their roles, meaning the true operational picture was spread across BOSS and other tools.
Butterfield needed to understand what BOSS did well, where it created limitations, and what the future system strategy should be.
This included reviewing the existing system, documenting key functionality and capturing important technical information such as deployment, updates, operating systems and software versions.
Following this, we carried out an end-to-end process and system audit across the business. This helped identify how BOSS was used in practice, where third-party tools were involved, and where staff had created workarounds to keep processes moving.
To test the approach, Rich Material helped create a pilot project: a basic cloud "fitters" application designed to work alongside BOSS.
The purpose of the pilot was to understand whether an incremental rebuild could work, with one BOSS module gradually rebuilt at a time while continuing to operate alongside the existing system via custom-built APIs.
Ongoing improvement
The pilot was a success and helped confirm the future strategy, development approach and supplier relationship. It gave Butterfield confidence that the selected development partner understood the brief, worked well with the team and could support the wider system rebuild.
Butterfield's internal staff, with their years of knowledge, were able to move the strategy from theory into practice, giving them confidence in the chosen cloud rebuild approach.
The outcome
The project gave Butterfield a clear understanding of its existing system, current processes and future options.
The BOSS documentation created a valuable business asset that could support either extension, replacement or rebuild. The wider process audit highlighted how work really moved through the business and identified where the future system would need to improve workflows, data and operational visibility.
What made the project successful
The success of the project came from taking time to understand BOSS and the wider business before making a technology decision.
Rather than rushing into a rebuild or selecting a new system without context, Rich Material documented the existing platform, mapped how it was used and tested the future approach through a pilot project.
This meant the final strategy was based on evidence, operational understanding and practical experience.
What’s next
Butterfield is now moving forward with the wider rebuild of BOSS as a modern cloud-based operational platform.
Rich Material continues to support the implementation as a consultant, working with the delivery team and contributing project management experience, system knowledge and strategic guidance.