When Jim Roberts and the rest of the management team at Roberts Automatic Products decided that they had to purchase an ERP software system for their growing company, it was anything but an easy decision.
According to ProductionMachining.com:
Like many family-owned businesses, Roberts Automatic had grown through the years by doing whatever it took to survive and thrive. Writing their own ERP software program was one of the tasks the company undertook, which required always having a programmer on staff to update, tweak and reprogram the software. But when the UNIX system they built was about to break down and its programmer was retiring, it became clear that it was time to migrate to software available on the market that was targeted to their industry.
“The day we all agreed that we were going to begin the process of investigating new software was a scary day,” says President Jim Roberts. “We knew that no matter what system we settled on, there was going to be a lot of time invested for all of us to convert and get comfortable with this new system. Furthermore, because we had built the current system ourselves, we knew that any off-the-shelf system might not be as good as what we currently had, in some instances.”
