Instead, conversations with business leaders identified the most crucial parts of the company's sales history, supplier files and customer files; this information was manually keyed into the newly implemented Epicor system.

"Data integrity was a bit of an issue with our old legacy systems," she explains. "By taking that approach, we had a clean slate to start with."

In data they trust

Bedford flipped the switch on its new Epicor system on June 1 last year, giving it a month to iron out wrinkles in the new system before the beginning of the new financial year.

While many companies would run new and old systems in parallel to ensure a smooth transition, Bedford management made the decision to go live across the entire company at once - following a 'big boom' strategy that saw all of the company's users go live on the Vantage system on the same day.