Aquascot responded to the challenges of coronavirus by accelerating their digital transformation. In partnership with FluidIT they improved efficiency and productivity through delivery of a series of strategic projects, that will enable them to become a fully digitalised operation within a five-year roadmap.
John Housego, Managing Director of Aquascot, said, “By the end of this year the whole of our IT infrastructure will have completely changed. This offers up a wealth of new opportunities for us, not only with our customers but our business tracking and awareness, and product positioning. In a highly competitive market, we will have the data to be able to focus on improvements and then meet the need.”
Aquascot in partnership with FluidIT have transformed the factory in less than a year. The benefits to the business are:
- The production areas are paper free
- Quality assurance is fully digitalised with a new quality management system Q-Pulse
- The commercial data dashboards with PowerBI show actual versus forecast on sales and orders in real time. Time spent on manual processing and reporting is significantly reduced.
- M365 is fully implemented across the organisation including a communication portal using Sharepoint
- Aquascot has selected a new ERP/ MES system from software provider SI (Systems Integration) which will be implemented within the next three months
- The business now has a digital roadmap, setting out a step-by-step process to achieve full digital transformation over the next three to five years.
Aquascot’s IT estate of legacy systems had evolved to include lots of manual workarounds, paper-based processes and difficulty in getting visibility of data. The business was at a crossroads, whether to keep investing in their current systems or look to buy new ones.
They engaged Yorkshire-based consultancy FluidIT to use their IT Director as a Service offering, as well as benefitting from the wider team’s mix of capabilities, from project managers to business analysts and software developers. The two companies worked remotely throughout the entire transformation programme. They used online collaboration tools and sharing platforms to deliver the projects. Due to Covid restrictions they were not able to meet face to face.
John Housego said: “FluidIT had experience in delivering digital transformation for manufacturers, and the capability to do the kind of rapid automation we needed. And having the IT Director as a Service was attractive, someone who would get to know us and guide us, and who we could call on whether five hours a week or whatever was needed. It meant we didn’t have to hire someone full-time or learn it ourselves.”
SME businesses in manufacturing and food processing are driving an increase in demand for this partnership model of support from digital consultancies. It’s seen as a cost-effective way to bring in both IT leadership and project delivery resource.
About Aquascot
Aquascot is an award-winning seafood supplier based in Alness, near Inverness in Scotland. The company is 100 per cent employee-owned and has been processing salmon and trout for more than 30 years. In 2021 they won the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) trophy for excellence in people development at the SCDI Highlands and Islands Business Excellence Awards.
About FluidIT Consulting
FluidIT helps businesses work out what technology can do for them. The team works with and alongside our clients to deliver business benefits. Services include:
- System replacement and implementation
- Business Intelligence (BI), data and integration
- Change and project delivery as a service
- Process automation and digitalisation
- Security, infrastructure, cloud
- CTO / IT Director as a service
Contact
marketing@fluiditconsulting.co.uk