ISP3 Solution Providers Inc., a Vancouver-based solution provider that started six years ago with three people and a big idea, has surpassed other North American Oracle partners to win Oracle’s Titan Award for Midsize Business Applications Solution, awarded for the outstanding implementation of Oracle applications for a mid-size business customer.
It also received an honourable mention in the Midsize Business Applications Momentum category, which recognizes partnership and activities that further Oracle’s Applications Strategy for Midsize Business customers.
Founded in 2001 by William Liu, Stephen Chan and Anne Hopping, the company has grown from three founding partners in a single office to 35 consultants and offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Seattle, WA, and Guadalajara, Mexico. Today, its customer base extends across North America, as well as to El Salvador, Mexico and Brazil, and encompasses both the private and public sectors.
The ERP side
Said senior partner William Liu, “Our focus has always been on the ERP side of JD Edwards, and we offer full solutions right from resale and project management, right through implementation, and support thereafter. On the commercial side, our focus over the past few years has been on the resource sector, the mining vertical – it’s been a strong industry. We focus on JD Edwards, but our consultants also engage with BI and reporting tools. Our consulting base consists of project managers, consultants in all of the areas JD Edwards offers: finance, distribution, payroll, manufacturing, maintenance, and property management.”
ISP3 also has a team of developers that creates bolt-ons to JD Edwards as well as writing customizations and modifications to the software.
Hopping became involved when the company began looking for expertise in human resources and payroll, her specialty.
“A lot of the construction industry is very heavily unionized,” she said. “You need someone who can deal with all of that.”
The company’s Oracle Titan Award-winning solution was a customization of its Natural Resources solution, based on JD Edwards, that allows customers to continuously reforecast project costs and make adjustments to stay on budget. According to the citation, after a four-month turnaround of the 12-module JD Edwards implementation, the Natural Resources solution “proved to be a repeatable project that resulted in immediate new business.”
Liu explained, “In the last 12 to 15 months we had several new mining clients, some in the production phase, but many in the construction phase. And if you know the mining industry, in the construction phase there are huge capital expenditures. One of our clients was looking for an ERP system, and we were able to meet their specific requirements for cost control – cost and forecasting. ”
He went on, “We created a solution of interactive online queries tied to approvals, expenditure and authorization, reporting and re-forecasting – that also tied to the whole supply chain. It was not dollar tied, but activity tied.”
It’s a fine distinction, but an important one when you’re dealing with single items whose price tags are in the millions of dollars, Liu explained. When, for example, a big motor leaves the dock in Japan, that activity could trigger a PO, which triggers the cost control – the customer knows that it has left the dock, so can determine when the item must be paid for, and thus be able to use funds more efficiently.
“Though we built this specifically for the mining industry, and we partnered with our client to build this application, it can also go across other industries that are specifically job cost oriented,” Liu added. “Oil and gas, construction – anybody who’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars on their projects would be very interested in having this solution to help them have visibility into their cash flow.”
The award-winning solution has provided other benefits to the company besides the “big glass trophy” that will soon be displayed on its Web site. ISP3 is now a member of the Oracle Accelerate Program, which gives it exposure to verticals and helps it offer other industry-specific solutions built around JD Edwards.
And, driven by its increasingly multinational customers, the company plans to hire a team of bilingual Spanish/English application and technical consultants in its Mexican office.