Overview of Hacel Lighting
Founded in 1980, Hacel Lighting is one of the largest independent lighting manufacturers based in the North East of the UK. Hacel is a design-driven company committed to developing and producing high-quality, energy-efficient lighting products for multiple sectors, including Automotive, Retail, Commercial, and Architectural.
Hacel has earned a strong reputation for its service, flexibility, and delivery capability, supported by a diverse portfolio of premium lighting products. Beyond product design and supply, Hacel also has a dedicated team specializing in designing customized lighting systems for entire buildings or projects. This helps UK customers achieve their goals in energy efficiency, climate targets, and carbon reduction. The fact that many major brands in shopping districts choose Hacel Lighting is clear proof of the quality and performance of its products.
Over 90% of the company’s revenue comes from UK customers, with the remainder from Europe and other global markets. All of its product lines are designed and manufactured in the UK at a dedicated 40,000 sq. ft. facility in Newcastle.
Challenges with On-premise Systems
Hacel Lighting has been an Epicor Vantage customer since 2006. Chris Neal, Finance Director and Company Secretary—who also oversees IT, HR, procurement, and logistics—joined Hacel Lighting in 2012 and has since experienced multiple versions of Epicor ERP. He supervised the upgrades from Epicor Vantage 8 to Epicor 9 and then to Epicor 10 (all on-premise systems). These upgrades had to be planned every 2–3 years, were costly, and required 30–40 days of consultant effort each time.
Although Chris proactively eliminated customizations to reduce dependency on consultants for future upgrades, he still had to budget for periodic hardware upgrades to ensure the on-premise servers could support the latest operating systems and middleware required for Epicor.
“I was genuinely surprised at how easy it was to move to the cloud. The upgrade from Epicor 10 to Epicor Kinetic took just a few hours, which speaks volumes about the quality of Epicor’s data migration tools. Having no customizations in Epicor 10 also made the process far simpler for us.”
Upgrading to Epicor Kinetic in the Cloud
Hacel initiated a strategy to gradually move most of its applications and IT systems to the cloud, enabling the company to focus resources on core business initiatives instead of IT operations. As part of this strategy, in early 2020, the company decided to upgrade from Epicor ERP 10 to Epicor Kinetic deployed in the cloud. Since their Epicor 10 system had no customizations, the transition was straightforward, and they officially went live in March 2020 after just 2.5 months of preparation.
Most of that time was spent planning the upgrade and setting up dual internet connections from two different providers to ensure a resilient cloud solution in case one provider experienced downtime.
How Epicor Kinetic Helped Hacel Lighting
Saving Costs & Optimizing IT
Like other cloud solutions, Epicor Kinetic is automatically updated with each new release, helping Hacel avoid the consulting costs typically required for upgrades. Since Epicor Kinetic runs on Epicor Cloud, Hacel Lighting no longer needs to invest in new hardware, middleware, or security software, allowing them to redirect budgets toward strategic initiatives instead of IT upgrades.
Upgrading to Epicor Kinetic also gave Hacel Lighting the opportunity to leverage new features. For example, Epicor Kinetic’s RESTful API allows Hacel Lighting to generate operational and performance reports across multiple departments. They achieve this by extracting data directly from the system into Excel and sharing it across the factory.
Chris emphasized that “factory reporting has improved dramatically” since the upgrade. He added: “Epicor Kinetic is the best system I have seen in terms of integration with Microsoft products like Excel and Outlook. The ability to send emails, notifications, and configure those processes is incredibly valuable for any manufacturing business.”
“Epicor Kinetic has capabilities far beyond what we will need in the next five years. We are steadily integrating these features into our operations, and the only limitation is the speed of administration. We’re pushing forward as fast as we can.”
Improved Reporting, Mobile Warehouse & User Experience
Some team members have adopted the new customizable user interface and taken advantage of the easy personalization without affecting future upgrades. Hacel Lighting also deployed Epicor Mobile Warehouse since go-live, which has significantly reduced lost time during production recording on assembly lines and improved data accuracy.
Most software vendors only fix major reported bugs in the next release. However, as an Epicor Kinetic customer, Hacel Lighting is always on the latest version, meaning they experience far fewer software issues than with the previous on-premise systems. Chris Neal noted: “Moving to Epicor Kinetic has delivered clear benefits. Both users and I no longer waste time reporting and tracking software bugs like we used to.”
Hacel firmly believes that Epicor Kinetic is the right choice for both the present and the future. Chris concluded: “Epicor is the best ERP system I have ever worked with.”
By transitioning to Epicor Kinetic, he believes Hacel is now in a much stronger position to focus resources on what matters most to the business while simplifying IT operations.
3S Software Co., Ltd.
To successfully upgrade a business, businesses need an experienced and trusted partner. 3S will be a partner accompanying businesses on their path of development, helping businesses become more comprehensive and increase productivity at lower costs. Along with compliance with the Epicor Signature Project Implementation Methodology, it will help businesses increase production efficiency and improve profits at a very reasonable cost. 3S believes that it will always bring the most satisfaction to customers.
The 5 main solutions of 3S include:
Epicor ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning
Epicor MES – Manufacturing Execution System
BPM XSOL Solution – Business Modeling Solution
ECM DOCSTAR Solution – Digital Content Management Software
Epicor CADLINK solution – The solution allows transferring information from CAD drawings such as AutoCAD, Solidworks to Epicor ERP
More references: EPICOR KINETIC: AIMTRON’S BIG LEAP
