The Marussia Formula 1 team has embarked on a project to overhaul its backend processes, where it is moving from using time-consuming siloed spreadsheets to a single view ERP system provided by Sage, in a bid to boost race speed and performance.
Computerworld UK spoke to Marussia’s operations manager, Kevin Lee, at Monza Grand Prix in Italy about the implementation and how migrating data into a single platform for view across the business can bring benefits to the team’s drivers.
Lee joined the team in December 2010, after decades working in Formula 1 across a number of teams, where he found he was landed with a business that he quickly dubbed “spreadsheet city”.
Lee explained that when he worked at Toyota he worked on a similar project and because of this he was keen to stay away from some of the more traditional, larger ERP vendors.
“When I was at Toyota it took SAP 18 months, a pile of money, more consultants than you could possibly imagine, just to get to a point where we could turn it on. Marussia, at the time, was a team of 70 people and I felt that the size of such a product was inappropriate,” he says.
“I needed something that was flexible, easy to use, easy to install – but at the same time gave us the scope to grow.”
After meeting with and speaking to the potential suppliers, Lee and the board of directors agreed to go ahead with Sage in June 2011. Lee felt that the other contenders were still “too close to SAP” in terms of approach to the project.
Read more at Computerweek
