Rootstock helps Vertical Aerospace stay on track during Covid-19 with cloud-based ERP rollout

It’s long been assumed that imple­ment­ing Enter­prise Resource Plan­ning (ERP) soft­ware is a lengthy and ardu­ous process.

But Root­stock Soft­ware, a lead­ing provider of ERP solu­tions, recent­ly worked with eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to dis­pel this myth, com­plet­ing imple­men­ta­tion of Rootstock’s Cloud ERP in just three and a half months – and amid the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The goal was to ‘go live’ in April, when the com­pa­ny would start to release its air­craft com­po­nents. Its team want­ed to have the ERP with full trace­abil­i­ty in place at the begin­ning of this project.

The team held a two-day work­shop, involv­ing stake­hold­ers across the busi­ness to out­line require­ments. By the end of Jan­u­ary, they had a roadmap. By Feb­ru­ary, they built the sys­tem, and in March, they start­ed test­ing. Then COVID-19 hit, and a lock­down ensued.

Steven Bax­ter, head of pro­grammes at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, is respon­si­ble for the sup­ply chain, pro­gram man­age­ment, logis­tics and build. He joined the busi­ness in 2019.

“I imme­di­ate­ly saw a need for an ERP. At the time, the com­pa­ny didn’t have one and was using Excel to track orders, but this wouldn’t pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive view of what was going on in the com­pa­ny. Being in aero­space, we also need­ed full trace­abil­i­ty of our prod­ucts and com­po­nents.

“An on-premise imple­men­ta­tion would have stalled. All of our team mem­bers were work­ing remote­ly and spread through­out the UK, but because we were imple­ment­ing a cloud-based sys­tem, we were able to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete test­ing and train­ing remote­ly.

“With Rootstock’s team sup­port­ing and advis­ing us each step of the way, we went live in just three and a half months – and dur­ing a world­wide pan­dem­ic.”

Now that Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has gone live, it has com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty into its entire prod­uct struc­ture – includ­ing sup­ply chain and pur­chas­ing, inven­to­ry and deliv­ery, costs and oper­a­tions.

As a start-up, it doesn’t have cus­tomers yet, but it’s mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant strides to bring its air­craft to the mar­ket. As it pre­pares for sales, the new ERP will pro­vide a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in terms of serv­ing prospec­tive cus­tomers and ramp­ing up oper­a­tions.

“We want­ed a new­er, more inno­v­a­tive solu­tion,” Bax­ter adds. “Dur­ing our inves­ti­ga­tion, we came across Root­stock. Its ERP was exact­ly what we want­ed –mod­ern and dynam­ic. It met our require­ments and was a one-stop shop, capa­ble of han­dling pro­duc­tion, pur­chas­ing and finance – all from one cloud rather than mul­ti­ple plat­forms.”

 Pat Gar­rehy, CEO of Root­stock Soft­ware, said: “Ver­ti­cal Aero­space is a lead­ing elec­tric air­craft com­pa­ny, and we are thrilled to be able to work with a com­pa­ny of its cal­i­bre,” said Pat Gar­rehy, CEO of Root­stock Soft­ware.

“It is pio­neer­ing a new stage of avi­a­tion and build­ing tech­nol­o­gy to rev­o­lu­tionise how peo­ple fly. The com­pa­ny has achieved so much since its incep­tion, har­ness­ing the pace and agili­ty from For­mu­la 1. And now, using our ERP, it has expand­ed the pow­er of the cloud to all areas of its busi­ness, extend­ing its col­lab­o­ra­tive work envi­ron­ment dur­ing the COVID-19 shut­down.”