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How First Filter expanded exactllyERP from Singapore across four countries
First Filter began its Exactlly journey with its Singapore operation. As confidence in the system and in the Exactlly team grew, the business extended exactllyERP to Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman. Running the same ERP across those countries has given continuity in the way finance, inventory, costing and operations are managed.
Customer Proof
A filtration business that operates across borders
First Filter International supplies filtration and separation products to the oil and gas industry, working from locations across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
Why operating in several countries makes the ERP question harder
First Filter International describes itself publicly as a supplier of filtration and separation products for the oil and gas industry. It is a business whose operations sit in more than one country rather than in a single place.
That shape changes what an ERP has to do. A company running in one country can succeed with a system that fits that country well. A company running in several has a second problem on top of the first: whether the way it manages its money, its stock and its costs holds together as it moves from one operation to the next, or whether each country quietly develops its own way of doing things.
It also changes how a system gets adopted. Extending an ERP into another country is a decision taken with the first one still running, and with the experience of that first implementation still fresh. It is a decision a business only takes if the first one went well.
First Filter at a glance
exactllyERP runs in First Filter's Singapore operation, and in the businesses the company operates in Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman.
The route to that position is the part worth reading. The four countries did not come onto exactllyERP together: Singapore came first, and the others followed.
- Customer
- First Filter International
- Business
- Filtration and separation products for the oil and gas industry
- Regional presence
- Asia Pacific and the Middle East
- Exactlly journey began
- The Singapore operation
- Extended to
- Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman
- Product
- exactllyERP
- Continuity across
- Finance, inventory, costing and operations
- Exactlly support
- Continued as the business expanded
Where the Exactlly journey began
One operation, in Singapore.
Singapore first
The Exactlly relationship started with First Filter's Singapore operation. That is where exactllyERP was first put to work, and where the company formed its own view of what the system could do and how the Exactlly team worked.
A first implementation carries more weight than its own scope suggests. It is the only direct information a business has when the question of doing the same thing somewhere else comes up. Everything that followed for First Filter rested on how that first operation went.
From one country to four
As confidence grew, the same ERP was extended to Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman.
What the expansion says
As the company's confidence in the system and in the Exactlly team grew, First Filter extended exactllyERP to its businesses in Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman.
That sentence is the story. An ERP that gets extended into three more countries has already been judged by the people who use it, in the only test that really counts, which is whether they would choose it again. No presentation makes that decision. The first operation does.
It is also a decision taken while the business itself was growing. The widening of the ERP footprint and the scaling of the company happened together, which meant the system had to keep pace rather than simply stay in place.
The same ERP across four countries
Where it began, and where it was extended as confidence grew.
Where the journey began
Singapore
The first First Filter operation to run exactllyERP, and the basis for everything that followed.
Extended to
- Malaysia exactllyERP
- Indonesia exactllyERP
- Oman exactllyERP
Each extension was a separate decision, taken by a business that already knew what the system did.
The same ERP, in every country it runs
Continuity in the way finance, inventory, costing and operations are managed.
Finance
- Managed the same way in each operation
- One set of financial habits rather than four
Inventory
- The same approach to stock wherever it sits
- Familiar to anyone moving between operations
Costing
- Costs looked at through the same lens
- The same method wherever it is applied
Operations
- Day to day work follows the same shape
- exactllyERP stays constant as the footprint grows
Why continuity is worth having
Continuity of this kind is easy to undervalue until it is missing. When every country runs its own system, the differences are rarely dramatic and almost always expensive. The same question gets answered differently depending on where it is asked, and people moving between operations have to learn the local way of working before they can be useful.
Running the same ERP across the four takes that cost away quietly, every day, without anyone having to manage it. It is the kind of benefit that never appears as an event, which is exactly why it tends to be noticed only in businesses that do not have it.
Support that continued as the business expanded
The team stayed with it
The Exactlly team has continued to support First Filter as the company has expanded.
That matters more in a multi-country rollout than in a single implementation. Each new country is a fresh start for the people in it, and it arrives while the operations already running exactllyERP carry on. Support in that setting is not a phase that ends at go-live. It is the thing that makes the next extension possible.
First Filter's own account puts the team alongside the software rather than behind it. Confidence in the system and confidence in the people are described as having grown together, and it was that combination, not either half of it, that the expansion was built on.
What this expansion demonstrates
Three things this story establishes.
Trust led to expansion
The move beyond Singapore was made by a business that had already lived with the system, not by one that had only been shown it.
Expansion validated the relationship
Three further countries is a judgement made more than once. A single extension can be optimism. Three is a settled view.
The same ERP continued across countries
The same ERP still runs in each of them, which is what makes the footprint coherent rather than merely wide.
Business outcomes
What the business has, described as the customer described it.
A rollout that grew from one country
- exactllyERP first in the Singapore operation
- Extended to Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman
- Each extension a decision of its own
Continuity across countries
- The same ERP in every operation it runs in
- Finance, inventory, costing and operations managed consistently
A relationship that grew with the business
- Confidence in the system and in the team grew together
- Expansion followed that confidence
Support through expansion
- The Exactlly team continued to support the business as it expanded
- Support that spans countries rather than a single site
Proof at a glance
The customer
- First Filter International
- Filtration for oil and gas
- Asia Pacific and the Middle East
Where it began
- Singapore
- The first operation on exactllyERP
- The basis for what followed
Extended to
- Malaysia
- Indonesia
- Oman
The ERP
- exactllyERP
- The same ERP across four countries
- Finance, inventory, costing, operations
Related Exactlly capabilities
The product behind this story.
In the customer's words
We began our Exactlly journey with our Singapore operation. As our confidence in the system and the Exactlly team grew, we extended exactllyERP to our businesses in Malaysia, Indonesia and Oman. Using the same ERP across countries has given us continuity in the way we manage finance, inventory, costing and operations, while the Exactlly team has continued to support us as we expanded. For us, Exactlly has grown with the business.
Expanding operations across countries?
If your business is opening in new countries and you want the same ERP in each of them rather than a different system in every country, talk to Exactlly about what that looks like.