ATP began life in the mid 1960's as an automatic transmission re-manufacturing operation.

ATP is now a major contender in the reconditioning of transmission equipment, whilst also becoming a European distributor for new automatic transmissions and trans-axles.

This highly specialised side of the business offers a unique ability to adapt these transmissions for special uses, such as City Buses, Airport ground support vehicles, tracked vehicles and construction equipment. This expertise and knowledge is now available worldwide, through Network 500 Ltd, one of the ATP member companies, specifically set up for this purpose as an on-line diagnostic service.

As the company grew, it was clear that the associated IT systems were not keeping up with business requirements, particularly in the areas of integration, database technology and EDI. Paul Wilde - Financial Director and Company Secretary joined ATP in 1996.

In many companies, IT is often linked directly with the Finance function, and this had certainly been the case with Paul's career; it was inevitable that Paul would have a heavy involvement in any future IT systems at ATP.

Within two years of his appointment, he was tasked with implementing a new system into ATP, as many of their existing core systems were not integrated, requiring a high level of manual intervention and, with increasing international business, Europe and Y2K, there were serious concerns with the accounts package not being multi-currency.

In June 1998 Paul Wilde and Andy Latta began negotiations with Open Logistix Systems.

January 1999 the contract was awarded, and the project was implemented within time scales and budget, with ATP going live in October 1999 after a pilot in June.

"after due consideration we decided that the functionality and ease of use of Openlogistix supply chain, distribution and accounts modules, in a windows environment meant that Open Logistix Systems were a perfect fit for our requirements."

This case study was based on an interview with Paul Wilde, Finance Director & Company Secretary.