USA staff , in Dionisio ’ s view , should never be just a matter of absorbing it . “ We give them time to settle in ,” he adds . “ My job is to manage migrating them into our systems , moving them into our domain , getting them onto our e-mail system , and so on .” While every acquisition is unique , the process has gotten smoother , he believes , because he ’ s had his team write and discuss lessons learned after each one . They then do a gap analysis to improve their next migration . “ The excitement of IT ,” Dionisio adds , “ is that there ’ s always something new and positive from which you can learn .”
Analytics and business information will be his team ’ s main concerns going forward . It is currently working with company leaders to select a single ERP platform to replace the assorted systems used by various units across the enterprise . “ We need to be on a unified system rather than continue to manage the legacy systems our acquisitions bring with them ,” Dionisio says . “ For example , we ’ re currently managing six different accounting systems that we want to consolidate into one centralized ERP .” A vendor will be chosen shortly , with the implementation slated for Q1 of 2018 .
Dionisio is also moving NAES from the Salesforce CRM platform to Microsoft Dynamics . He has no basic criticism of the existing system except that it takes too big a bite out of his budget . “ Since we ’ re doing so much of our work on the Microsoft cloud already ,” he explains , “ I was able to bundle MS Dynamics and get my costs down to almost a quarter of what a Salesforce renewal would have cost me .”
Migrating to the cloud in itself has yielded a direct saving of more than $ 2mn . “ I like saving money – that ’ s the other half of the CIO hat ,” he quips . “ To keep doing that , we not only have to continue to innovate , we must consolidate . Every part of the business depends on technology to make it as effective and as affordable as it can be .”
A case in point : NAES recently changed over to Gensuite as its dedicated program for managing safety , training and compliance across its extensive fleet of plants . This replaced a motley assortment
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