Hawk Corporation Partners With Oxford Consulting Group
2 May 2000
Hawk Corporation Partners With Oxford Consulting Group to Deliver Four Site QAD E-Implementation
INDIANAPOLIS--May 1, 2000--Oxford Consulting Group, an Indianapolis based e-business consulting firm, announced today that Hawk Corporation (NYSE:HWK), a leading worldwide supplier of friction and powder metal products, has partnered with Oxford Consulting Group to complete a four site concurrent implementation of QAD using an innovative Internet-based implementation methodology.Hawk Corporation, having already implemented QAD applications throughout the Wellman Friction Products division, selected QAD as the ERP package of choice for its powder metal group. For this division, however, Hawk will forgo traditional onsite consulting services for a more cost-effective Internet-based e-implementation approach. "The cost of implementing four distributed sites was going to be a significant expenditure for Hawk Corporation. Travel expenses alone would have run tens of thousands of dollars. This is why we looked to Oxford to collaborate with us to deliver the implementation utilizing the Internet. Now we can reach all four plants simultaneously without the cost of travel and multiple consultants," said Paul Moser, Project Manager for the Hawk PM implementation. "We wanted to bring team members together for training and implementation without taking them out of their plants for weeks. The concept is to enable collaboration and learning by focusing on QAD using the Internet technology available to us," Moser added.
Oxford Consulting Group QAD Practice Manager, Tim McGhee, commented, "We are very excited to be collaborating with Hawk to deliver an effective alternative to traditional classroom and onsite consulting engagements. We recognize our clients are tired of paying for the non-value added expenses like travel associated with these types of implementations. By providing them with this innovative Internet-based approach, our clients can reduce the cost of implementations and devote dollars to more important strategic initiatives."
McGhee reports that the Oxford e-implementation approach is particularly well suited for companies that already have one or more facilities running QAD and want to continue the deployment. "After defining standards and business processes as part of one implementation, an organization is well-positioned to deploy them throughout other facilities during subsequent implementations. Utilizing our Internet approach, companies are able to reduce the amount of time and money it will take to do this," said McGhee.
Hawk's Lel Somogyi, CIO of Wellman Friction Products, added, "Hawk recognizes we need an integrated enterprise system across the organization. We are also committed to investing in e-business initiatives that will allow us to better service our customers. This e-implementation approach lets us do the QAD implementation without compromising its effectiveness, and gives us the incentive internally to develop and use the web tools we plan to use for our customers, at the same time. With Oxford's help, Hawk is on a fast track to deploy e-business functionality as an extension of our integrated enterprise."
McGhee concluded by saying that while pure e-implementation is not suited for all organizations, it gives companies additional choices in developing implementation strategies as well as more control over cost. "We recognize that face-to-face effectiveness will never be replaced, but we also want to leverage the Internet to help our clients in innovative ways."
About Hawk Corporation
Hawk, through its operating subsidiaries, designs, engineers, manufactures and markets specialized components, principally made from powder metals, used in a wide variety of aerospace, industrial and commercial applications. In additional to its powder metal business, Hawk is a leading worldwide supplier of friction products for brakes, clutches and transmissions used in aerospace, industrial and specialty applications. The Cleveland, Ohio-based company also designs and manufactures die-cast aluminum rotors for small electric motors used in business machines, appliances and exhaust fans. Sales in 1999 were $187.4 million.
About Oxford Consulting Group
Oxford Consulting Group is a professional services firm dedicated to helping clients reposition themselves to compete in the digital economy. The cornerstone of Oxford's business strategy is to develop a balance between people, process and technology as technology alone will not bring about the far-reaching changes demanded by today's Internet marketplace. Oxford has been providing e-business and ERP solutions to its nationwide client base since 1998.