Business Process Re-Engineering for Leading Specialty Chemicals Manufacturer

A mid-sized specialty-materials manufacturer, a leading materials science company specializing in polymer technologies, engineered products, and specialized materials. Their products serve various industries, including construction, agriculture, transportation infrastructure, weather and fire protection, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, electronics, and design was running an inefficient Oracle POD that could no longer keep up with the plant floor or the back office.

Client knew that for its business to scale and stay competitive, they needed more than just system upgrades—and needed operational clarity. This initiative wasn’t just about fixing what was broken; it was about building a foundation for smarter manufacturing, tighter financial controls, and a roadmap that supports its long-term growth and acquisitions.

Chief Financial Officer mentioned- “As we looked to expand operational efficiency and prepare for future growth, it became clear that our legacy ERP setup was holding us back. Our vision was to modernize core processes—particularly around costing, manufacturing, and financial reporting—while laying the foundation for a scalable Oracle platform to support innovation and global expansion.”

Client: Material Science Company
Industry: Chemical Manufacturing
Size: 600 employees

Location: Toronto

Challenges:

The company was facing major performance bottlenecks within its Oracle system, especially in core functions such as manufacturing execution, cost control, and financial reporting. These technical lags led to growing operational inefficiencies—slowing down decision-making, increasing manual workarounds, and limiting return on ERP investment. Without a strategic framework for future scalability, the organization was struggling to align technology with its long-term growth and integration goals.

Bottleneck	Day-to-Day Impact
System lag in manufacturing & costing	MRP and cost-roll processes regularly stretched past the night shift, delaying shop-floor schedules by up to 3 hours per week.
Fragmented data flow	Drill-downs from Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM) to General Ledger broke on one in five transactions, forcing finance to spend 10–12 hours each month hunting for missing detail.
Heavy customization	More than 1,400 custom objects made every patch risky and kept annual support fees high.
Slow month-end close	Close took 7 full days, with half that time consumed by manual reconciliations and variance research.
No future roadmap	The IT team had no clear path to adopt new Oracle modules or sunset costly bolt-ons, limiting the company’s ability to scale or acquire.

Action:

Over a focused 20-week program the joint business–IT team tackled the root causes rather than applying another layer of “quick fixes”:

Process Re-engineering – Re-mapped Product Lifecycle Management, Order Management, Costing, Production, and Finance workflows, eliminating 140 low-value steps.
Costing Overhaul – Migrated from average to standard costing for 2,600 SKUs, giving planners a transparent way to measure true margin and variance.
SLA & Chart-of-Accounts Redesign – Added 42 new natural accounts, cleaned up 300 obsolete ones, and rewrote Subledger Accounting (SLA) rules so every OPM batch now lands in the right GL account—100 % of the time.
Month-End Playbook – Introduced a four-step close checklist, parallel processing of accruals, and automated variance alerts at ±5 %.
“Future-Ready” ERP Roadmap – Delivered a two-phase blueprint to bring in Advanced Supply Chain Planning and Maintenance Cloud, each with projected paybacks and resource estimates.

Results:

30% faster month-end close, significantly reducing finance team workload and allowing more time for strategic planning.
20% increase in forecasting accuracy, thanks to improved variance tracking from the move to standard costing.
35% reduction in custom code, resulting in 20% lower system maintenance costs and faster processing for critical manufacturing transactions.
A comprehensive ERP roadmap was delivered with a projected 25% ROI over three years, creating a clear path to sustained process improvement and technology expansion.
Most importantly, teams reported greater confidence in data accuracy and system performance, laying the foundation for more scalable, insight-driven growth.

Before vs. After

Outcome	Before	After	Benefit
Custom code footprint	1,400 objects	910 objects	-35 % custom code, lowering support hours and patch effort
Manufacturing transaction runtime	15 sec / txn	12 sec / txn	-20 % faster throughput in first quarter
Cost-variance accuracy	±25 % swing	±5 % swing	↑20 pp accuracy; tighter forecast and margin control
Month-end close	7.0 days	4.9 days	-30 % cycle time; 2 extra days for analysis
Finance reporting errors	1 in 22 reports	1 in 27 reports	↑18 % accuracy
Maintenance & license spend	Baseline	-20 %	Savings driven by smaller custom footprint
ERP expansion ROI	—	25 % projected over 3 yrs	Clear business case for future Oracle modules

Client Testimonial

“We went from firefighting system slowdowns to trusting the numbers on day one of close. Cutting our custom code by a third not only saves money—it lets us adopt new Oracle functionality without fear. The roadmap gives us a clear runway for growth and acquisitions.”

— Chief Information Officer

Request Detailed Client Story