Salt Union

About Salt Union

Salt Union Ltd is a Compass Minerals company, with three businesses operating out of its site in Winsford, Cheshire. The De-icing Business and Exactrak are trading names of Salt Union Ltd. DeepStore Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Salt Union Ltd.

Winsford Rock Salt Mine was opened in 1844 and is the oldest operating mine in the UK. The Mine produces over a million tonnes of Rock Salt a year and this is primarily used for highway de-icing.

Why Oracle?

Salt Union first implemented Oracle E-Business Suite in 1999. Oracle was chosen because of its rich functionality, seamless integration and it's flexibility to adapt and expand to the changing demands of the business.

They went live with the following modules: Financials (Receivables, Payables, General Ledger and Fixed Assets), Order Management and Purchasing.

Why Percipient?

Percipient are Salt Union's Oracle support partner and were chosen for the upgrade project because of the level of ability, continued excellent service and knowledge in the industry.

Salt Union decided to upgrade to 11.5.10 to utilise the latest Oracle technology and functionality and ensure their Oracle technology infrastructure is up to date as they continue to expand their usage of the software available. This included implementing the Enterprise Asset Management module (eAM) as part of the project.

"We have been working closely with Percipient since 2005, the Oracle Application is critical to our business and Percipient has consistently proved that they can deliver in terms of implementation and support. As we embarked on this project it was vital that they understood both our business and the Oracle suite of products and I am delighted with the level of experience and commitment they continue to show us. They are a key partner for our organisation as we continue to expand our usage of the Oracle products"

Nick Newton
IT Manager, Salt Union

Percipient upgraded Salt Union's Oracle Application version 11.5.5 running on an Oracle 8.1.7 database, to the latest release 11.5.10 running on an Oracle 10g database. A key part of the project included migrating from a Sun Solaris platform running on a Sun V440 server, to Red Hat Linux running on DELL PowerEdge Servers. The Oracle Application environment was also ported from a single tier to a multi tier environment, with the Oracle Database running on one node and the Forms and Web Server on the other.

"This was a challenging project with a complete technology and application upgrade to get Salt Union onto the latest software. The full range of Hardware, Operating System, Database, Application and previous Customisations were upgraded with the addition of a new application module. I am delighted that this went smoothly and is down to the commitment of our team and our excellent working relationship with Salt Union."

David Forrest
Chief Executive Officer, Percipient Consulting

Percipient also brought Salt Union's existing customisations in line with the latest Oracle technology.

"A great success ... Percipient continue to prove to be a very good partner, knowledgeable, hard working, committed and with excellent attention to detail."

Rob Roughsedge
Project Manager, Salt Union

The project consisted of three test upgrades preceding the Go Live period, which ensured that any issues that arose were dealt with and documented prior to the Go Live period. Key Salt Union users were also provided with two test instances which allowed them to test their business processes on the upgraded instance. This is standard Percipient upgrade methodology and allowed any issues to be recorded and dealt with in an efficient manner ensuring a smooth transition through the Go Live Period.

"Flawless"

Jerry Smith
Chief Information Officer, Compass Minerals