Much has happened since we announced we were deploying an ERP system, and indeed since we went live a year ago on November 1st 2019. The global pandemic has changed the world and placed unprecedented pressures on all of us.
It is a little hard to believe that our Priority ERP system has been running for 12 months. We are very pleased with the benefits it has already given to the business and I am pleased that we caused only minimal disruption to our customers and the supply of product. I know that some of our lead times extended a little, but I am confident that we have now improved this and have available a clearer picture regarding actual delivery dates. This proving very helpful as we are seeing a greater volume of one-off ordering.
We introduced a new part numbering scheme and you will have seen these numbers on various documents. This now includes the certificates for our Redipor® products, which are now starting to come from Priority. We are still recognising the old 6-digit part numbers and will continue to do so for some time. However, we will, in 2021, be looking at changing product labelling over to the new part numbers. We will of course give you plenty of notice as to when this will be happening.
The ongoing roll out of ERP continues and we have started to bring the various production-based activities fully into the system, known internally as phase 5 of the project. We anticipate this will take several more months to complete.
Our goal, going forward, is to start exercising the capabilities of Priority to not only drive business improvement but to also provide better quality information and in a more timely manner to customers. We are confident we will continue to make further announcements about future developments.
