Metal Building Manufacturer Achieves a Seamless ERP Transition

The client is one of the largest manufacturers of metal building components in the United States, with more than three decades in the market and a nationwide network of manufacturing plants. It produces metal roofing, siding, building components, and packaged building systems for thousands of post-frame, commercial, residential, and architectural customers. Its sales team and customers manage quotes and purchase orders through a dedicated customer portal. At this scale of operations, order accuracy and uptime are core operational requirements, which makes the portal one of the most critical systems in the business.

As the company continued to evolve its digital operations, it set out to accelerate the modernization of its customer portal, the platform that connects every quote and purchase order to the business. They aimed to:

• Accelerate the portal migration already underway with senior engineering capacity, while preserving the momentum of the work in progress.
• Extend the portal with new functionality for the sales team and customers.
• Transition to a new ERP, the system of record for the entire operation, while day-to-day business continued uninterrupted.
• Keep order processing and manufacturing running smoothly across every plant throughout the change.

Beyond capacity, the company was looking for a partner it could trust with growing responsibility. It wanted a team experienced enough to join a live program and, over time, take ownership of its most critical work. The ERP transition was the most ambitious goal of all: a change at the core of the business, executed with both systems living in parallel and zero tolerance for data loss.

The client achieved the most ambitious goal on its roadmap: transitioning its customer portal to a new ERP while the business continued to run on its system of record every day.

A dual-track approach protected continuity throughout the transition. One squad maintained the existing ERP integration while another built and validated the new one, and a synchronization layer kept the portal accurate against both systems. Meanwhile, the portal continued to gain new features for the sales team and customers.

To keep releases safe while the platform’s foundation changed, the team built a comprehensive automated testing practice covering critical workflows and validating end-to-end behavior before every release. Paired with automated deployment pipelines, this practice lets the client keep shipping new capabilities on schedule and approach go-live with confidence.

The client entrusted this work to Bridgenext because of what the partnership had already proven. The engagement began in 2022 with a small group of engineers who joined the existing program team, alongside the client’s incumbent vendor, to accelerate the portal migration already underway. Working side by side with the client’s IT leadership and sharing standards and visibility from day one, the team steadily took on more responsibility. As results accumulated, the client chose to consolidate the program with Bridgenext, transitioning full ownership of the project from its previous vendor and growing the team into a self-contained, multidisciplinary delivery unit operating as an extension of the client’s IT organization.

The infrastructure the team built remained client-owned and co-managed. Daily syncs with leadership and strategic sessions with the CIO and IT Director kept delivery aligned with business priorities in real time. An open-books approach to progress, blockers, code quality, and risk kept every layer of the work visible. Requirements shifted over time, as they do in any live operation, and the delivery cadence absorbed them without slowing progress.

After a successful ERP deployment and stabilization, the engagement moved to a streamlined steady-state team focused on the platform’s continued evolution.