From 17 Years of Technical Debt to a Future-Ready Infor LN Foundation
ERP Delivery
Systems & Platforms
IT Strategy
RTC Industries is a leading manufacturer of retail display and merchandising solutions, serving some of the world’s most recognized consumer brands. Their operations span complex manufacturing, warehouse, and financial workflows, all of which had been running on the same version of their Infor LN ERP system for nearly 17 years. Infrastructure components were aging out of support. Extended support costs were compounding. And the organization had quietly reached a ceiling on what it could build or innovate next.
They had tried to upgrade before. That attempt stalled under the weight of competing priorities and never crossed the finish line, leaving behind not just an unfinished project, but a quiet organizational doubt: could something this complex really be done? When RTC committed to getting it right this time, they needed more than technical expertise. They needed a team willing to embed alongside them, take on shared responsibility for the outcome, and stay invested in the results long after go-live day.
That team was Vervint.
Primary Goals
Get off aging infrastructure: before the business paid the price
Years of extended support costs and innovation constraints had made upgrading from Infor LN FP2 to version 10.8 an urgent business imperative, not just an IT priority.
Execute a go-live that wouldn’t disrupt the business
With a narrow go-live window, a fully shared (non-dedicated) project team, and zero tolerance for business disruption, execution discipline would be everything.
Rebuild organizational confidence in what’s possible
A prior failed attempt had left a mark. This upgrade needed to succeed completely, and in a way that re-energized rather than exhausted the people who made it happen.
“The Vervint team worked as part of our team as if they were going to be here when we were done, long-term invested in the success of this working, not only for being able to say the project was complete, but that after they left, it was going to work for us and do all the things we expected it to do. That’s a real differentiator.“
Bill Mickow
VP of Information Technology, RTC Industries
A Long-Overdue Upgrade and the Weight That Came With It
Seventeen years on the same ERP platform is a long time. For RTC Industries, those years accumulated not just in aging hardware and expiring support contracts, but in organizational scar tissue. An earlier upgrade attempt had been set aside when other priorities took over. The technical debt grew. So did the pressure.
By the time RTC committed to the Infor LN 10.8 upgrade, the situation was clear: this project could no longer wait. Infrastructure was falling out of support. Extended support costs were adding up. And the business was bumping against hard limits on what it could innovate or improve, not because of a lack of ambition, but because the foundational system couldn’t keep pace.
The goal going in was focused and deliberate: get to LN 10.8, minimize disruption, and create the foundation for what came next. Incremental wins in warehouse processes and financial reporting were on the table, but the real prize was getting current so RTC could finally move forward.
In the Trenches, Not on the Sidelines
What made this project different wasn’t the technology, it was how the two teams worked together.
For this upgrade, every member of the RTC business team carried project responsibilities on top of their regular job. Not one person was fully dedicated to the effort. That’s a formidable reality for any ERP implementation, which touches finance, manufacturing, warehousing, and more simultaneously. Rather than operating as outside advisors pointing the way, Vervint embedded alongside the RTC team, helping clear the path, maintain focus, and keep the project moving even when the day job pulled people in competing directions.
Vervint’s project manager operated less as a task tracker and more as a project leader, actively engaging in the work, surfacing decisions before they became problems, and translating complex project data into clear, actionable information for the business. When RTC needed to restructure how they handled financial reporting dimensions, territory the internal team wasn’t deeply familiar with. Vervint’s finance consultant stepped in with both technical mastery and the human awareness to meet the team where they were, build their confidence, and guide them to decisions they could trust.
“The business never saw us arguing,” Bill Mickow recalled. “We always came from a common front.” That unity wasn’t accidental; it was the result of a tight steering group that worked through trade-offs candidly, aligned privately, and presented consistent direction to the broader organization. The structure built trust. And trust kept the project on track.
Protecting the Mission Without Losing What Mattered
In any ERP upgrade, there’s a constant pull toward more: new functionality, better processes, cleaner workflows. It’s tempting to optimize everything at once, and the new system creates a visible window into everything that’s possible.
The discipline on this project was in knowing what to do with those opportunities. Whenever a potential change surfaced, the first conversation wasn’t about the feature; it was about impact. What does this mean for the timeline? How wide is the radius of change across the business? If the footprint was large, it got deferred. If the value was clear and the risk was contained, the team made a deliberate, eyes-open decision to move forward.
Meaningful changes were made, particularly on the finance side, where new reporting dimensions required careful partnership to land correctly. Everything that didn’t make the cut wasn’t abandoned; it was documented. That backlog became a source of organizational energy: a list of what RTC had just unlocked the ability to pursue.
A Go-Live Worth Celebrating
The project hit one real disruption: the original holiday-window go-live date had to move. The business got unexpectedly busy, and the team had to replan. Rather than losing momentum during the delay, Vervint kept both teams connected and focused on what was within their control. When the next window arrived, they were ready.
That readiness was earned. Multiple full dry-run testing cycles (complete practice runs of the go-live process) built the reps that mattered. Each cycle surfaced new issues, resolved them, and left the team incrementally more confident. By the time the real go-live weekend arrived, users had enough familiarity with the new system that nothing felt like a leap of faith.
The war room was quiet. It was the first time Bill Mickow had experienced that in an ERP go-live of this scale. The business was up and running on Monday, exactly as planned.
Results Delivered: An Organization Energized, Not Exhausted
A clean go-live with business continuity intact
The upgrade executed within the planned window. The business was operational by Monday, the 17-year data migration went better than expected, and the post-launch war room remained remarkably quiet throughout the first week, a signal, as Bill put it, that “we had really done everything, dotted all the I’s, crossed all the T’s.”
Immediate productivity gains across the organization
End users gained capabilities they’d wanted for years, including the ability to generate their own reports and access data directly without routing requests through IT. Daily friction built up over 17 years of workarounds began to dissolve.
Stronger financial reporting
The finance team landed new reporting dimensions that gave them cleaner, more flexible ways to analyze the business. The structural changes required careful partnership to get right, and they did.
Improved warehouse efficiency
Process improvements in warehousing made daily operations faster and more reliable, with immediate impact on the teams doing the work.
Organizational energy, not post-project fatigue
The project team was recognized at all-hands meetings. Employees who had lived through prior failed attempts expressed genuine surprise at how smoothly things had gone. And almost immediately, a growing backlog of “now can we do this?” requests signaled something more than a successful go-live: it signaled an organization that believed in what was possible again.
“These projects can be really successful and go really smoothly, if you pick the right team and set the right expectations for them. This one was different than ones I’ve done in the past. And it was because of the way we worked together and shared the passion to get this done correctly.“
Bill Mickow
VP of Information Technology, RTC Industries
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