JB Poindexter Case Study
Friday May 5, 2023JB Poindexter & Co : Oracle UPK content conversion to Opus success
JB Poindexter & Co [JBPCO} is a privately held portfolio of businesses that provide best-in-class innovative services for commercial trucks, specialty vehicles, upfit and accessory, and manufacturing industries. JBPCO applies innovative operational and financial disciplines to truck and van bodies, pick-up truck covers and accessories, industrial vehicle storage and shelving, funeral coaches, limousines, specialty industrial parts and expandable foam packaging. The portfolio of industry-leading business units includes Morgan, Morgan Olson, Truck Accessories Group, Reading, Masterack, Specialty Vehicle Group, EAVX, MIC Group, and EFP Corporation.

In the summer of 2022, Paul Kreuger, the Chief Information Officer & Vice President of Information Technology, knew that their eLearning solution Oracle UPK was coming to the end of its support life in that year and needed to replace it to assist their employee base using IT Applications such as JD Edwards. Kreuger considered tools such as Ancile uPerform, Datango & Clicklearn, but settled on Epilogue Opus and was assisted through the selection process by their System Integrator, iLearnERP.
Kreuger tasked his Team with producing all educational, end user support and change content for their JDE installations across all business units, focusing on having all employees become self-sufficient on support in Finance, Manufacturing, Logistics, Materials, QA, and Supply Chain Management. Kreuger knew that one of the most important aspects was the ongoing, easy maintenance and consumption of that content for those 6 JDE areas.
Having used Oracle UPK extensively, JBPCO was able to implement Epilogue Opus in under 3 weeks in 2023 and have lots of Subject Matter Experts creating content in Opus: a testament to the effectiveness of Kreuger’s Team in change management and change communications. Looking forward with Opus, there are no restrictions to any other IT Application, such as Ceridian, Dayforce HCM, Salesforce & Docebo LMS at JBPCO.
JBPCO also looked at other solutions including Adobe Suite, Whatfix, TTS and WalkMe, and states “We took advise from our long standing Edwards’ system Integrator and tested all offerings thoroughly, and because of the content was 100% web based with Opus stored in one location via AWS, as well as the ability to use the Opus Content Library as an LCMS, the decision was straightforward”. Kreuger continues “Opus allows us to have a lean content development process, using the SMEs to author the content, then the L&D Teams review, edits and publishes from one screen and all the Opus outputs are updated : the Opus Solution also migrated all our UPK content in bulk in minutes with a high fidelity“ Kreuger continues “Opus was also the clear choice on UPK conversion, in testing and security. In fact, some of the competitors we looked at to Opus do not have a true UPK converting process, which was a factor for JBPCO”.
Kreuger continues “The JBPCO IT Security Team are focused on keeping all the system data and information safe, and our due diligence for the thousands of end users meant that the IT Teams were heavily involved at every step” JBPCO also have planned to utilize Opus on RF Readers and Tablet PCs throughout the business units.
JBPCO likes the ease of editing in Opus, UPK conversion utility & language conversion functionality.
Additional training benefits include Quizzes & Tests on the competency of manufacturing employees, as well as Sandbox access via Opus Simulations.
Digital Adoption Business Transformation
JBPCO had several Key Business Objectives, including migration away from Oracle UPK and increased user adoption. These objectives were mirrored in Learning offerings:
- Training covers all employees on a variety of Applications
- Training material available close to Go Live & Post Go-Live Dates
- Reduce time to proficiency in employees, both existing and new hires
- Self-support in the IT Applications for new employees
- Training uses IT Application system screen
- No end user disruption in migration from UPK
Highlights at JBPCO include
- Opus is now the JDE end user support platform for all staff
- Replaced UPK in 2023 in under 3 weeks
- IT Applications include JD Edwards, Ceridian, Salesforce, & HCM
- JBPCO have over 500 UPK converted Documents
- JBPCO are using Opus Follow Me for live In Application Support
- Opus will support multiple languages including Spanish and French Canadian
JBPCO evaluated other learning solutions such as ANCILE uPerform, Captivate and Datango but after due diligence settled on Epilogue Opus for a variety of reasons including ease of use, just-in-time training & support, centralized content, and bulk conversion of Oracle UPK.