Edinburgh Crystal integrates Web site with IMPACT Encore

Edinburgh Crystal, the UK's No.1 quality crystal brand, has integrated its Web site with Syspro's IMPACT Encore ERP system as the backbone for its new e-commerce strategy.

The company has gone live with an Internet-based sales facility, enabling people from across the globe to directly order stocked products from its Web site.

Edinburgh Crystal is historically strong in the UK, with a 25% market share. The IMPACT Encore ERP system is designed by leading local software house Syspro. A 21-year-old company with a track record of supporting its customers' business objectives, Syspro's accounting, manufacturing and distribution products are used in more than 45 countries.

Lisa Lee-Smith, Edinburgh Crystal's strategic market development consultant, says the company sees the Internet as a way of breaking out from the saturated European market, but without the need to establish costly direct selling outlets.

"We are looking to build up our consumer sales primarily in the US," she says. "With e-commerce and Internet shopping growing rapidly, our Web site - combined with on-line and traditional marketing - will provide the ideal low-risk route to selling into this potentially huge market."

Andrew Thompson, IT manager of Edinburgh Crystal, comments: "While the rapid take-off of e-commerce has created the opportunity to increase our global market presence, the implementation of IMPACT Encore with its additional functionality has provided us with the internal capability to maximise this opportunity. IMPACT enabled us to effectively integrate an e-commerce operation into our existing business framework".

A recent upgrade of its ERP system with IMPACT Encore means that Edinburgh Crystal now has the system facilities to effectively manage the order processing and dispatch activities for the Web-generated sales.

Customers can now place orders using the 'on-line store' pages of Edinburgh Crystal's e-commerce enhanced Web site. The orders are processed within IMPACT Encore, and within 30 minutes the picking lists are released.

Also, through Encore's Event Management program, a facility that enables users to monitor trigger points in Encore as they occur and to associate specific actions with that event, a Visual Basic routine is triggered. This program interrogates IMPACT through an ODBC link, collects all the order detail information - product price, duty, weight and customer's address - and feeds this directly into a Federal Express supplied PC, located at Edinburgh Crystal.

The PC uses this information to create a manifest file and prints off the Federal Express shipment documentation in readiness for dispatch the following morning. It also dials up and downloads the manifest into a secure site on CompuServe, which Federal Express's central computer system in the US can then pick up. This provides Federal Express with the invoicing and dispatch information as well as instructions for a next-morning collection.

IMPACT Encore enables a company to exercise complete control over the planning, forecasting, management and distribution facets of the business. It is a comprehensive solution which is simple to maintain, thereby maximising time for business management and profit generation.