When retail and wholesale fabric distributors Fabric Library and Home Fabrics learned that their Advanced Pick-based systems were no longer going to be supported and maintained in the new millennium, they had visions of having to abandon a 12-year investment in their financial and distribution computing system.
However, a switch to the UniVerse database environment at the end of last year ensured they kept the massive investments they had made in their customised applications.
It also gave them the flexibility they needed to introduce new business processes, as well as speed up their 60-user (per site) computer systems without having to replace their IBM 6000 processors.
The new processes now being added to their applications include fabric roll, piece control and bar coding systems. These, says Soraya Patel, software consultant and partner at DDX, the Informix business partner responsible for development of the customised system, will significantly improve customer service and boost productivity.
"Because of the proprietary nature of Pick, we were unable to easily integrate the application software with new hardware technologies such as bar code scanners. The openness of UniVerse makes creating the interface much easier," she says.
With the piece control system, the fabric roll is monitored from entry. Every piece cut from it is tracked so that when customers request a certain length of a fabric, the orders department is able to tell them precisely what lengths are available.
"It`s going to help improve customer service dramatically," says Patel. "Also, as all flaws will be monitored and recorded, managers will be able to extract reports on specific rolls and feed this information back to the supplier."
With the bar coding system, staff are now equipped with scanners so that pieces that are removed from the warehouse are automatically logged. "It means staff don`t have to waste time looking for pieces that are no longer there," she adds.
The two companies called in independent consultants KPMG to determine the best route for the company to take following the Advanced Pick decision. Having investigated moving to new applications based on Oracle or Baan, or sticking with their 12 year old systems and migrating to UniVerse or Pick`s D3, KPMG recommended the UniVerse option.
"Apart from being a much cheaper and quicker to implement option, it meant they could retain the considerable investment they had made in their customised applications, while migrating to a more open environment, which would make any future plans such as e-business, much easier to implement," says Patel.
The switch over took just three days to effect and was described by Hylton Surat, financial director of Home Fabrics, "as totally uneventful", as were the two companies Y2K experiences. Nothing had to be done to the database itself, while tweaking the application involved two hours work.
DDX Software, has also developed special solutions for the agricultural co-op sector as well as for the transport industry, all of which have now converted to UniVerse.
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