Christian Art Distributors contracts SNS to support its business-critical application

Issued by Watt Communications: for EOH
Johannesburg, 23 Feb 2011

SNS, a leading provider of supply chain solutions, is proud to announce the sign-off of a support contract for the Infor WMS solutions with Christian Art Distributors, the main supplier of Christian products in South Africa.

Christian Art has been the largest provider of Christian resources, including gift books with solid scriptural truths, bookmarks, journals, pass-around cards, Bible cases and promise boxes in South Africa since 1974.

Its distribution centre is located in Smuts Avenue, Vereeniging, and consists of 4 500m2, divided into two warehouses. Approximately 6 500 to 7 000 different items are stored there at any given time. Nearly 2 500 of these are gift items, while the rest are books.

Up to three containers can be received each day, containing products that need to be packed and prepared to fill orders. They can process around 200 orders each day, and these can consist of up to 30 000 units. Between six and 30 tons of products can be dispatched each day.

Christian Art's distribution centre processes are controlled by the Infor Warehouse Management System to ensure ease of flow and maximum control. This solution, which was supplied by Softworx, Infor's channel partner in sub-Saharan Africa, and implemented in 2007, has offered Christian Art high inventory accuracy, minimal data entry errors and high order fulfilment rates, thanks to its real-time operations capabilities. Through its sophisticated wave module, the Infor WMS enables Christian Art to process its large number of daily orders with minimum time. In 2010, Christian Art contracted SNS to support this business-critical application.

SNS, who has recently opened an office in South Africa by partnering with Softworx (to offer a comprehensive local supply chain management sales and support capability), has been implementing, customising and supporting the Infor Supply Chain Management applications (including the WMS) for the last 13 years. Its operational and technical expertise in warehousing operations makes it the ideal partner for any company whose distribution centre is a critical element to its business. SNS's customers' portfolio includes leading companies such as Fuel Group, P&G, Nestl'e, Agility Logistics and others.

“Though SNS has been supporting us for a short period only, their quality of service is definitely noteworthy,” said Riaan Kloppers, IT Manager at Christian Art. “They were able to highly improve the performance of our servers as well as introduce various changes to the application to further fit our business requirements.”

“We are very pleased to support Christian Art's operation in South Africa,” said Mario Ghosn, General Manager of SNS. “As with all our clients, we are putting our maximum efforts to ensure they are a satisfied Infor WMS user.”

Christian Art

Since Christian Art Distributors was established in 1974, it has continued to show phenomenal growth. In 1978, Chris Johnsen first began negotiating with international publishers and obtained the rights to distribute its books in South Africa. The distribution of English books gained strong momentum in 1983 when Christian Art took over Word of Life, the largest distributor of English Christian literature in South Africa. Word of Life was owned by Team Alliance Missions in America, an organisation that sent missionaries all over the world to bring the gospel to as many people as possible. After taking over Word of Life, Christian Art Distributors obtained the exclusive rights to distribute books from many of the leading international publishers in South Africa.

SNS

SNS (Supply Network Solutions) is a leading provider of superior supply chain services whose customers and partners are geographically spread across the globe. With offices in Dubai, Jeddah, Johannesburg and Beirut, SNS offers a wide range of services and is recognised in the market by its proven track record of successful projects.

SNS's services range from consulting and training to solution development, implementation, systems integration and support. These services are delivered by an expert team of operational and technical consultants, highly knowledgeable in the supply chain and logistics domain.

For additional information, visit the SNS Web site at http://www.sns-emea.com.

Softworx

Softworx is a successful South African business applications company that prides itself in being able to deliver world-class products to its extensive customer base, which includes a number of Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Softworx supports clients in industries ranging from manufacturing, retail, distribution and financial, to supporting various government entities. The company is dedicated to marketing, implementing and providing support for its range of complimentary software products to medium and large enterprises that require effective solutions to optimise their business processes.

Softworx has positioned itself as a leading provider of business applications in South Africa, specialising in end-to-end business solutions. The company prides itself on being able to deliver true value to its customers through the implementation of business solutions based on a powerful combination of leading edge products and consultancy. As a wholly owned subsidiary of EOH, Softworx has increased the number of services and products that can be offered to its customers from within the group.

EOH

EOH is a business and technology solutions provider creating lifelong partnerships by developing business and IT strategies, supplying and implementing solutions and managing enterprise-wide business systems and processes for medium to large clients.

EOH operates in the following three clusters of business units as a fully integrated business:

Technology - Through a number of subsidiary companies, EOH is able to sell, implement and support a range of world-class business applications, including ERP, CRM, business intelligence, advanced planning and scheduling, e-commerce and manufacturing execution systems (MES).

Consulting - Concentrated under the EOH Consulting brand are business units offering services ranging from strategic and business process consulting, project services, change management, supply chain optimisation and education.

Outsourcing - EOH offers comprehensive maintenance and support of client's IT infrastructure and applications through the rendering of full IT outsourcing, application hosting and managed services. In addition, EOH offers full business process outsourcing (BPO) services.

EOH has a presence in all major centres in South Africa and operates in the rest of Africa.

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