Riverdale Publishing, one of the leading lights in the UK greeting cards market, has chosen SYSPRO with an integrated electronic data interchange (EDI) system to improve communications and boost supply chain efficiencies, stretching from the UK to China.
The company selected SYSPRO with Crystal Reporting, coupled with a BACS purchase ledger system, as the backbone of its management system.
Supplied by K3 McGuffie Brunton, the system also uses an integrated bar code tracking system to ensure there is accuracy for picking and warehouse management, allowing instant stock data input for Riverdale's products.
Interestingly, for a company that earns a living from consumers' need for paper-based greeting cards, Riverdale readily identified that it needed the opposite to written communications - an automated enterprise resource management system. This would allow management to run a tight operation, with design, distribution and administration being managed in the UK and the majority of the production being outsourced to China.
The company's products are regarded as high quality and cover a range of well-established brands, including Stepping Out, 'Ahh, that's cute', Kingsley, A Moment In Time and A Touch Of Class. Riverdale uses a large network of specialist distributors and retailers to ensure its extensive range of cards - more than 58 000 product lines and growing by over 1 500 new designs a year - is always available to end customers worldwide.
According to Andy McGee, IT Manager for Riverdale Publishing, the company requires excellent levels of management data communications - input, output and analysis - to ensure everything runs smoothly, all of which is provided by a slick ERP system.
"I have high hopes of SYSPRO, with Crystal Reporting further improving efficiency within our organisation to electronically view and store reports, such as customer debtor balances and stock valuations, as we are still printing out reams of paper for auditors at period end," McGee says.
Any good management system requires quality data, and Riverdale Publishing has grasped this concept well, implementing mobile data capture to boost the functionality and usefulness of the system. The company's sales representatives visit the retail outlets and use HP-Compaq IPAQ handheld computers for communicating orders back to HQ.
"This information is fed into the fully-integrated SYSPRO enterprise system to trigger distribution of product to the customer. When there is a need for replenishment, the system generates purchase orders to transmit to the manufacturing facility in China, which in turn initiates production.
Riverdale Publishing serves the home market and is also active in many other countries around the world. The company has its headquarters in Silsden, bordering the Yorkshire Dales, and operates a design studio in Milton Keynes. The company employs over 100 permanent staff and several freelance artists.
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