PAC Strapping Products

Situation

PAC Strapping’s old ERP system was mainly focused on four areas – Accounting, Procurement/Inventory Control, Sales, and Shipping – and even then, it was limited to only certain sub-functions in these areas. For Accounting, there was no system-related way to do costing from actual build of materials, routings and labor overhead rates; this had to be performed off-line and then uploaded. The Sales function was mainly focused on order entry, invoicing, and reporting; there was no standard pricing setup by customer, no quoting, and no CRM connectivity. For Shipping, the system functioned across all areas but was only functional from paper; orders to be shipped were communicated by paper, outside of the system. The old system was not Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) compatible. EDI would be done manually through customer portals. With more and more customers – many of whom were growing in the business – using and requiring EDI, this process would not be sustainable in the future. The old system was past any technology upgrades, and the closing process was a “black box” controlled only by accounting.

Results

• $25,000 invested in software/information systems
• $25,000 invested in workforce practices/employee skills workforce practices
• $50,000 invested in other areas of the business
• 1 new jobs created
• The new ERP system is capable across all functions of the business. Most important is the newfound insight into production scheduling and processing. There is now visibility on how far out the company is on select production items based on volume by SKU. There is also detail available on production variances from manufacturing jobs that never existed before, which will lead to better product costing down the line
• In general, the insight into reporting across all areas has dramatically improved since these reports now exist where they did not before, and teams can use them to do their jobs better every day.
• The new system is a complete package for the key business cycles. In addition, the system-based CRM, including opportunity tracking and functional quoting, will make forecasting a more focused process in 2021 and beyond.
• New system is EDI capable. Once fully realized, there will likely be at least one person to re-assign for a different function within the business, if not two. This will also dramatically improve billing and AR accuracy
• The new system has security roles and function-specific access so select employees can perform certain functions. This specifically helps with the “black box” accounting concern. There is now a tremendous amount of visibility depending on level of access. The new system has built-in paperless functionality– a tremendous advantage to support a remote workforce, something of particular value during the COVID pandemic.