System 2000 Enterprise
Supply Chain Management Software Solutions

Background & Challenge:
When we met Art Walker, L&R Distributors' CFO, he was facing major changes in his business. For the first time, L&R was about to start selling its products to the major health and beauty chain stores. But the company's home grown computer system couldn't support the new wave of large transactions.

A decision was made to upgrade to new D&W Software, but Art faced another business challenge: His old system supported L&R's unique packaging and pricing mechanisms, but the new D&W Software didn't. In order to maintain the competitive edge these pricing mechanisms gave them, L&R needed a way to integrate some valuable functions of their old system into the more robust D&W Software package.

Solution:
A decision was made to upgrade to new D&W Software, but Art faced another business challenge: His old system supported L&R's unique packaging and pricing mechanisms, but the new D&W Software didn't. In order to maintain the competitive edge these pricing mechanisms gave them, L&R needed a way to integrate some valuable functions of their old system into the more robust D&W Software package.

SMC Data's solution incorporated the following features:

1. Telzone Orders: L&R's sales force serves major chain stores. The Telzone ordering system used by L&R allows sales people to replenish their customer's merchandise by simply scanning bar-coded labels. Orders are immediately transmitted to L&R's AS/400 server and automatically updated in the D&W system.
   
   
2. Merchandise Packaging and Pricing: L&R's original packaging and pricing software modules were upgraded to work as a stand alone database. They were then interfaced with the new D&W software. This allowed the new D&W system to take advantage of the proprietary pricing mechanisms that L&R had developed in their old system.
   
   
3. EDI: Not having EDI in place, L&R faced the possibility of losing a one million dollar order. One of its new chain store customers gave L&R one week to establish EDI communication. SMC Data Systems was there to meet the challenge. We immediately contacted an EDI Service Bureau and coordinated the receipt of data from the new chain store client. Once the order was received by L&R's AS/400 server, we re-used the same Telzone Orders mechanism to update the D&W database, thus cutting down on implementation time for the new EDI requirement.

Results:
Supported by the solution that SMC Data Systems developed for L&R Distributors, sales at L&R have grown from 25 to 50 million dollars without increasing their computer department's staff. The only item that had to be upgraded was the AS/400 processor -- needed to handle the large volume of data that has resulted from the increase in sales.