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Edumeds, school book and stationery retailer
Edumeds is the leading retailer for school books and stationery in Namibia. They deliver books to all schools, regardless of their location and distance from their three retail branches. Edumeds needs to manage back orders and reconcile accounts for its customers, some of which do not have the skills or communication possibilities to manage their own back orders and accounts.Situation
Edumeds was running three disparate systems, Great Plains, Pastel and a character based MBA software. They needed a new solution as all three had their drawbacks or were simply outdated, and none of the vendors could supply a satisfactory new solution at a reasonable cost.
The New System
Edumeds spent more than a year searching for a flexible yet cost effective solution. In particular they required one which could handle the management of back orders, flexible pricing and advanced and dependable stock control in a simple and efficient way. Other key reasons for choosing HansaWorld were the system’s speed over slow networks and the ability to run on old equipment.
Sandra Farrer, M.D. of Edumeds comments, "Edumeds has some special requirements for handling back orders and student accounts. We are managing the demands of the customer in an industry that is built around back orders. Most systems do not handle this well. In particular, we need to update prices on invoices based on the shipment date, not on the quotation as these might be six months apart."
Edumeds had looked at a host of other systems before being introduced to HansaWorld in September 2004. “We knew what we were looking for, and where all other systems failed. Immo showed us that HansaWorld could handle all of our requirements within 20 minutes of the demo”, remarks Mrs. Farrer. Enterprise was chosen as it offered advanced back order functionality, advanced financials and was able to demonstrate ease of use and value for money, as very little hardware had to be upgraded. Also, it was important that all present back orders from Great Plains could be imported into HansaWorld.
“It was important for us that we could import the outstanding back-orders from Great Plains, as we need to report on the status of these orders to our customers on a regular basis” maintains Mrs. Farrer.
Implementation Process
Enterprise was sold and implemented in about 3 weeks by Namibian Dealer Active Business Solutions. Edumeds has 21 users and uses the basic financial modules, Quotations, Sales Orders, POS and Stock Control. It was also important for Edumeds that Enterprise could be customised easily. For example, Edumeds shows on each invoice the amount of books ordered, delivered, outstanding and invoiced, so that each invoice is also a statement of the status of the order for easy reconciliation by the customer.
Edumeds runs most workstations and their server on Windows. Implementation began in mid November 2004 with Go-Live the 13th of December 2004. The implementation ran smoothly and implementation was carried out at the quiet time of year for Edumeds as all schools were closed for summer holidays.
Benefits and Results
“The implementation was carried out professionally and the team kept strictly to the proven HansaWorld Implementation Methodology, which ensured a minimum of growing pains on the new system. It was also reassuring to note that a programmer was on site so that most last minute wishes could be addressed right there and then.”
Future Plans
Looking forward, Edumeds will explore the new opportunities possible with HansaWorld. One example is the use of item varieties for the multitude of stationery items they sell.
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