Customer Case Studies

Since 1983, our core principles of customer care and quality service have earned us a solid industry reputation for successful software implementations. Our customer base spans a wide variety of distribution markets — a testimony to our software's flexibility and depth.

Take a look at how companies have turned to TECSYS to increase their competitive advantage:

Ace Mart

Ace Mart Restaurant Supply has built its success on its commitment to "in-stock" product availability as reflected in its value proposition "When You Need It Now!". Stock-outs can seriously undermine Ace Mart's customer service and loyalty. When its proprietary software system began impeding the company's ability to deliver on its in-stock promise, Ace Mart launched an intensive search for an enterprise solution that would safeguard this crucial competitive advantage. The winner of the 18-month selection process: TECSYS and its EliteSeries solution.

"We're confident that the EliteSeries, with its fully integrated e-commerce front-end and distribution-focused back-end, will enable us to experience order-of-magnitude improvements in inventory accuracy, warehouse efficiency and customer service."
Dave Russell, Controller

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Adidas-Salomon

When Adidas added Salomon/Taylor Made to their roster, they were suddenly faced with the need to move 2.5 times more inventory than before, and at a time when customer demand for turnaround, accuracy and accountability was reaching new highs in every industry. Add to that the complexities of integrating two different order management systems, one residing in Canada (AS/400) and one in the U.S. (HP3000), and it became clear that they needed to team up with a partner who had the skills to help them over all the hurdles. Their research culminated in a relationship with TECSYS.

"We had come to a point where our business was changing so rapidly that the configuration of the old distribution center just didn't make sense anymore. We needed a much larger stand-alone facility that could accommodate the three product lines, and provide us with better space utilization...the typical vanilla-variety WMS and RF providers just weren't going to cut it."
Paul Leone, Director of Information Technology and Logistics

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Assured Logistics

Assured Logistics, the retail merchandise logistics division of Progistix, needed a transportation management system that offered enterprise-wide visibility of shipments and integration with their SAP order management system, while keeping the total cost of ownership low as new facilities are rolled out. TECSYS EliteSeries TMS was up to the task, and now it's accuracy and self-serve tracking/tracing abilities are providing Assured Logistics' customers real competitive advantage.

"We selected TECSYS because of their in-depth knowledge of, and experience in, the transportation industry. The advanced product design and ease of integration with our core SAP application provided us with a solution that no one else could provide."
Chris Thomson, Director IT, Retail Merchandise Fulfillment

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Battat

Battat Inc. is a leading North American designer and distributor of high-quality children's toys. With operations in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Battat's clients include major department stores such as Sears and T.J. Maxx, and suppliers such as Target, BJ's and Costco. Battat rolled out the TECSYS EliteSeries to accommodate its rapid growth, deliver streamlined, real-time, inventory control, and meet customer expectations for electronic fulfillment and just-in-time deliveries.

"When we receive an order, it has to be filled within three days. This requires a totally integrated order fulfillment system that provides real-time enterprise-wide information. The EliteSeries delivers this and more, allowing us to make informed decisions to enhance both our growth and customer satisfaction."
Joe Battat, President

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Bayer

From hospital life-saving diagnostic equipment and headache relief to snowtire treads, Bayer touches countless lives every day. Shipping an average of 25,000 orders a month to everyone from the local drug store to the Big Three U.S. auto makers meant it was imperative that Bayer have a smooth-running supply chain. A process was put in motion that ensured just that — they overhauled their traditional warehouse operations and created a paperless environment — and it generated other supply chain benefits besides.

"This move helped to improve employee morale...As a result, we have been able to enjoy increased productivity and accuracy in the warehouse. From the outset, employees took ownership of their respective jobs. They also supported the warehouse team concept and tried hard to make it work."
Harold Mueller, Director of Logistics

» Full story (390Kb) Reprinted from Materials Management & Distribution magazine

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Cardinal Health Specialty Pharmaceutical Services

Cardinal Health Specialty Pharmaceutical Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cardinal Health, the leading provider of products and services to the healthcare industry. It now ranks among the top three 3PLs in healthcare, distributing products to pharmacy chains, specialty distributors, and wholesalers. Three key factors drove their software search: 1) their old package could not be validated under the FDA guidelines; 2) they needed increased reporting flexibility; and 3) the old system was affecting their ability to be competitive. Cardinal Health Specialty Pharmaceutical Services then selected TECSYS' EliteSeries enterprise application suite.

"We know, and can track, every piece of every order. An Enterprise Performance Management tool such as EliteView allows us to create, view, analyze and report all activities by client."
Gary Davis, Information Systems Manager

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Corus Group

Corus L.P., formerly Reynolds Aluminum Company of Canada, is a unit of Corus plc in partnership with the Société Générale de Financement. Corus plc is a British-based steel and aluminum multinational with US$15 billion in annual revenues and 66,000 employees. Corus is a major supplier and exporter of specialized flat-rolled aluminum for the automotive and packaging industries. The EliteSeries has helped the company compete successfully in a very tough vertical market, automating their distribution centers. Corus now uses TECSYS' new Web-based EliteSeries.

"The EliteSeries actually enabled us to change our business paradigm and achieve a significant competitive advantage. Thanks to its value-added capabilities, we have been able to move from a manufacturer of commodity products to more lucrative specialized products. There is no doubt that TECSYS will continue to be a key strategic partner for Corus L.P., as our company grows and evolves."
Marcel Turmel, Director of Technology

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Dainty Foods

In business since 1882, Dainty Foods mills, bags, packages, and cans numerous rice products under its own brand names, as well as for private-label customers. The CDN$42-million public company operates in a very competitive commodities environment, where margins are extremely thin and distribution efficiency is of the utmost importance. As TECSYS' first EliteSeries client, Dainty Foods now uses the browser-based, Internet version of this leading enterprise solution.

"As the longest-standing EliteSeries customer, we can certainly testify to the software's ability to evolve with the times. Regardless of the changes in the marketplace, it remains state-of-the-art. We have been able to move forward with EliteSeries technology without having to reinvent ourselves or lose any effort. It is a true test of what has proven to be a very valuable investment."
David Wayland, VP, Finance & Information Systems

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Darice

Founded in 1954, Ohio-based Darice Inc. is a craft industry leader. Darice now has more than 60,000 products and serves thousands of independent craft stores and large chains that include Jo-Ann Stores Inc., Wal-Mart, and Michaels. Darice chose TECSYS because it was the only company that offered a fully integrated end-to-end solution with distribution, financial, warehousing and transportation capabilities. EliteSeries is the backbone for Darice's future plans.

"It is giving us performance numbers and percentiles we never had. These new measurements will help us achieve our corporate vision."
Mike Birkholm, Chief Operating Officer

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Elkay Plastics

Since 1968, Elkay Plastics Co., Inc. (Los Angeles) has been a leader in the development and production of industrial and retail plastic bags. Just-In-Time (JIT) availability and synergistic channels are as crucial to the success and growth of Elkay as the quality of their products. Elkay's implementation of TECSYS' EliteSeries radically streamlined their inventory and distribution processes.

"Within three months of implementation, we saw a measurable impact in increased customer service levels and decreased inventories. Now we can operate with a higher level of management potential."
Gordon Tyler, VP Information Technology and Administration

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ESAB

ESAB is the number one welding company in the world and the second largest industry player in North America, with a product range that includes welding machines, cutting equipment and filler metals. ESAB services its customer base of metal fabrication companies, shipyards, the agricultural industry and more through a large distributor network. The company decided to automate it's warehouse facility to keep pace with revenues that were doubling every five years. They evaluated proposals from several vendors before choosing the warehouse management system from TECSYS.

"It was a complete one-stop shopping set up that was implemented, after a lot of groundwork, over a two-week period. We've experienced not only a huge increase in productivity but also in proper tracking of orders and inventory, which our old system wasn't able to do."
Mike Williams, Operations Manager

» Full story (123Kb) Reprinted from Materials Management & Distribution magazine

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Floors-2-Go

Floors-2-Go offers a wide range of laminate and hard wood from a selection of 130 products, and a comprehensive range of essential accessories in over 140 retail stores across the U.K. To enable the Company’s aggressive growth and automate its 130,000 square foot warehouse facility for distribution to its retail stores, Floors-2-Go launched a warehouse management system search among a number of players, after an extensive search the Company’s management decided on TECSYS. Floors-2-Go’s management liked the technology and TECSYS’ deep expertise in distribution, but most importantly they believed in TECSYS’ ability to deliver and support Floors-2-Go’s mission critical operations and business objectives. Today, TECSYS’ EliteSeries is empowering Floors-2-Go to gain control over every transaction; significantly improving warehousing throughput and costs, improving orders turnaround, and achieving unparalleled enterprise visibility of its operations and customer service levels.

"TECSYS understood our business requirements and was able to demonstrate how TECSYS’ EliteSeries could deliver on our business objectives. Floors-2-Go selected TECSYS based on its reputation in the Warehouse Management System’s (WMS) market and its valued advanced WMS functions."
Hardeep Chana, Information Technology Manager

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Focus Products Group

Focus Products Group has been very active acquiring companies with lines of products that complement the housewares and personal care items it delivers to major retailers. While each acquisition boosts the company's bottom line, integrating new operating companies is a logistical and strategic challenge. Focus Products Group relies on TECSYS EliteSeries to bring its new divisions in line.

"We're committed to partnering with TECSYS. They've shown us commitment in terms of the resources that they have made available to us when we need them. And they are responsive when it comes to the product, too."
Eric Lockwood, Vice President of Operations

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Hofland

Hofland Ltd. is Canada's premier floral wholesaler, recognized across the country as a provider of high-end product and quality service. With new distribution channels emerging and major customers starting to buy directly from growers, Hofland sought to implement an effective value-add strategy. In addition to hosting educational seminars and design shows, the leading floral wholesaler began expanding its product offering to include giftware and home decor. Hofland implemented TECSYS EliteSeries to support this diversification and grow its customer base, while delivering real-time information.

"A flower shop can no longer afford to be just a flower shop, which means as a supplier we have to provide more than just flowers. TECSYS' EliteSeries has helped us incorporate new product lines and penetrate new markets with greater speed and efficiency."
Glenn Hofland, President

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Hospital Logistics Inc.

Hospital Logistics Inc. (HLI) was created to manage a Toronto-area hospital supply chain for medical and surgical products, utilizing a unique combination of internal hospital expertise and external supply chain and logistics expertise. HLI sought to establish a complete, cost-effective system that would provide efficient Just-In-Time inventory, ordering, and distribution of medical supplies to member hospitals. With a tight timeline from contract execution to go-live, HLI needed to find an application suite that offered a rapid implementation, was flexible, yet tightly integrated. The vendor had to be distribution-centric with the technology and capability in place to handle mobile devices and the projected rapid growth. After an extensive search process, TECSYS' EliteSeries enterprise applications suite was selected.

"Together, we sought to establish a complete, cost-effective system that would provide efficient Just-In-Time inventory, order, and distribution of medical and surgical supplies to member hospitals."
Susan Anderson, CIO of HLI and Sr. Vice President of THiiNC Logistics Inc.

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Hubbell Canada

Hubbell Canada is one of North America's leading electrical distributors. Founded by the inventor of the separable plug and wall receptacle more than 100 years ago, it is part of Hubbell Inc., a US$1.4 billion multinational. Hubbell Canada is a diversified company with multiple markets and distribution plants, operating in an industry where unrivaled service and customer responsiveness are a key to gaining market share. Hubbell replaced its legacy system with the TECSYS EliteSeries and uses Elite.eCom on its Web site.

"TECSYS has a clear vision and direction. In our opinion, it is well ahead of its competitors in terms of its e-commerce platform. Elite.eCom supports all of our B2B functions, including product catalogs, pricing availability and real-time order status and tracking. The TECSYS team is also dedicated to our business objectives, helping minimize unforeseen problems and respecting our timetable."
Allan Gibbins, President

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King Par Golf

With close to US$100 million in annual revenues, Michigan-based King Par Golf (KPG) is one of North America's top five golf suppliers of golfing goods. It offers a complete range of hard goods and golf accessories, including Fortune, Strategy, Knight, Affinity and Intech brands. TECSYS' EliteSeries meets KPG's high distribution needs and provides them with crucial real-time inventory capabilities that enable the company to efficiently meet the evolving requirements of major retailers, sporting goods chains and mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart and SAM's Club.

"Our business is all about service and fill rates, such as how much product we can ship and stock for our customers. This means we need to act quickly to optimize a very seasonal window of opportunity. The EliteSeries allows us to do this by offering the most disciplined platform we have seen for fulfilling orders. It is also readily upgraded and is supported by an intelligent, committed staff."
John Biafore, General Manager

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Kurt S. Adler

With over 50 years in business, Kurt S. Adler is a leading importer and exporter of holiday ornaments with headquarters in New York City, 13 permanent showrooms, and a state-of-the-art distribution center in New Jersey.  To support the company’s high profitability, Kurt S. Adler needed a system to sustain their infrastructure and the size of their company. Rapid growth had made it unmanageable, and a generation change had introduced new management challenges. Modernization was no longer an option, it was a requirement. Manual processes were slowing down the company’s productivity.  

Driven by necessity and the inadequacy of their old systems, they started to evaluate other systems that could handle their entire supply chain requirements and replace their archaic enterprise system to support their growing business.  They selected TECSYS’ PointForce because of the solution’s functionality; their strong focus on the giftware industry, was matched by the software’s capabilities, including addressing royalties, and product licensing—components that were critical to their selection process.

“We wanted a package that was very close to our needs; and our needs were specific to the giftware industry.”
Chris Riggi, Director of Information Systems

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Matsushita

Matsushita had one objective in mind for its warehouse management system: to eliminate the need to shut down the warehouse one day each month to conduct a physical inventory. With the help of RF data collection equipment and a warehouse management system from TECSYS, Matsushita has met this challenge, and now has one more selling day per month. Since its implementation, the system has not only eliminated the need to conduct physical inventory, but has allowed Matsushita to operate in a paperless environment with no errors.

"Most months we have zero discrepancies. That means everything ships without error — no model mixes, no product mixes, no incorrect amounts, no incorrect colors. We seem to have become a model for businesses that want to improve their warehouse management and inventory control."
William Austin, Logistics Manager

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Milton CAT

Milton CAT, one of the largest Caterpillar® dealers in North America, needed a warehouse system that would run on their existing IBM® iSeries platform, interface to their proprietary ERP and put-to-light systems, and also provide the tools to establish a new customer self-service kiosk. TECSYS' EliteSeries Warehouse Management System for IBM iSeries was able to meet these needs and the results have been increased visibility on inventory and orders, an improvement in the businesses overall accuracy, reduced waiting times for parts, and the creation of their new customer self-service kiosk. Each of which has been able to help Milton CAT strengthen responsiveness to both their customers and 13 dealership locations.

"TECSYS was able to customize their system to fit some of the requirements we had. Most warehousing systems just handle warehousing, not retail. We needed the capability to do both. TECSYS was able to make modifications to their system that they actually added to the core product. They were the only vendor that had the flexibility to do that."
Rod Ford, Information Systems Director

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Mobel Electronics

Mobel Electronics Inc. is rapidly becoming Canada's leading distributor of computer memory. Recently appointed official distributor for Kingston Technology, Mobel recognized that to meet the challenge of becoming the best memory distributor in Canada and beyond meant that they needed to review and overhaul their current business processes. To better suit the ever-changing customer demands and support expected of them, they sought the expertise of TECSYS' EliteSeries suite of distribution software.

"We put our trust in TECSYS because they understood our corporate vision: to provide superior customer support and maintain rapid order fulfillment!"
Christopher Price, Operations Manager

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Rolland

Rolland Inc. fine papers division, a member of the Cascades group of companies, discovered that a warehouse management system can do far more than optimize storage and inventory functions, however important they may be. They found that the right system, properly implemented, will also influence the supply chain in both directions, from customer service levels on one side to helping achieve production efficiencies on the other. It has already had a dramatic effect on the way business operations are shaping up for the future.

"We set an objective to become a world-class producer of fine papers (ISO 9002 certified). We would not have achieved this without TECSYS. With their WMS, we're now shipping the right product to the customer on time, and the twice-yearly inventory count is a thing of the past."
Michel Charbonneau, General Operations Manager

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Schenker

Schenker Canada is a company whose business is contract logistics, including the warehousing and distribution of goods on behalf of some of Canada’s foremost manufacturers of food, home- and personal-care products. It performs the service at a mammoth 45,000 square-meter distribution centre (DC) in Mississauga, ON, just outside Toronto. Schenker had the daunting task of looking for a warehouse management system that would supervise all the complex activities at the DC, while having the capability to support a customer-oriented and integrated view of the supply chain.

"There are many warehouse management systems out there and not all of them work as well as they claim. After looking at many e-fulfillment products, we selected the TECSYS system. In part, we did this as we were able to tour a number of Fortune 1000 companies where it's being used successfully."
Eric Dewey, Vice President of Logistics

» Full story (425Kb) Reprinted from Materials Management & Distribution magazine

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Sisters of Mercy / ROi

Sisters of Mercy, a healthcare integrated delivery network (IDN), formed a for-profit operating division called Resource Optimization and Innovation (ROi) as a means of responding to spiraling healthcare costs and fierce regulatory pressure to improve patient safety and quality of care. After implementing TECSYS' EliteSeries, and realizing the success, flexibility, and overall results achieved in Phase One — the pharmacy transformation — the EliteSeries has been selected to handle Phase Two — the medical/surgical transformation.

"Today the Sisters of Mercy Health System has the ability to eliminate virtually all medication errors. All steps are carefully controlled throughout the process, including the management of the request, ordering, filling, repacking and unit dose barcoding through scan verification. This verification process ensures the patient receives the correct medication, as prescribed, at the correct time."
Keith Ernst, Vice President of Supply Chain Management, ROi

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