Overview
Assembly Techniques offer a complete kitting service for small consumables and they supply into the building trade, waste & water, pharmaceutical and mass spectrometry industries, amongst others.
Based in Dukinfield, Cheshire, they employee nearly 40 staff and have been in business since 1987. Assembly are an ISO 9001-2008 approved company committed to quality of service.
The company wanted to improve business processes and move away from a heavily bespoked solution to an off the shelf, tried and tested solution.
Business Challenges
The business was experiencing a costly, heavily bespoked system – Merlin Business Software which had been customised over time. It needed to modernise and upgrade. SAP Business One provided the solution.
“We wanted an off the shelf, tried and tested solution rather than being the guinea pigs – our existing solutions was proving a costly exercise when changes were required.”
Carla Giles, General Manager at Assembly Techniques
SAP Business One is an off the shelf product with over 55,000 implementations worldwide and this was a key factor in Assembly considering Business One. In addition to this, the company had a requirement for MRP (materials requirement planning) functionality in particular with regards to a multi-level BOM (Bill Of Materials) with links from each level.
The user interface was key to the software being adopted across the business.
“The look and feel is great, it is really simple to use for people across the organisation, which was very important for us, and being able to modify elements of the system to suit Assembly’s processes such as UDFs is important. You feel like you are getting a bespoke solution, but it is all out of the box.”
Carla Giles
The reporting functionality within SAP Business One is also very simple to use.
“Having SQL & Crystal Reports at your fingertips is very helpful allowing you to manipulate the data in the system.”
Carla Giles
Results
Since working with Frontline, Assembly has carried out additional work on its SAP Business One system including:
- Batch sending of invoices
- A fully functioning link for multilevel BOMs saving hours of employee time
- The software prompts users to complete the next steps in a process rather than waiting for them to update the systems
- Increased efficiency, accuracy and functionality.
Carla Giles explains that the support from Frontline is fantastic.
“It gives us the confidence that we can go to Frontline with any issues and know we will get a resolution. We are safe in the knowledge that whoever we speak to at Frontline knows what they are talking about from a technical perspective.
Through Frontline’s Connected Delivery approach, they have taken the time to understand us fully as a business which has been vital in establishing a successful relationship.”
