Premier Ink Blots Out Inefficiencies With Sage PFW
“Our records were like a fruit salad-apples, oranges, and pears-all mixed up together in one big mess.”
Judy Fritz, office manager at Premier Ink Systems, was at her wits end. The company found itself in an expansion mode, but had not upgraded its systems in years. Besides its original facility in Ohio that produces industrial inks and coatings for boxes and bags, Premier recently acquired a manufacturing plant in San Diego, and opened yet another facility in Wisconsin. They used three software systems that did not “speak” to one another: an early version of BatchMaster for limited production tracking, separate accounting software for journal entries, and various preadsheets for inventory.
Fritz called Sage for help. Sage matched Premier Ink with a reseller who understood their needs and suggested a fully integrated Sage PFW ERP system, based on its process manufacturing applications that tie production and financial data together. This allowed the company to preserve its legacy data and existing material safety data sheet (MSDS) capabilities, while adding powerful accounting features to help manage growth.
Sunny Results in San Diego
Premier Ink implemented the new solution in San Diego first; the plant’s record-keeping had to be reorganized anyway due to the change of ownership. Just six months after going live, the system is an unqualified success.
“Sage PFW is a 110 percent improvement over what we had before,” says Fritz. “The system brought us out of the dinosaur ages and into the 21st century. It’s working so well, in fact, that we are moving forward quickly to adopt Sage PFW throughout our enterprise.”
When an order is received, Sage PFW creates a batch ticket, pulls raw materials from inventory, sends out the finished product; and generates an invoice, all automatically. Double data entry is a thing of the past. “When we close our purchase orders in Sage PFW, payables are instantly matched up with bills,” explains Fritz. “With the click of a button, we can receive the data and send it over to payables to process a check. This saves at least an hour a day for both our payables and receiving clerks, possibly even more.”
“Sage PFW is a 110 percent improvement over what we had before. The system brought us out of the dinosaur ages and into the 21st century.”
MSDS sheets print out in Sage PFW according to parameters set by the compliance officer. Inventory is now accurate for the first time ever. Soon the system will monitor inventory levels according to preset maximums and minimums, and print a report when stocks get low. The batch clerk will no longer have to check with the production manager every time she fears stocks are running short.
Flexible Format
One of the biggest problems had been that the system recognized only one finished good-ink. But Premier actually produces many types of inks and coatings, and also does specialty jobs on consignment. Today the Sage PFW system differentiates between products and tracks a distinct flow for each one, resulting in much better control of the business.
“We run things a little quirky around here,” says Fritz. “Fortunately, our reseller has a great understanding of our business needs. He showed us how to maximize the power inherent in Sage PFW by integrating financial features and then training us how to use them. He also enlightened us on how to set up our system with a Citrix server, establishing communication lines between our offices via computer. We maintain the guts of the system here at headquarters and remote users can log on, saving the cost of buying additional licenses. We had been totally in the dark about how to create a seamless solution. In our opinion, our reseller saved the day.”
Fritz foresees large-scale efficiencies resulting from the new system. “Sage PFW will easily save half the time we spend on general ledger and other accounting tasks when we have it installed system-wide- as it is already doing at our San Diego facility,” she remarks.
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