Adtech
"If the whole place burned down tomorrow I'd do exactly the same again."
ADTECH - THE COMPANY
Based in Stroud Gloucestershire, Adtech Polymer Engineering has been in business for the last 19 years. It has grown to a company with a £2m+ turnover and a staff of 20. Its business is the manufacture and stocking of high performance plastics which are used in a wide variety of industries. Accordingly it needs to make sure it can keep track of everything that is going on!
SELECTING THE RIGHT SOFTWARE
Second time around, Adtech Polymer Engineering has found that buying their business system from a small software company has paid big dividends.In the world of plastics, fluorocarbon-based polymers have unique properties. Resistant to high temperatures, non reactive and virtually friction free when they come into contact with other materials, under such product names as Teflon and PTFE they are used in an extraordinarily wide band of industrial applications. Founded some 19 years ago by polymer technologist Patrick Thody, Adtech Polymer Engineering is the principal supplier of these high tech plastics.
Adtech both holds stock of basic polymer for resale to its trade customers, and also designs polymer for resale to its trade customers, and designs and supplies product for customer specific applications. With around 600 to 800 active customers in wide areas of industry, Patrick Thody soon realised that he needed a business system that could handle all aspects of the business.
So in the early 90's Patrick started looking for a fully integrated system that would handle all stock, ordering and buying as well as his accounting needs. In 1993 they chose Sage Sovereign. "It was a disappointing experience. We got the basic ledgers going but for stock and ordering Sovereign often did not work in the way that we wanted or expected. When we questioned this, it always seemed to be our fault and not the system". Adtech struggled with Sage for several years, but in 1998 Patrick started looking around for a new system.
"Following our experience with the Sage system, this time round we were cautious. If an installation goes wrong it can destroy you. We looked at the usual suspects - Access, Pegasus, Exchequer. Our Scandinavian supplier recommended Scala but at £25,000 it was expensive. Finally we got to hear about Anagram. I wasn't terribly impressed with them at the beginning. Their literature was pretty amateurish, and first impressions do count. After all, when you buy a new system it's really an act of faith because you can't get your brain around it all. However, we knew from experience that opting for a well-known name wouldn't necessarily be the best solution for us. What did impress me was that they quickly gave me references, straightforward, honest people I could relate to who were using the system and liked it. So in the end we plumped for Anagram. It was a modern 32-bit Windows system, and it was cheap, about £6,000 all-in for a 10 user system with sales and purchase order processing, stock control, and the three accounting ledgers. So, if this installation went pear-shaped as well, at least it wouldn't break the bank."
"it's just very flexible... we find it so much easier to use"
HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
Adtech's Encore system supports nine users, both operating managers and accounts staff. It handles Sales Order Processing, Purchase Order Processing and Stock Control, as well as all the company's accounting requirements. The main system is at the head office in Stroud, but there is also a remote terminal linking in Adtech's branch office in Scotland.Encore is used by the line managers responsible for each line of business. For example, Samantha Deverell is responsible for handling sales of Adtech's made to order products. She keys in her own sales orders and all her purchase orders and stock receipts (individual managers do their own buying at Adtech, there's no Purchasing department). "Basically, it's just very flexible and infinitely easier to enter an order. I've trained four people in the company on order entry. Encore goes in a logical manner. We find it so much easier to use than Sage's Sovereign. Also, I can move around the screens quickly to find out all the information I want. While I'm in a sales order and looking at a particular product, I can jump straight over to that product record and see all the purchase orders. So I can instantly see all the specific costs and selling prices relating to a single customer order."
"When looking at a customer's sales history, Encore shows me the total sales by product at a high level, but I can drill down on the screen from these totals to see the original sales order or invoice and what they paid on a particular invoice. Or I can see all the orders for a product during a month, or all the stock movements in and out. Everything is available at the touch of a button. We've got full histories of what we've sent, what we've invoiced, and all stock movements."
"The other good thing about Encore is that it's very flexible and can cope with the special requirements we have. For example, if someone wants 100 metres of PTFE and our Stores have rolls of 50, 40 and 12 metres, the system allows us to retrieve the job card and amend the amount despatched to 102.
It's good at handling Returns too. When an item comes back from a customer we can raise a credit note and choose whether to book it back into stock. Also, when we return goods to a supplier we can recall the completed purchase order and say we are sending back 500 metres. This prints a Returns note and reinstates the order as still outstanding."
Although modestly priced Encore offers many of the "multi" features normally confined to much more expensive systems. It holds multiple product selling prices for end-user, trade or high volume sales, as well as special prices for particular customers. It is also full multi-currency - Adtech trade with US customers in dollars, and also purchase product in euros. It is multi-location, too, handling stocks and transfers at the main Stroud warehouse and at the Scottish sub-office.
HOW IT'S GONE
Encore has now been installed since 1999 at Adtech. What is Patrick Thody's verdict? "We've spent most of our time getting the stock and order processing side bedded down and haven't really started to explore the reports yet. But I am delighted just how well it's gone. A great advantage is that if we have a problem we can talk to Anagram direct with the people who wrote the package, whereas with Sage I was only allowed to talk to the dealer. And I can't believe how good-natured Anagram are after my experience with other software suppliers. Over the last 18 months we've built all our systems around Encore. If the whole place burned down tomorrow I'd do exactly the same again."