Simex

Client: Posyltorg GMBH, Frankfurt, Germany

Industry: Mail Order Industry

Business challenge

The Posyltorg GmbH company works with the mail order industry – goods chosen in printed catalogues are ordered in mail order companies and delivered to the end customers. Orders are prepared by small dealer companies and sent to the central Posyltorg office, then all orders regrouped and sent to the mail order company; goods are sent from the mail order companies to Posyltorg’s warehouse, repacked and then sent to the dealers. Each mail order company has its own order format and delivery rules; every dealer sends orders in their own format. The end customer can cancel the order at any stage of the delivery. Having such complicated business logic, Posyltorg urgently needed a Supply Chain Management system to automate their business activity.

Prior to Archer Software, Posyltorg used local developers, but delivered program did not satisfy their requirements. After the failed local development, Posyltorg turned to Archer Software for assistance.

Value delivered

Archer Software analyzed the complicated business logic of the customer. Archer engineers visited the customer's site a number of times and examined for themselves all current business processes. After eight months of tight cooperation, a completely new and innovate system was implemented into production.

The solution consisted of:

• Back Office system - main office software that automates and controls interactions with mail order companies, dealers, warehouse and financial department
• Front Office system – dealer software that automates and controls interactions with Posyltorg main office, end customers and does accounting.

Some features of delivered software are:

• Full control over goods supply process with sophisticated logic, including cancellations, returns and losses
• Online and offline modes
• A number of exchange format supported - XML, dbf, Excel.
• Various search capabilities
• User-friendly GUI
• Accounting management
• Integration with warehouse peripheral devices: bar-code scanner and label-printer
• Access restriction system
• All data is encrypted and fully secured

Result

The Front Office software was installed in more than 40 dealer offices in different cities and countries. The implemented system met the customer's business requirements and let them operate much more efficiently and at lower cost.

Since the successful implementation in 2003 Archer has been supporting the system. During this time many extra-features have been added to the program. The companies continue to work closely together.

Technologies

• Delphi 6 IDE with JEDI, Lockbox, ComDrv32, XML Transform libraries.
• In scope of the project own custom grid component was developed and than successfully reused in upcoming projects.
• FireBird database connected through IBX.
• FlexCelReport helped to prepare Excel export and reports.
• BZip2, DCPcrypt for packing and encryption.
• FTP client implementation for file exchange.
• CGI for simple web access