Saratoga Warehouse Associates Upgrades 3PL Management System to SmartEnterprise Solution from Headwater Technology Solutions, an Accellos Company
Anticipating growth for its network of six warehouses in upstate New York, Saratoga Warehouse Associates has upgraded its warehouse managment software to a state-of-the-art solution that incorporates such advances as automated picking, radio frequency identification (RFID)
and the ability of customers to view the status of their inventory 24/7 on the web. The company was also able to move its management operations to a low cost Linux environment.
Saratoga Springs, NY (PRWEB) October 31, 2006 -- Saratoga Warehouse Associates, a multi-facility third party logistics operator and long-time user of WarehouseLogic third party logistics management software, has upgraded to the SmartEnterprise 3PL suite from Headwater Technology Solutions Inc., an Accellos Company, in anticipation significant growth, it was announced by Vice President of Information Technology Chris Fenwick and Headwater Senior Vice president Joe E. Couto. Cutover to the new solution occurred in September.
Saratoga Warehouse Associates operates in excess of 650,000 square feet of space in six dry storage warehouses, in or near Saratoga Springs, among them food grade facilities. Customers include manufacturers of food products such as pasta, wood products such as pellets and tissue, and metal products such as aluminum coils. The company also operates an asset-based 125-unit transportation fleet throughout the Northeastern U.S. and an allied transportation brokerage operation for long-haul deliveries.
"Saratoga Warehouse Associates had used WarehouseLogic since the early 1990s and experienced very few issues," Fenwick said. "Moving up to SmartEnterprise not only enabled us to implement an advanced warehouse management solution, but also to preserve most of our procedures and our legacy data. The transition went very smoothly and very little retraining of employees was required."
The SmartEnterprise solution is comprised of the Enterprise Foundation, an integration layer; WarehouseLogic logistics management software, the Active Desktop GUI-based single point access and control module, the d'Amigo alert management and reporting tool, the e-Vista web-based 24/7 customer visibility portal, and eFile, a versatile scanner-based document entry and retrieval tool.
Saratoga Warehouse Associates also purchased the company's associated RF solutions for automated RF picking and for RFID tagging and retrieval, which will be implemented in a second phase beginning in the late third quarter, as well as Boomi EDI for exchanging documents electronically.
"RFID will give us full slap-and-ship capability, as well as compatibility with Wal-Mart, where we ship a lot of seasonal goods and wood pellets," Fenwick said. "RF Picking will generate great efficiencies in the warehouse, because it will fully automate the picking operation, bypassing the paper pick-sheet stage. We will know the exact status of any warehouse project in real time. This may save us as much as 40 percent on labor costs, which will make us more competitive in the 3PL market.
"Moreover, with e-Vista enabling customers to learn the status of their inventory online, rather than by phone, and by converting many of our paper documents to electronic forms, we'll also achieve major efficiencies in the office," he added. "And besides setting up electronic document exchange with customers, EDI will allow us to move Load Tender Offers from the warehouse to our transportation brokerage operation electronically so that it can quickly solicit the most competitive choices from the available carriers."
In the overall upgrade, Saratoga also acquired the latest version of Oracle and moved from an SCO Unix platform to a Linux platform to host SmartEnterprise and Oracle, as well as a Linux web server to house the e-Vista portal.
"SmartEnterprise gives us a stable, feature-rich logistics platform," Fenwick said, "and with this upgrade, we are good for the long term. As a company, we are aggressively moving to maximize the productivity of our facilities with a major new business campaign. This will help to draw clients because the cost of doing business with us will be substantially less than that of our competitors. There is an initial expense, but the ROI is definitely there. We're gaining a great deal of visibility into the data, and we use that information to make decisions that benefit both our transportation and our warehousing companies."
About Headwater Technology Solutions Inc.
Headwater Technology Solutions Inc., an Accellos Company, is a global Supply Chain Execution (SCE) company focused on the 3PL WMS, TMS and LLP markets, supporting the flow of goods and information from the point of origin to consumption. Headwater's SmartEnterprise 3PL/LLP/corporate logistics and Freight Logix TMS transportation solutions enable seamless supply chain planning and execution that leads to smarter and more profitable management of goods as they move through the supply chain. Headwater maintains corporate headquarters in the Toronto suburb of Markham with regional offices in Oakville, Ontario and Atlanta, Georgia, marketing its services and solutions internationally. For more information, visit www.headwaterinc.com.
CONTACT:
Lynn Couto
905 695 9999
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