Daniel Electronics Syspro Case Study
The Context
Every product Daniels Electronics manufactures is customized to the needs of its public safety customers. As a result the company requires Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software with strong inventory management capabilities to track the unique requirements of each customer order. In addition, with an expanding customer base the sales department needed a unified and user-friendly system for tracking sales leads, customer orders, invoices and sales funnel reporting.
The Company
Daniels Electronics Ltd. designs and manufactures radio communications equipment for specialized applications. Located in a modern 30,000-sq.ft. building in Victoria, B.C., Daniels' manufacturing facility features in-house robotic surface mount manufacturing, automated production testing, digital RF design facilities, and SYSPRO Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Inventory control systems.
Since its incorporation in 1950, Daniels has built its reputation on extremely reliable and environmentally robust base stations, repeaters, paging and ground-to-air radio equipment. “Typically,” says company Controller Tom Smith, “our clients are coast guard services, forest services, utilities, telephone companies, transportation agencies, fire departments and law enforcement agencies.”
According to Smith, the bulk of Daniels’ sales come from U.S and Canadian government contracts at federal, state and provincial levels. As a General Services Agreement (GSA) Schedule qualified supplier, Daniels can sell product to any U.S. government agency.
The Challenge
“Our product is unique because of the custom configuration required,” says Smith. “No two systems we put together are the same.” In recent years, the complexity of Daniels’ business has increased, due to exponential sales growth, and to a gradual migration to a product line based on digital technology.
“When sales increased tenfold,” says Smith, “we found that the manual processes we had in place were starting to fall apart. Our sales team used to write up their quotes in Excel or Word, and there was no linkage to SYSPRO. In addition, we have to report on our contracts, and we were doing that in a very manual fashion.”
The Solution
Daniels Electronics has been using SYSPRO for approximately 14 years, originally implementing the base accounting modules, then slowly working up to the Inventory and MRP modules. Daniels recent customization of SYSPRO allows the company to track design and manufacturing details of every system it sells.
Daniels now utilizes SYSPRO’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module, linked to the company’s sales order quoting system, to manage its 26,000-customer data base. ”We created a more customer-friendly invoicing and sales order tracking system,” says Smith. “Now you can see and track the entire sales funnel, from enquiry to actual sale.” To further facilitate reporting requirements, the company is considering the adoption of SYSPRO Mobile, which would allow the company to instantly update and control the movement of its inventory.
The Results
“We have considered much more expensive ERP products,” says Smith, “but they didn’t offer more than what we already have, and SYSPRO has provided solutions to meet all our needs. As well, we’ve always had excellent support from SYSPRO. Any time we’ve had a problem they’ve been there to get it fixed. They’ve helped bring us to the next level.”
For more information on Daniels Electronics, there products and services, please visit: www.danelec.com.
Partner Candlewest Systems Ltd.