A manual MRP
One employee reran the MRP spreadsheet every day so no orders were missed.
Acumatica Manufacturing Case Study
How CoachComm, a headset maker in Auburn, Alabama, replaced four disconnected systems with Acumatica Manufacturing.
About CoachComm
CoachComm makes communication headsets for coaches, broadcasters and industrial uses, and it builds the circuit boards inside them in-house. It sells direct to hundreds of high schools and colleges, the NFL and the Canadian Football League. Distributors carry its headsets to broadcasters such as NBC's 30 Rock, The Tonight Show and MSNBC.
The Challenge
CoachComm builds its circuit boards in-house, with more than 3,000 parts per unit, and its finished goods run up to 25 levels of components. The MRP lived in a spreadsheet that one full-time employee updated every day with purchase orders, service orders, inventory levels and future work orders. Each run took 45 minutes to an hour, and the results still had to be sorted into priorities by hand.
Data sat in Aptean Southware, Infor CRM, Agile and a few other on-premises applications holding nearly 30 years of history. Customer names and part numbers differed from one system to the next, so most processes needed manual reconciliation. To avoid running out, the company overstocked parts, yet it still ran short of critical ones.
CoachComm needed one connected system that could run MRP automatically and give every team the same real-time data.
One employee reran the MRP spreadsheet every day so no orders were missed.
Fear of shortages drove inventory up, and critical parts still ran out.
The CRM showed no inventory, shipping or support data, and order part numbers were converted by hand.
Negative inventory draws slipped through, with no alerts for returns or out-of-stock items.
The Solution
CoachComm reviewed several leading ERP vendors before choosing Acumatica. It cited Acumatica's licensing model, an end-to-end system that connects to third-party applications, and the overall value, including what it cost and how the pricing was structured.
MRP runs inside Acumatica in place of the daily spreadsheet. Lead times are set per part by vendor, price histories are available for review, and forecasts now drive the plan, showing where to combine batch quantities and use blanket orders to save on shipping. Eight hours a day of spreadsheet work is gone.
With accurate, real-time data, CoachComm no longer ties up cash or warehouse space in excess parts, and it no longer runs out of critical ones. Inventory carrying costs fell 15%.
CoachComm spent a year uniting and normalizing the data from its four legacy systems, led by an executive it rehired for the job. Acumatica's import and export scenarios loaded the data without IT writing SQL to push it into tables. At go-live, the company did not miss a single day of shipments.
Sales builds quotes, tracks shipments and pulls up past documents in Acumatica, including from the mobile app while traveling. Reps filter accounts by territory, region and rep, and dashboards put the metrics they track in one place. Quoting takes less time, with customer, division, dealer and distributor details in view.
Starship connects to Acumatica, so sales sees shipping confirmations and where each shipment is in transit. Rate shopping in Starship helps CoachComm save on shipping costs.
Acumatica's multi-tenant setup keeps separate companies or divisions apart within one instance. Staff switch divisions without signing out and back in.
The Result
Every CoachComm department now works in Acumatica, and managers use real-time data to run their areas. The company is rolling out more modules next: limited e-commerce, mobile expense management and a customer portal.
Forecast-driven MRP and vendor lead times by part.
Mobile access, sales dashboards and faster quotes.
Shipment tracking and rate shopping through Starship.
Self-service tools for analyzing real-time data.