Separate databases
Every intercompany transfer meant switching between company databases to post the entries.
Acumatica Manufacturing Case Study
How Eastman Music replaced Sage 100 and brought 14 instrument companies onto one Acumatica Manufacturing platform.
About Eastman Music
Eastman Music began when Qian Ni, a flautist studying in Boston, imported three violins from China and sold them from his car. It now makes handmade string, brass, woodwind and percussion instruments, with brands including Wm. S. Haynes, S.E. Shires and Bourgeois Guitars. It sells to professional musicians and consumers, and reaches school districts and colleges through 400 instrument dealers.
The Challenge
Over the past decade, Eastman Music grew from a flute and string maker into a global company whose instruments could equip most orchestras. Revenue rose 73 percent in two years, through both sales and acquisitions.
The business ran on Sage 100 and other systems added over the years. Each company had its own database, so the central accounting team signed in and out of separate systems to record intercompany transfers. Frequent crashes and corrupt data kept the company's only in-house IT person busy with support tickets.
Eastman Music needed one platform that could run every company, connect to its other applications and take on new acquisitions quickly.
Every intercompany transfer meant switching between company databases to post the entries.
The system crashed often, and a move to the cloud did not fix it.
Flute maker Wm. S. Haynes could not get its add-on production module to work.
Backun, the Canadian clarinet and accessories company, ran a different ERP and needed Shopify connected.
The Solution
Eastman Music compared several ERP systems and narrowed the list to Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics. It chose Acumatica for its usage-based pricing and tightly integrated platform. Open APIs meant every company, including Backun and its Shopify store, could join the same system.
Multi-company, multi-currency and intercompany accounting let one central accounting team handle all 14 entities in a single system. Intercompany transfers no longer mean signing in and out of separate databases. Intracompany transaction reports that took one to two days now run in five seconds.
The rollout began with the distribution headquarters, S.E. Shires and Haynes, and covered all 14 companies in about two years. Import scenarios and processes from earlier sites are reused, so each new company only needs the vendors and customers that differ. Malletech was invoicing and shipping through Acumatica the afternoon its acquisition was announced.
The flute maker uses MRP, reorder points and a critical materials report to see which parts to order or make. Staff check bills of material and work in process in Acumatica in place of a whiteboard. Scrap from silver, gold and platinum is now a by-product on the bill of materials. Production orders record scrap automatically, a step that used to be manual and was sometimes missed.
Warehouse management directs pickers by pick priority and can hold items that need quality checks. Customer service sees each order's allocation status without walking out to the warehouse. Ready-to-ship orders once quoted at 10 to 14 days now ship the same or next day.
Purchase order receipts show what each overseas container holds and which orders it fills, so customer service allocates stock and the warehouse starts packing right away. For student-level products, about 80 percent of a container turns around in two days. Container receiving dropped from two weeks to less than two days.
Sales reports now take less than two days to update, down from two weeks, and forecasts draw on real-time production data. Staff build their own generic inquiries and dashboards, and add a report field in a few minutes without paying a consultant. On-time delivery to Eastman Music's largest customer improved, and so did supply to its other customers.
The Result
All 14 companies now run on Acumatica, and a three-person operations support team shares data and manufacturing expertise across them. Many customers have told the sales team that Eastman Music is their most reliable vendor for delivery dates and stock availability. The company expects to keep growing through acquisitions, and new companies can join the same platform.
One central team runs accounting for 14 entities in multiple currencies.
MRP, bills of material and real-time work in process.
Pick priorities, quality holds and faster container receiving.
Real-time order and stock data for quotes and forecasts.