Child’s play is serious business at
Swing-N-Slide, manufacturers of wooden outdoor playground equipment. Twenty years ago, the only quality playground products designed for back yards were expensive, pre-cut wooden swing sets priced over $1,000. Swing-N-Slide recognized an unmet need, and began selling strong, durable and lower-cost playground projects. Today their line of do-it-yourself wooden playground equipment is the market leader in the
United States, sold worldwide through
6,000 home center, building supply and hardware stores.
Swing-N-Slide recognized the need for a robust financial system early on, and has used MAS 200 as its backbone for nearly a decade. “MAS 200 has done everything for us almost since time began,” says Scott LaCourse, IT manager.
“It manages our order processing and all the fundamental accounting functions, including payables, receivables, general ledger and payroll. It’s working so well that as we’ve grown, we haven’t even considered switching products.We knew the right choice was upgrading to
MAS 200 for SQL Server.”
The customer database contains about 12,000 entries. Of those, between
4,000 and 6,000 are active retailers.
“I like being able to put a flag in the
Acounts Receivable module to indicate which partners are featured on our
Web site retailer locator,” LaCourse says.
“Their information goes straight from the database to the locator, which saves me a lot of time.”
Quarterly taxes are reported using the Magnetic Media module, in compliance with state requirements. “We just load the tax-related tables, and MAS 200 does the rest,” LaCourse notes.
Accuracy Saves Money
Major trading partners insist on their vendors communicating via an electronic data interchange (EDI). For five years
Swing-N-Slide has used a third-party integrated module written specifically for
MAS 90 and MAS 200 for transactions with its 20 biggest customers. “On a busy day, our EDI handles about 175 orders,” notes LaCourse. “I doubt we could do that volume if we had to take orders manually and rekey them into the system.
Having an EDI interface means that our data in MAS 200 is very accurate.”
Accuracy is also enhanced by a modification to the Sales Order module that checks for duplicate purchase order numbers. “Sometimes we get orders via EDI or fax and the purchase order number is already in the system,” says
La Course. “MAS 200 alerts us to avoid double shipments. A single order can run $15,000 and freight charges are considerable, so this one customization saves thousands of dollars.”
Swinging Cyber Sales
About a year ago, Swing-N-Slide ventured into e-commerce using the
MAS 200 e-Business Manager module.
“We started small with a clearance store, offering items that would otherwise be obsolete so we wouldn’t compete with our biggest retail partners,” says LaCourse.
“The popularity of the site surprised everyone, including the marketing folks.
We now offer 35 obsolete and discontinued items online, directly to consumers.”
LaCourse notes that managers
past nine years Dave and his wife Dawn have run their own swing club in the
This allows them to purchase high volume for a lower cost. Bringing over 20,000 products into one convenient location and with over 450 brands they provide a large selection.
Dan was no coward, thank you very much. He was many things, but coward was not one of them. Moreover he didn’t shy away from anything that others would cringe at. There is nothing to fear other than fear itself, and Dan had no reason to be terrified.
In addition to the change in behavior of consumer, many companies or retailers change the sales channel combinations. The greatest impact of the Web-bases electronic revolution has occurred in companies adopting the click-and-mortar approach. Click- and-mortar is one the strategy used by the companies or retailers that they continue to conduct their business in the physical locations and have added the electronic commerce component to their business activities. According to one study, 37% of United States retailers are selling through a combination of the internet, in stores and catalogs. This represents a growing demand for the business-to-customer package delivery service.
Using a purchased database may not always prove to be fruitful and successful for the salesperson.
Laudon, K., & Laudon, J. (2007). Essentials of Business Information Systems (7th ed.) (Bob Horan, Ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
P’kolino’s story is all about passion for superior products and how they can change people’s lives. Founded by Antonio Turcos-Rivas and J.B Schneider, the Company’s goal is: to “make better products to improve play at home”. In the course of developing safe and quality products, implementing and marketing other strategies, P’kolino Company aims at improving children’s play thus , improving sales by $51million (Bygrave and Andrew, 2008). The Company’s goal was comprehended during their MBA’s study. During their study, the two entrepreneurs began a thorough research and development project with more than twenty international design students.
Stair, R.M., Reynolds, G.W., Gelinas, J.U. Jr., Sutton, S.G., Hunton, J.E., Albright, S.C., Winston, W.L. & Zappe, C. (2007) Accounting Information Systems and Financial Modelling, Thomson, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Ann Beattie writes her short story “The Lawn Party” as a male narrator. Because men tend to be less emotional than women are, this makes the narrator’s point of view more believable. Although this is a story that moves from one agonizing situation to another, the lack of human emotion leaves one with a somewhat empty feeling. One could infer that the author removed all sensitivity from the narrator in an attempt to make him appear aloof, indifferent, and even somewhat callous.
According to Brown, C.V., Dehayes, D.W., Hoffer, J.A., Perkins, W.C., Martin, W.E. (2011), MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC) is a member support, non-profit organization that deals with state government on behalf of local business policies. In the early 2000’s, the MSCC, became the most powerful advocacy organization for the business community under the new leadership of President Jack Wallingford. As the growing demands of members and employees were increasing, the MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC) has decided to update its computing systems. The management then decided to consolidate their systems to AS/400 based system called UNITRAK. Ted Vassici has supported the systems for a significant period before Simon Kovecki was hired by MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC). Simon Kovecki was in charge of implementing this new system, but he ended up with failure that left MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC) with lost data on the old systems, and an inoperable UNITRAK system. This case study illustrates the problems that MSCC went through after acquiring the UNITRAK system.
Prior to the start of the Information Age in the late 20th century, businesses had to collect data from non-automated sources. Businesses then lacked the computing resources necessary to properly analyze the data, and as a result, companies often made business d...
E-business and e-commerce are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes they are used to differentiate one vendor’s product from another. In both cases, the e stands for "electronic networks" and describes the application of electronic network technology - including Internet and electronic data interchange (EDI) - to improve and change business processes (Bartels, 2000)
Paige B., Brian D. and Cameron W. (2012). Business Driven Information Systems, 3rd Canadian Ed. 300 Water St, Whitby, ON L1N 9B6, McGraw Hill Ryerson Ltd
Today, there is a range of computerised systems in the market that business can use to keep track of their finances; few of the most recognised for their performance are Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, QuickBooks, SA...
In our world, people rely heavily on the power of technology every day. Kids are learning how to operate an iPad before they can even say their first word. School assignments have become virtual, making it possible to do anywhere in the world. We can receive information from across the world in less than a second with the touch of a button. Technology is a big part of our lives, and without it life just becomes a lot harder. Just like our phones have such an importance to us in our daily lives, database management systems are the same for businesses. Without this important software, it would be almost impossible for companies to complete simple daily tasks with such ease.