Intact

James Boylan Safety Ltd

JBS traces its origins back to 1944, when James Boylan & Son made shoes in Mullan, Co Monaghan. JBS has evolved from manufacturing to become one of the largest Irish suppliers of safety clothing, janitorial goods, corporate wear. The following case study demonstrates how the JBS group have added value and improved business processes using Intact software.

From the beginning of its business transformation, a commitment to investment in smart IT has been a major characteristics of JBS management. The company's systems today have two major features:

• Integrated Systems: Almost all of the business activity is managed through an Intact bespoke integrated system. The system is the fruit of 6 years work by JBS Management and Intact Software.
• Smart ICT Infrastructure: The business is   totally decentralised, with senior managers and sales staff based in different locations around the country closely linked by a smart Intact ICT infrastructure.

Declan O Donnell, Managing Director of the JBS group explains their business philosophy, “Sales people should be near their customers, while managers can work from wherever is convenient or appropriate – which will very often be away from base.  The  Intact ICT Infrastructure provides us with the tools to manage our multi location site. From our sales manager in Derry to our graphic design office in Cork.

Broadband connections to home offices were the principal systems links for all of the sales reps and the managers until JBS chose to move from broadband to Vodafone. 

They found “It was much more flexible and the performance was fine for our needs because when people log on, most of the work is actually done on the central Intact system, including sales and CRM and whatever else the user is entitled to work with”. 

Each branch has its own network but all are linked over broadband VPN, with a separate ‘Voice Over IP’ internal phone system  linking all locations. Head office in Monaghan holds all the companies data and business system. So, for example, an order entry from a rep in the field or a branch goes directly on the    central system and a query can be looked up on the system from anyone anywhere in the organisation.

Intact’s Financial and Business Management Software formed the basis on which JBS has developed a comprehensive system tailored to its own specific needs and business culture. “I really appreciated that things had come together on a recent trip to India when I logged on to the JBS System from my hotel room,” O’ Donnell recalls, “in a matter of minutes I had a clear understanding of that day’s business, from the sales personnel’s CRM activity to order processing to invoicing to volume outputs from each warehouse. All of this took three or four clicks on a single screen.”

 

The Project and Implementation Process

“During the consultation stage, we found Intact to be very informative and helpful in taking on board our requirements while at the same time identifying areas which would be beneficial to us on an ongoing basis. Training was received on site.

The data from the existing system and importing it into Intact. The information was converted into the key areas such as Customers, Suppliers, Stock and Customer Price Lists. This was followed by a reconciliation of the imported data with the data from the old system.

In essence, JBS group has just two sets of software:

1. Microsoft Office
2. Intact’s Bespoke Designed Integrated System. 

The Intact integrated system covers everything from sales (including web orders), to stock and warehouse control and accounts. Even E-Mail is part of the Intact designed system. The company doesn't use Outlook or any standard mail package. A good example of how well things work can be seen in the JBS warehouse system, where order assembly is done from an optimised pick list generated by the system. This details the bay or bin location of every item, so operators on the stock picking trucks can follow the most efficient route, which is partly automated by wire-guided systems in the warehouse floor.

JBS works with a national freight partner to compliment its own delivery vehicles in offering a following-day delivery service to its customers for the vast bulk of orders. The Intact system ensures that orders  go to the relevant stock location, which can be a branch as well as Monaghan, for despatch to central distribution at the end of day and assembled or routed overnight for morning delivery all over the island.

Branch Stock Location is sometimes more efficient for supplying locations such as Derry, where a cluster of local chemical companies is served with specialist items not generally required elsewhere.

IT is always evolving and changing so its very difficult to say that any system is finally and completely right for your needs”, says O’ Donnell. “Usually the best that you can hope for is to be confident that you have the system that suits your needs right now and for the next 12 months.

We are always conscious of future proofing, because our customers’ requirements also evolve and change. That’s why we worked so hard with Intact to provide a system which can be operated in modular format or as a complete and fully integrated operational  system. It not only works very well now, but is a solid platform for additional or different functionality tomorrow. It is also a model that we can simply drop in to a new branch or line of business or acquisition to ensure complete integration.” immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

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