Product: Cosmetics.
Number of Employees: 100
Years in Business: 27
Location: Bristol, VT

Situation

Autumn Harp had developed from a small rural branded cosmetics manufacturer to a 100-person OEM operation. Their information management and resource planning systems had been struggling to keep pace with the evolving company. Different departments had addressed issues by building or incorporating different solutions, resulting in multiple data entry points, inaccuracies and difficulties in extracting data. This had been causing real pain for about a year when they decided to replace these systems with an integrated ERP software package. Obviously concerned about the amount of staff resources and cash outlay involved in such a major undertaking, they turned to VMEC for assistance in selecting a software package to suit their needs.

Projects/Solutions

VMEC used the Soft Select system to take Autumn Harp through the process of identification and selection of software packages which satisfied their requirements. A two stage process, Soft Select identifies business and functionality requirements by a process of interviews with key personnel in the company. Once these responses have been tallied, the resulting data is used to generate a much more detailed survey with very specific requirements which are then matched against a database of software packages. Matches for combinations of functionality are shown in a list, typically with the top ten packages being listed for consideration by the company. Autumn Harp was already considering one package, which would not have appeared on the match list using the normal selection criteria. Using the highly customizable process, the package was included for comparison against those selected on the standard report.

Results

Autumn Harp received a report of 7 packages with 74% to 92% correlation between requirements and package functionality. A short list of 4 packages was selected from this list, and demonstrations requested. A package was selected and is in the process of being implemented allowing Autumn Harp to handle current and increased business for the future.