S&S Activewear LLC Case Study

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Apparel

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Procurement

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Supply Chain Visibility

Services

System Integration

The Challenge

S&S Activewear, a wholesale distributor of activewear apparel and accessories, was using a Telnet green-screen system to organize its business information. As the company's needs became more sophisticated and better technology became available, it decided to look for a more advanced system in a .NET environment. The company hired a consultant to evaluate various ERP options in the market, some of which cost several million dollars. However, none of the options, including big-name players like Microsoft Dynamics and BlueCherry, were found to be suitable. The company had developed its own inventory management system to manage the array of colors and sizes for every single style of clothing, and many other ERP systems were not equipped to do this.

About The Customer

S&S Activewear is a wholesale distributor of activewear apparel and accessories. The company is an industry leader in the category of imprintable apparel and accessories, which can be custom-printed on for corporate branding, uniforms, and other uses. S&S Activewear has a presence in Chicago and also operates in Los Angeles under the Americana Sportswear brand name. It employs 350 staff across both offices. The company had developed its own inventory management system to manage the array of colors and sizes for every single style of clothing.

The Solution

A recommendation from a trusted colleague led S&S Activewear to Acumatica. The company was impressed with Acumatica's API functionality and import tools, which were key factors in their selection process. S&S Activewear deployed the Acumatica Financial Management Suite and Intercompany Accounting module in mid-2012. They found Acumatica to be affordably priced and appreciated the fact that it was not licensed per-user, and included a broad set of functionality at an affordable price. The company also liked that there was flexibility in how Acumatica is delivered, whether it be SaaS or on-premise hosting. Looking ahead, the company intends to continue streamlining its processes by integrating its own developed applications into the core Acumatica system using Acumatica Studio.

Operational Impact

S&S Activewear saved 2 hours a day by taking advantage of the advanced financial capabilities in Acumatica 4.0. The ability to deduct debit adjustments as a whole instead of having to apply them against specific AP Bills eliminated manual work.
The anytime, anywhere access that Acumatica enables also generated more cost savings. The company used to have accounts payable staff at both locations. Now, with all accounting work done in Chicago, the company has cut down its account payables staff to just two.
The company liked that there was flexibility in how Acumatica is delivered, whether it be SaaS or on-premise hosting.

Quantitative Benefit