Chateau Bodywear
Discover how this prominent clothing manufacturer overcame growth obstacles by replacing their outdated management system. Thanks to the implementation of our comprehensive ErpWizard Suite, the company experienced improved efficiency and streamlined processes.
Client
Chateau Bodywear always seeks improved efficiency and maintains its industry leadership. They achieve this by serving their loyal customers better and introducing innovative base layer garments under Watson’s brand.
Find out how this Canadian company replaced its outdated management system, which hindered their progress, with a flexible and scalable ERP solution. This solution proved ideal for their company’s growth.
Challenges
Château Bodywear Challenges
Château Bodywear had been using the Magic Software platform for their IT system since its implementation in 1995. Back then, this technology was considered cutting-edge and helped the company gain a competitive edge in their industry.
However, as time passed, both business requirements and technology advanced rapidly. After 20 years and several software tweaks, Château Bodywear’s IT system had become overly complex and inefficient, no longer meeting their current business needs.
It became evident that a complete upgrade of their IT solution was necessary. The new system had to be flexible, scalable, and efficient in order to cater to the needs of their employees, business partners, and customers.
Why Namtek Consulting Services?
“Choosing a software solution developed by Namtek Consulting Services was an obvious choice”.
Jeff Khoury, Executive Vice-President of Château Bodywear.
Château Bodywear has worked with Namtek Consulting Services since January 2000 and has seen first-hand the support the Namtek Team offers its customers.
This made the Château Bodywear decision much easier.
“ Many changes were done to our previous system by the Namtek Team with no major hiccups, something I cannot say about past IT developers I’ve worked with ” – Jeff Khoury, Executive V.P. of Château Bodywear
Solution
erpWizard – NAMTEK’s latest fully integrated ERP management solution. ERP provides Château Bodywear with all the business modules it needs. These include Purchasing, Invoicing, G/L, A/P, A/R, Forecasting, Duty Relief Tracking, etc.
The ERP solution includes add-on modules such as EDI2XML for EDI communication with business partners around the world, and WIMS 2.0, a complete real-time warehouse management system.
According to Mr. Khoury, the decision to go with erpWizard and its add-ons was due to 4 main reasons:
- Simplicity. The management system was simple yet was developed with detailed business functions.
- Ease of Transition. There was an ease of transition that he liked, which made transferring an abundance of past data from the old system to the new one that much easier.
- Cost. In Mr. Khoury’s experience, a fully integrated system like this would typically cost his business hundreds of thousands of dollars. NAMTEK provided an efficient fully integrated business system that was developed with the latest technologies at an affordable price.
- Support. Once again, having seen what the team at NAMTEK Consulting Services can do and how they work impressed his own staff. Everyone at Château Bodywear was able to call, email or even meet with NAMTEK’s team of developers at any time.
Implementation
It was well known to Mr. Khoury that implementing any software solution in a company scares not only managers but also employees.
This would mean asking his team to accept the changes and learn the new system.
However, according to him, “implementation proceeded more smoothly than anticipated.”
The time it takes for everyone in the company to get used to the changes, of course, depends on the individual and the area of responsibility of each of them. In the case of Château Bodywear, user training began long before implementation and continued well after.
In the eyes of this leader, training was mandatory. Before the actual transition, Chateau Bodywear staff were able to run a demo of the system with real data so everyone could understand how the system works.
Namtek conducted a full training program during and after implementation. It was necessary that everyone in the company knew how to properly use the solution and use its full potential.
Results
As Executive V.P., Mr. Khoury was able to see major positive changes to the company with erpWizard, beginning with its greatest impact:
Reduction of EDI issues
With an abundance of EDI transactions going in and out on a daily basis, it’s important that the EDI communication with their business partners was flawless. The old system had many limitations that caused problems for Château Bodywear. It was only able to handle 12 digit UPC codes, EDI mapping was hard coded and always required a programmer’s help for changes, and selling prices were only assessed by style.
The new system, integrated with Namtek’s EDI to XML translation software, EDI2XML, now allows them to verify EDI mapping internally, with no limits to UPC codes, allowing them to process EDI transactions requiring 14 digit UPC codes, and they can handle different selling prices by SKU rather than solely by style.
Creation of products
Today, the team at Château Bodywear can create a full product item profile in order to better analyze sales and future trends through their integrated Business Intelligence software, Tableau. On top of this, they now have the ability to price and sell the same item in different units of measure (in units, dozens, or by case packs) without having to create a different item number.
Tasks, Reminders, Comments, and External document attachments
Attaching any kind of document, be it an Excel spreadsheet, Word document, PDF, or Image, as well as tasks, reminders, or comments to just about anything is now possible. This has allowed for better transfer of information between users, no matter their department or physical location.
Printing
All printing documents are now produced as PDF files. This allows for ease of use and is environmentally friendly. Sharing important reports and files with colleagues is now easy and quick.
Apart from the day-to-day visible improvements that the team at Château Bodywear was able to quickly see and benefit from, the new system has allowed this leading Canadian undergarment company to be more efficient overall and to respond much more quickly to customer needs and industry changes.
“ In terms of business process efficiencies, erpWizard has given our company the ability to keep up with our customers’ needs and requests. With our old system, it was a struggle to stay in line with the ever-changing business world we must all accept ” – Jeff Khoury, Executive V.P. of Château Bodywear.
Looking forward, Mr. Khoury predicts labor efficiencies and better communication between his staff, customers and suppliers. In his own words, he is “completely satisfied with the system and sees so much potential for more add-on modules in the near future.“
