Nelson Irrigation quenches its thirst for detailed invoicing
In the surprisingly complex business or irrigation equipment manufacturing, SYSPRO Product Configurator provides vital inventory control...
We see them every day – in parks, football fields, golf courses and farms – yet we are oblivious to the complexity and strategic planning undertaken to ensure they provide efficient solutions for irrigation.
Can you imagine a sprinkler being made up of eight different components, predetermined by crop type, soil type, wind velocity and application rate for water spray?
Nozzle sizes are selected depending on required performance levels, the degrees in which a sprinkler spray plate rotates is chosen based on what is being watered, and volume capacity and water pressure is determined by the amount of coverage needed.
For leading irrigation manufacturer, Nelson Irrigation, all this is second nature – knowing what nozzle goes with what spray plate is as easy as ABC.
Specialising in effective agricultural irrigation equipment renowned for their water and energy saving abilities, Nelson Irrigation designs, manufactures and sells a full range of proprietary irrigation products sought after by farmers, residential users, councils, hotels, and landscapers.
Complexities of product configuration
With 20-plus product ranges, each with 200-plus options for resale, it is imperative for Nelson Irrigation that it has an automatic database system can match technical knowledge and be able to configure every product as an individual line item, to suit exact customer requirements.
The company’s previous software couldn’t individually itemise every product configuration on invoices and this was becoming a major problem for resellers who found them difficult to understand. With only one available line listed per invoice, individual components making up the total product weren’t listed or even identified.
Whilst Nelson Irrigation had an extensive and efficient reseller’s book, invoicing capabilities were less than impressive.
Key points for the solution
According to Danny MacQueen from Nelson Irrigation, product configuration software that could be easily adapted and customised to suit ever-changing needs was sought.
A product configuration solution that would also resemble the company’s resellers book was required.
It needed to be able to link data to the invoicing, inventory, manufacturing, accounting and tracking systems, while at the same time being flexible enough to clearly and easily itemise each product configuration, and providing three and four line items per invoice.
The solution also needed to be easily maintained in-house and constantly able to match the current sales book for resellers.
“We have an extremely efficient resellers book that has recently grown to 400 pages. It lists all available options, variations and possible configurations for our complete irrigation product range. We wanted an invoicing system to resemble this and found it in SYSPRO Product Configurator,” says MacQueen.
What is SYSPRO Product Configurator?
SYSPRO Product Configurator facilitates rapid product configuration, within sales-orders, by non-technical people and allows easy customisation of products to meet specific customer requirements.
It has been developed as a rules-based configuration system - ensuring viable products and improving order entry by configuring complex products on the fly.
The system provides an option to configure a standard inventory item, with the ability to maintain a library of common configurations to easily repeat orders without having to store and retrieve hundreds or thousands of different bills of materials.
With SYSPRO Product Configurator, quotations and orders can easily be configured by non-technical staff, freeing up qualified staff, engineers and designers.
Proven engineering data can be saved and re-used, eliminating errors from quotations to ensure orders are profitable.
Linking directly to SYSPRO’s production module, the Product Configurator can directly generate work orders. Order management is integrated with purchasing and financial data in a single system.
Nelson Irrigation also wanted the ability to allocate stock from the SYSPRO Product Configurator database directly and automatically to sales orders and match inventory levels from the same system.
“The old system was extremely confusing and inconvenient. It wasn’t familiar with all our product configurations and didn’t have the capability of customising individual sales,” says MacQueen.
“We investigated a number of solutions and one of the main reasons we chose SYSPRO was the service providers behind the product, ProActive Integrators (PI).
We wanted a local company we could rely on and access for training and implementation planning.”
With the help of PI, Nelson Irrigation transferred from a DOS based system saving valuable time and dramatically reducing operator errors.
SYSPRO’s product and option selection was configured to resemble the resellers book and the modules adapted to provide the flexibility to modify parameters at any stage in the future if required.
Benefits for Nelson Irrigation
SYSPRO Product Configurator helps control Nelson’s inventory by automatically allocating components from inventory to make non-stocked items configured within the customer sales orders. Once components are moved into a sales item and transferred onto an invoice, they are taken out of inventory so stock levels are real-time and accurate.
SYSPRO also has the ability to trigger alerts for inventory levels, stock-outs, delivery times, dates and much more.
It has an accurate reporting function which can develop and identify inventory and sales levels, and orders ready for processing. Key benefits include:
- Suits ‘configure to order’ companies requiring top level assembly in order entry.
- Selection criteria defined - to determine number of options presented for configuration.
- Allows selection made at one level to determine available selections at other levels.
- Ensures invoice has individually itemised each component in total sale configuration.
- Resembles Nelson’s reseller book.
- Provides flexibility to modify and adapt configurations.
- Stores and recalls commonly used configurations, with 4000+ product configurations in the system.
- Easy to use, so non-technical people can configure orders and invoices to free up technical designers and engineers.
- Creates component dependencies based on options.
- Checks availability of critical items before processing.
- Optionally, generates a standard inventory part and BOM from the configured selections.
- Links to SYSPRO’s production modules providing the ability to generate work orders from the configuration.
- Links options to stock codes and operations.
- Checks gross profit on configured items to ensure profit is acceptable.
- Tests configurations to verify all available options are dealt with accurately.
- Defines invalid selections to verify each configuration complies with technical requirements.
- Checks availability dates for resale products.
- Integrates with SYSPRO Inventory Control, Sales Orders and Invoicing, Quotations & Estimating, Bill of Materials and Work in Progress modules.
- Generates labour requirements based on configuration selections.
“SYSPRO Product Configurator is easy to use and trouble-free. Nelson Irrigation can now provide accurate and detailed invoices that match the configuration of the sale and the system resembles our resellers book. ProActive Integrators taught us how to look after ourselves and we know local support and backup is there if we ever need it,” concluded MacQueen.
For more information
Roslyn Young
Marketing Communications Manager SYSPRO – Asia Pacific
Ph: +61 2 9870 5555
E: roslyn.young@au.syspro.com
W: www.syspro.com
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