An ERP built around how the business runs, not around the software.
A US wholesale supplier was running its whole operation (inventory, orders, deliveries, receivables and a truck fleet) across systems that did not connect, with decades of data in the oldest one.
A working business held together by re-keying.
Every department had what it needed and none of them shared it. Inventory lived in one place, sales orders in another, deliveries on paper, and receivables in an accounts package that learned about a sale days after it happened.
The cost was not dramatic and that was the problem, it was a steady tax of re-keying, chasing and reconciling that the business had normalised. The visible symptom was that nobody could answer where an order was without making a phone call.
The legacy system could not simply be switched off. Decades of history lived in it and parts of the business depended on it while the new platform was being built, so any plan that required a clean break was not going to be accepted.
One platform, and a migration that did not require a clean break.
We built an integrated web ERP covering the full chain: customers, sales orders, inventory with CAT pricing, invoicing, payments, deliveries and receivables, with vendor and inbound supply on the other side of the same dataset.
Legacy data was migrated and then kept in sync while both systems ran. That synchronisation is the part that made the project acceptable to the business, departments moved when they were ready, not on a date chosen by the project.
Delivery moved out of the back office. GPS-enabled tracking with SMS alerts meant customers stopped calling to ask where the truck was, and dispatch stopped acting as the switchboard.
Around the core we added the parts of the business that are usually left out of an ERP and then handled on paper anyway: fleet and truck maintenance, employee payroll integration, job-level financial tracking, document management and automated tasks.
Eleven modules, from quote to cash to truck.
Customer management
Accounts, terms, contacts and history, with the order and payment record attached, not looked up.
Sales orders
Quote through order through fulfilment, against live inventory.
Inventory
Stock, locations and CAT pricing, updated by the transactions rather than by a nightly job.
Invoicing and payments
Generated from what shipped, which removed the most common cause of billing disputes.
Accounts receivable
Cross-functional, with automated reporting so collections work from current data.
Vendor management
Inbound supply chain and purchasing on the same dataset as outbound.
Delivery tracking
GPS-enabled, with SMS alerts to the customer.
Fleet management
Trucks, maintenance records and scheduling, kept in the system instead of on the wall.
Jobs
Job-level financial tracking so profitability is visible per job, not just per month.
Payroll integration
Employee management connected to payroll rather than re-entered into it.
Documents and tasks
Document management, email, calendar and automated task assignment across departments.
A web ERP with a live bridge to the system it replaced.
Application
Data
Field
Reporting
What the business got.
- Re-keying between departments stopped. One dataset from sales order to invoice to receipt, which removed the reconciliation work that had been absorbed as normal overhead.
- Order status became a screen instead of a phone call. Sales, dispatch and accounts see the same record, so the question is answered where it is asked.
- Customers stopped chasing deliveries. GPS tracking with SMS alerts moved delivery updates from a person to the system.
- Receivables improved because the data was current. Automated AR reporting from live transactions, not from an accounts package learning about sales after the fact.
- The transition did not require a shutdown. Legacy sync let departments move individually, which is why the project finished at all; a clean-break plan would have been rejected, and rightly.
“iSummation took our vision from concept to realization. Words cannot express gratitude for what the development team have done. They have been our mutual partners when it comes to development, tech support, and developing features at a very micro level.”
