Overview
Learning Resources UK have outsourced their warehouse operations to UPS, where they are expecting to save significant costs when compared to their previous in-house warehousing operations. Outsourcing the warehousing operations meant integrating Learning Resources ERP Solution, Sage300 ERP, and UPS.
Challenges
One of the key challenges was to build a solution which provided equivalent integration as Learning Resources warehouse management solution (WMS).
IMan was the logical choice to provide the integration, as it was already deployed and providing integration between their eCommerce provider and Sage300 ERP.
Tascoli
Tascoli, Realisable’s longest standing partner, were able to draw on their extensive knowledge & previous implementations of IMan. Due to the existing IMan implementation at Learning Resources, Tascoli were able to re-use a number of existing components, thus saving time and reducing overall complexity.
UPS
UPS’ API well documented & logical interface made requirements phase and integration design easy.
IMan
IMan has been able to provide the heavy integration needed between Sage300 ERP and UPS.
- Integration was straight-out-of-the-box, without any additional development since IMan already supported all the necessary integrations touchpoints with the O/E, P/O & I/C modules.
- IMan’s comprehensive transformation functionality meant everything could be performed within IMan without needing to pre-normalise any of the data.
- IMan’s Xml read/write capabilities meant easy compliance with the UPS’ Xml interchange format.
- Realisable were able to make an enhancement to IMan to address a specific data upload scenario required by UPS, where the enhancement was built into the core product, thus reducing ongoing maintenance costs.
Deployed solution
The actual deployed solution involved providing a number of dataflows between UPS and Sage300 ERP.
- Purchase Receipts are uploaded from Sage300 ERP to UPS as an Advanced Shipping Notice (ASN), facilitating Container Receiving.
- On actual receipt of goods, UPS provide a receipt confirmation to trigger a stock movement in Sage300 ERP from the transit location to the main stock location.
- Sales Orders are uploaded from Sage300 ERP as pick tickets to UPS.
- Picking confirmations from UPS are imported into Sage300 ERP as O/E Shipments.
- Import of miscellaneous stock adjustments from UPS.
- Import of transfers, to handle stock moving to and from quarantine locations.
- UPS Cycle Counts are imported against the Sage300 ERP master item record, where they are checked before subsequent processing.
- IMan has been able to automate a multi-transaction process within Sage300 for the custom kitting process provided by UPS for Learning Resources.
Outcome
The configuration based nature of IMan resulted in a project which was implemented far quicker than bespoke development where:
- Requirements gathering phase was far reduced since detailed documentation was not required.
- Rapid integration design & setup.
- Deployment & testing were far easier than a bespoke developed solution where changes and fixes to the integrations were made & incorporated quickly.
Further automation
Learning Resources are looking to further automate their internal operations. One of the upcoming projects is to import the ASN generated by their parent US company into Sage300 ERP for intercompany purchase orders.