Customer Successes
VIP wins with Avorcor

The Company: VIP Auto, an auto parts, tires and service retailer with 53 stores, headquartered in Lewiston, ME.

The Situation: Facing a changing commercial landscape (consolidation, new competitors, new product categories), VIP needed to craft a strategy geared to this dynamic marketplace while mitigating risk with an incremental, iterative approach.

The Solution: The Avorcor Supply-Chain-as-a-Service platform provides VIP with a layer of software services that provide a common interface to their existing IBM i5-based retail backoffice systems, while also enabling the incremental development and delivery of new in-store, warehouse and backoffice business processes.

The Results: “Avorcor has enabled us to turn the tactical replacement of aging warehouse scanners into a strategic asset for the company enabling real time access to inventory data, warehouse operational metrics, and rapid processing of special orders to our retail network,” according to VIP's VP of IT, Dan Grosz. “Going forward we see continued significant benefits from the system in improving warehouse efficiency and supporting electronic commerce.”



American Institutes for Research – Competitive advantage in a limited time frame
The Organization: The American Institutes for Research (AIR) is one of the largest behavioral and social science research organizations in the world. Their overriding goal is to use the best science available to bring the most effective ideas and approaches to enhancing everyday life.

The Situation: AIR required customized tracking and monitoring of standardized student testing. They had a dual requirement for small component of inventory management for extra tests and supplies, mixed with single, serialized tracking of tests from printer to warehouse to school to scoring.

The Solution: The Avorcor Supply-Chain-as-a-Service platform facilitated custom interface for educators to prepare testing materials online, generate orders, and manage the delivery and routing.

The Results: Avorcor delivered a turn-key solution in four months at a fraction of the cost of modifying an existing WMS application. Said AIR’s Director of Logistics and Operations Processes: “We didn’t need to spend hundreds of thousands to jump ahead of the competition. All we had to do was find a vendor who approaches the challenges from a completely different angle."



Customer-centric order management at Shepher – Better tools for selling toys

The Company: Shepher Distributors is a national wholesale toy distributor servicing New York retailers since 1945.

The Situation: Shepher was limited in their ability to process orders quickly enough during high-volume periods, such as the winter holiday season and early summer. Issues that caused slowdowns in order processing included specialty promotional pricing, closeout pricing, lot pricing and price change approvals. Sales reps typically would take orders by pad and pen and then transcribe orders into the system when they found time. In addition, Shepher had an existing WANG-based order system written in COBOL that, for cost reasons, they didn’t want to abandon.

The Solution: Avorcor provided Shepher with a new Order Management system using the Supply-Chain-as-a-Service platform, encompassing the Contact Management, Item Master Management, Order Management and Administration web services. Retaining the WANG order system as the system of record, the customer and item databases are downloaded into the new Avorcor-based order management system nightly, or on-demand as required.

Shepher’s sales reps now take their orders using Symbol MC50 handheld scanners while walking through the showroom with their clients. The new scanner-based ordering system adds items to the order by scanning the product’s UPC code, shows the sales representative the current order total, allows them to negotiate pricing with the client during the walkthrough, and allows them to handle a client with multiple location needs concurrently. The sales rep then saves the order, where it becomes accessible from a Web-based terminal and can be edited, split and approved as required by sales management. Finally, the order is submitted to the existing WANG-based system for fulfillment.

The Results: The new system provides Shepher with greater order accuracy, ensures proper addressing, facilitates faster processing of orders and provides sales representatives with more real-time data regarding availability, promotional pricing and category item classifications. The system also provides sales reps the basis for new business intelligence regarding orders and greater accessibility to item master data, availability and client information without tying them to their desktops.


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