Andwin Scientific is a complete laboratory supply company. It distributes scientific products including general equipment and supplies, glassware and bench chemicals. Covering all market places such as Environmental, Biotech, Education, Manufacturing, Food & Beverage, Water/Wastewater, Pharmaceutical and Federal, State and Local Government, Andwin specializes in product distribution both as a distributor to direct end using companies, and as a supplier/vendor to national and international supply houses.

Established in 1950, Andwin Scientific is a division of the Andwin Corporation, currently based in Warner Center, CA. The Andwin Corporation is an ISO 9001:2000, woman owned OEM medical manufacturer and leading supplier of kit packaging, specimen collection and transport products to name just a few of its many offerings. The company also holds 20 national/ international patents and trademarks.

Andwin Scientific currently operates three divisions – paper, clinical and industrial It is headquartered in California with additional operations in North Carolina and Illinois.

Dealing with more than three million parts and thousands of vendors each year in the industrial division alone, Andwin needed an efficient system to help it manage its business and process orders. So about six years ago, the North Carolina office began using MAS 200 for its accounting and distribution functions.

As the company grew, they saw a need to add a customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage contacts, quotes and sales. In order for the 21-person sales team to have a complete 360 degree view of its customers, Andwin knew that it was critical that the new CRM solution be integrated into its MAS 200 system. To be effective the sales team needed to see prior purchases, credit and payment information, current inventory and customer pricing. They chose to add SalesLogix.
 

Bad Chemistry

Andwin soon discovered that integration was not only important in its software products, but also in the expertise level of its reseller. Andwin’s long-time MAS 200 reseller was not an integration expert. Unfortunately, DynaLink was installed incorrectly causing numerous operational delays for Andwin. It would take approximately 20 minutes to input sales orders and the North Carolina office alone typically processes 180 orders a day.

In addition to its integration issues, Andwin’s main server, which is utilized by all three of its divisions across the United States was also experiencing major technical issues. At one point, it was running at 100% usage and Andwin’s IT firm spent eight hours evaluating the problem, advising Andwin to replace its server at a cost of $30,000 and still the problem continued to occur.

“We were spending approximately $250,000 a year in IT support with this reseller and still had significant IT issues,” said Jonathan Behlert, general manager at Andwin. “We decided that we needed to make a change. We researched and evaluated other Best Software resellers and CompuData ranked among the top.”

Good Chemistry

CompuData’s first key initiative was to evaluate Andwin’s IT infrastructure and determine why some of its key software packages were not working properly.

Within the first two weeks of its contract with CompuData, Andwin’s new server reached 100% capacity again. Within a couple hours, CompuData diagnosed that it was a SQL issue caused by an incorrect installation of SalesLogix. CompuData correctly re-installed the software and the issue was resolved. By re-installing SalesLogix and repairing the DynaLink integration tool between MAS 200 and SalesLogix, CompuData solved many of Andwin’s long-time challenges within just 6-8 hours.

With the proper linking of its front and backoffice applications, both sales and accounting, as well as senior management, now have immediate access to the complete customer information, from the customer’s credit status, available credit terms and account balances to product availability, pricing, discounts and inventory data. The integration of MAS 200 and SalesLogix enables sales and accounting to have one single view to maintain accurate and complete data, streamlining Andwin’s processes.

“Now that our two key software solutions are able to communicate, we have eliminated many unnecessary manual steps that we had in place to compensate for our integration issues. By improving our processes, we are in a position to make more sound business decisions and better serve our customers,” said Behlert.

MAS 200 + SalesLogix = Efficiency

“CompuData stabilized our computing platform and handled the entire integration piece,” said Behlert. “CompuData was able to provide the support and get all of our hardware and software solutions communicating effectively, enabling us to work much more effectively.”

Andwin now has one master database in which all of its information is stored. As leads come in through the sales department, they are entered into SalesLogix and as the prospect turns into a customer the information is then accessible in MAS 200 for billing purposes, enabling data to be entered once, employees to be trained on only one application (i.e. sales doesn’t need to learn to use MAS 200) and information to be accessible from one data source for the entire organization.

A True IT Partner

Since beginning its relationship with CompuData, Andwin’s IT support bills have been reduced from approximately 20 hours a week of service down to just about two hours a week. “Every time we had a technical problem our old IT firm would typically spend a significant amount of time in our offices and only provide us with a temporary fix,” explained Behlert. CompuData has reduced the service time from 3 or 4 hours to about 30 minutes and consistently delivers a permanent solution.

“CompuData has always been easy to get a hold of, even when we have questions that require a person with certain specialties,” said Behlert. “CompuData’s team members are experts in Best Software’s MAS 200 and SalesLogix solutions and have a thorough understanding of the technical challenges that small and mid-sized businesses face. They have been extremely responsive and been able to solve all of our technical challenges thus far remotely, eliminating travel expenses.”

“With our key business applications now working properly and our IT infrastructure stabilized, CompuData is taking a look at our business model to determine how they can help us improve it through technology solutions,” added Behlert. “We see CompuData as a partner that not only keeps our technology infrastructure in check, but also provides added value in working with us to leverage technology to support our business initiatives.”