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M.R. Williams, Inc. is a wholesale food distributor located in Henderson, NC
that services several hundred convenience stores throughout NC and VA. They take
a great deal of pride in providing their customers the best service in the
industry and are constantly researching ways to improve the process of ordering
and delivering products and supplies. Their customers typically place one or two
orders each week, to replenish their products and stock up on new and seasonal
items, and the order ships from the distribution center the following day.
Application Highlights:
- High-tech product ordering system
- Ability to keep track of product inventory levels
- Built-in messaging system
- Price check module
- Invoicing module
- Rapid data synchronization with back office server
- Extensive web-based logging on back office server
- Automatic product updates during synchronization
- Very easy to use
- Low cost per user
To improve the ordering process, M.R. Williams decided to
design a Palm-based ordering system and offer this to their customers. The
Palm application allows store personnel to quickly create an order using the
built-in barcode scanner in either the Symbol
SPT 1550 or
SPT 1800 handheld devices. Rather than simply recording the item number
and quantity of each item to order, users can see the information for each
item as they scan it, including order history, pricing, and suggested order
quantity. This intelligence takes much of the guesswork out of the ordering
process and results in a more accurate and appropriate order.
In addition to scanning items to add to an order, users can view a list of
items that they typically order and add some or all of these items to the active
order. This greatly speeds up the ordering process as a user could quickly
select all of the items they typically order without having to walk through the
store scanning each item. Users can also view previous orders and simply
re-order all of the items on a previous order with a few taps on the screen.
A store's inventory is very important to the success of the store. M.R.
Williams responded to the customers' need to track their products and provided
them with a inventory module that allows the entire store to be inventoried. The
user can quickly view the total number of items, total cost and total retail
value of the items. They can also view a product movement report that lists the
products by arranged by their weekly average.
All of the data is transferred through a central back office server using the
latest technology from Extended Systems. Since all of the product information
and history is maintained on each customer's handheld, the server must be able
to quickly process changes and deliver the data to the handheld over telephone
lines and the internet. Not only is the latest data sent to and from the
handheld, but the server also allows program updates to be rolled out
automatically. All connections are logged and each step of each connection is
able to be viewed from any web browser in the company's office, which is useful
for troubleshooting and analyzing connection performance.
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