Liverpool’s award winning packaging firm Weir & Carmichael has invested in a new SYSPRO enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from Manchester-based K3 Business Technology Group (K3).

Weir & Carmichael’s management team expects the system to provide full visibility of important management information while reducing administration and saving time and costs by eliminating data duplication and the need to run separate systems.

The SYSPRO ERP system will automate Weir & Carmichael’s entire accounting, order management, manufacturing and distribution operations and will provide fully integrated contact management system (CMS) functionality. It will also integrate seamlessly with Weir & Carmichael’s Microsoft Office software and email system. K3 will tailor the system to make it easier for the company to manage its supply chain, which involves importing packaging material from overseas that is subject to the volatility of the cost of oil and landing, docking and storage charges.

“Our legacy system had come to the end of its development life cycle and we had to use a number of workarounds to make it function the way we wanted it to. This involved using separate spreadsheets and manual systems, which resulted in duplicated data and effort. With SYSPRO, however, we will have all our information held by a central database that is accessible to all those who need it, when they need it. The ability to find the information quickly and enter data once only will boost our efficiency and help our customers,” says Stephen Williams, Financial Director, Weir & Carmichael.

Stephen Williams reports that it is not an easy job to find a good replacement business system because there are several software products that appear similar and seem to offer a wide range of features and functionality.

“We looked at several Microsoft-based systems but K3 demonstrated to us that SYSPRO would be the best fit for our company. We liked the user-friendliness of the software, and the K3 team appeared to understand our business and could show us how SYSPRO would provide the automation we needed now as well as having scaleability and a broad range of customisation options for future use. In addition, the system offers us the opportunity to integrate SYSPRO CMS, which eliminates the need for our current separate CMS,” he adds.

Weir & Carmichael is a family owned and run business established in 1955. It offers a range of flexible packaging solutions and has been supplying various industries throughout the UK for over 50 years with sacks, bags and recycling containers. The company has an excellent reputation for quality and service and is both ISO9001 and ISO14001 accredited. The company is the recipient of several business awards, including winning the Liverpool Daily Post Regional Business Green Awards and was the runner up in the Merseyside Innovation Awards for its unique reusable Britwrap transit packaging.