K3 Syspro has won a contract for a highly flexible SYSPRO ERP system from Bermondsey’s last surviving traditional tin box and canister manufacturer William Say & Co. Ltd.

As a 75-year old, four generation, family firm, William Say & Co is the last company of its kind to operate from Bermondsey, London’s historic tin can manufacturing base.

The latest version of SYSPRO is expected to provide greater visibility of information and enable further customer service improvements. Additional benefits include streamling the the admin workload and allowing more control of operational costs.

William Say & Co selected SYSPRO following a thorough evaluation of the ERP software market. The management view was that K3 demonstrated a good understanding of the company’s requirements and the software provided better customisation without compromising the software’s upgrade path.

“K3 listened to what we needed and the team showed us how flexible SYSPRO is, allowing us to customise the software to our exact requirements and yet benefit from upgrades and ongoing developments, making it a good future proof investment. The other systems we looked at did not offer this level of flexibility,” says Garth Wilkinson, the company’s Operations Director.

The integrated enterprise resource planning system features K3’s unique and highly versatile DataSwitch data integration and manipulation software. DataSwitch offers a host of user benefits, including a user friendly interface that allows non-IT personnel to automate complex, repetitive data import and export tasks. It is ideally suited for generating multiple transactions from a single input and can be configured to alert operators in the event of any transaction failure.

“The additional DataSwitch software will integrate SYSPRO with our online customer order facility, which is on our website. This will allow us to capture the information online and upload it directly to SYSPRO without further intervention,” he adds.

K3 will install SYSPRO on site for William Say & Co. The company will run the software itself, with K3 support provided when required. The initial set up allows for 11 users working mainly in manufacturing, administration and accounts.

“Information visibility is very important to us and we are looking forward to gaining the benefit from instant access to management data through SYSPRO. The fact that we will have a single database for our information will make this much easier. We currently use separate systems and with the new software, we will have easy access to all orders, work in progress and manage our inventory levels using a single integrated solution. The instant view of work in progress and our raw material stockholding will help us to reduce unnecessary inventory and help us to deliver even better service levels to our customers,” he adds.

William Say & Co is the only tinbox and canister factory left in Bermondsey, the historic London base of can manufacturing. The company is an acknowledged market leader, producing award-winning tins using traditional methods. This unique family business has enjoyed success for four generations and continues to produce a variety of cans for differing industries – from lever lid tins for paint, to slip lid tins for candles.