Spring Air Company, the world’s fourth-largest innerspring bedding manufacturer, says it has selected Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP to support growth, using new manufacturing and financial reporting capabilities.
The company is due to integrate its manufacturing, distribution, financial, budgeting and procurement activities across the entire organisation, and expects improved reporting, better scaleability, cost and time savings, improved data accuracy, improved planning and easier IT support.
The deal comes after a merger with Consolidated Bedding Inc, which left the organisation with six different ERP applications, none of which, it says, met the needs of a growing manufacturer.
Paul Davis, vice president of IT at Spring Air explains that some applications did not incorporate manufacturing or financial reporting functions, or did not integrate with the Microsoft Office system tools that the executive team needed.
He also indicates that the systems were difficult to use and that the company did not own the source code, so its IT department was unable to design and implement changes. Most of the software had also been developed for the company’s needs before the merger and was outdated.
“We have to be sure we can receive orders, manufacture the product, and get it to our customers on time, and Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 was the best ERP manufacturing application available to us,” says Davis. “Overall, it matched what we needed and we liked the technology behind it. We knew Microsoft would support it long term.”
And that was after looking at 10 possible ERP applications, narrowing the contenders to Microsoft and Oracle JD Edwards. Microsoft Dynamics AX scored the highest among the management team, he says, so Spring Air purchased the Microsoft technology and chose Microsoft gold certified partner Tribridge of Tampa as its implementation partner.
“With its great history and performance in this area, we knew Tribridge would do an incredible job helping us drive this project,” says Davis. “Spring Air also is in the process of integrating Microsoft Dynamics AX with RF-Smart software from ICS, EDI and other solutions.
“Microsoft Dynamics AX will allow us to have information on a real-time basis to help us monitor and drive the business. It provides us the ability to drive processes throughout the organization to make us more efficient, from accounting to manufacturing to IT.”
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