AJ Wells Unifies Data Management with SYSPRO and ZAP Integration

Enhancing operational efficiency by integrating SYSPRO ERP with ZAP Data Hub

Customer

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Achieving a Single Source of Truth in Data Management

AJ Wells & Sons Ltd was founded in1972and is a privately owned, family controlled British company that specializes in the design and manufacture of wood burning stoves, manufactures vitreous enamel products and imports fair trade fireside accessories and pumice chimney.

Their Business Challenge

AJ Wells identified a need for a single source of the truth across the organization and its various systems.

SYSPRO Solution

AJ Wells upgraded from SYSPRO 6.1 to SYSPRO 8 and integrated its ERP solution with ZAP Data Hub data warehouse automation software to deliver accurate, trusted financial and operational reporting in Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

The Outcome

Full integration between SYSPRO 8 and ZAP has given AJ Wells consistent, timely and easily accessible data. Rob Holgate, Head of Finance for AJ Wells, says: “We can now spend our energies looking at the data and trends, and make business decisions based on that.”

“We now have a clean view shared by everyone as well as improved reporting and insights. SYSPRO integrates well and ZAP is connected directly into it so we can refresh the model several times during the day.”
– Rob Holgate, Head of Finance, AJ Wells & Sons Ltd.

Adapting to changing business needs

AJ Wells’ operation has grown from a 1500 sq. ft. factory to a facility of more than 50,000 sq. ft, and its workforce has expanded from three employees to well over 100. The company has also needed to adapt to the shifting business regulations and requirements introduced by Brexit.

“From a manufacturing perspective, we are based solely in the UK, but we have a sizable export business with France as our second-biggest market. With Brexit and new markets opening up, we have gone from a single company group to an enterprise with operations in Australia, the US and Ireland as well as a distributor in South Africa,” Holgate says.

A SYSPRO customer since 2005, AJ Wells uses the entire suite of Manufacturing modules including Bill of Materials, Inventory, Sales, Purchasing, Works Orders and General Ledger. The solution’s strong Manufacturing offering proved to be essential in tying up orders with production.

When the time came to upgrade to SYSPRO 8, the company did consider other systems before electing to remain with SYSPRO. “We’re extremely comfortable with how SYSPRO works on the manufacturing side of things, and the upgrade is relatively cost effective,” Holgate says. “SYSPRO’s decision to move towards quarterly updates rather than major new releases was also appealing.”

One source of truth

When he joined AJ Wells in 2019, one of Holgate’s top priorities was to ensure a single source of truth in the company. The first step was to automate the process by implementing ZAP Data Hub to build out the data warehouse and integrate all the relevant data sources, and to integrate this BI solution with SYSPRO 8.

This enabled AJ Wells to solve its data management and analytics challenges. The result is a better business with high-quality information relating to which components of the business yield the most profit.

AJ Wells has yet to leverage some of the improvements offered by SYSPRO 8 as the implementation had just been completed when the ZAP project kicked off, followed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’ve got a long list of things we want to improve, such as sales order automation, which SYSPRO 8 will make easier for us. We’re also looking to automate daily and month-end tasks as much as possible,” he explains.

Pivoting through the pandemic

According to Holgate, the data provided by SYSPRO was particularly beneficial during the three-month Covid-19 lockdown imposed in the UK from March to July 2020.

“It helped significantly with our production and forecasting. We furloughed many of our factory workforce from March but when we started to see some interest in the market coming through we decided to bring those employees back a month early, at the end of May.

“Before the shops reopened, we were making stoves in production again. It proved to be the right decision as there has since been a worldwide explosion in demand for stoves and we can’t manufacture fast enough,” he says.

Looking ahead

AJ Wells is looking forward to using SYSPRO’s web user interface and the SYSPRO mobile ERP solution to broaden its access to SYSPRO beyond the office environment to the shop floor.

“We are also looking at integrating SYSPRO with our clockingin system so that we can increase the data we capture against actual jobs in our project work,” Holgate says.

“In general, we are looking to expand our use of SYSPRO across the business on an ongoing basis.”
– Rob Holgate, Head of Finance, AJ Wells & Sons Ltd.

Achieve business success with SYSPRO ERP

SYSPRO is a leading, global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provider, specializing in key manufacturing and distribution industries. SYSPRO’s ERP solution empowers customers to take the next step – whether it is expanding into new territories, adding new product lines, transforming business processes, or driving innovation.

AJ Wells Unifies Data Management with SYSPRO and ZAP Integration

Enhancing operational efficiency by integrating SYSPRO ERP with ZAP Data Hub

Customer

Achieving a Single Source of Truth in Data Management

Their Business Challenge

SYSPRO Solution

The Outcome

Adapting to changing business needs

One source of truth

Pivoting through the pandemic

Looking ahead

Achieve business success with SYSPRO ERP

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