Sage 200 Case Study from bite

The company
Schneider Industry (UK) Limited is the UK's largest manufacturer of LPG bulk vessels. Based in Airdrie, Scotland, Schneider's manufacturing facility has continually kept pace with the requirements of the UK bulk market production, design and quality of finish. State of the art equipment and fabrcation techniques have ensured Schneider is the number one supplier with an expansive portfolio of innovative products.

The challenge
With a turnover in excess of £6 million, Scheider has three other site in, Stoney Stanton, Chepstow and Derby. Expansion in services through acquisition in recent years and the resulting business growth meant that the organisation was struggling with a lack of integrated business and management reporting.

"We needed accounting software that could deliver relevant and
timely management reporting and was fully integrated across
all of the sites, removing the need for all the disparate
information systems,"
explains David Strain, Finance Manager at Scheider Industry.

He continues, "Sage MMS (now Sage 200) provided us with
this functionality, yet critically CPiO was also able to suggest
ways in which the software could be used to contribute
hugely to the business in areas other than maintaining
cash flow and producing regular financial statements."

For example, due to the nature of Schneider Industry's business, full stock traceability is very important. If a problem were to arise with a particular vessel, any other vessels that were made with the same batch of steel heads would need to be traced. The Bill of Materials module within Sage 200* ensures the components that go into each vessel are recorded and given a unique serial number so that each component can be traced at any time.

The solution
In January 2006, Schneider Industry purchased Sage 200 accounting software from business software specialists CPiO. As a result of recently taking on a new senior management team, Schneider Industry implemented the new accounting package to integrate all parts of its business, to deliver timely and accurate business and management information, and to form the basis for the future innovation that will drive efficiency and cost savings. The Sage 200 solution will replace the organisation's existing Sage Line 50 finance and accounting systems as well as a mixture of bespoke invoicing and database packages across its four UK offices.

“Not only did we use Sage MMS (now Sage 200) to integrate
across disparate systems, but we were able to utilize the
software to contribute hugely to the business in areas
other than maintaining cash flow and producing
regular financial statements,"
said David Strain.

Schneider thoroughly investigated all of the options available when it came to upgrading its finance and accounting systems and decided upon Sage's mid-market solution because of the excellent previous experience it had with the company's software.

The benefits
“Because of our experience with Sage and CPiO in the past, they were always favourites when we started looking to upgrade" said David Strain. "We are extremely pleased with the progress six months into the roll-out. It's made a huge difference as we now have all relevant information at our fingertips, the ledger information is available across all four of our sites, not to mention our mobile sales-teams, and it has massively reduced the level of duplication in terms of re-keying data."


The future
Moving forward, Schneider Industry hopes to develop a paperless Sage 200 function, whereby branded invoices and other communications are created electronically. The company is also working with CPiO and Sage to develop bespoke software that will link its transactions between BP and American Express to ensure payment is received within five days. It is these developments that will speed up communication with suppliers and customers, resulting in significant cost saving for the company.