Codeless Platforms today revealed that its BPA Platform has provided Compass Packaging International, a fulfilment, distribution, warehousing, manufacturing, and global 3PL provider based in the USA and Ireland, with a flexible solution to incorporate an acquired business running SAP R/3 Enterprise. Additionally, following the deployment of SAP Business One, BPA Platform has also enabled Compass Packaging to automate multiple business processes.
“What we’ve ended up with is a fully integrated system. It’s not just the manufacturing side, we also have all of the financials connected to it,” revealed Siobhan Callan, Director of Business Development, Compass Packaging.
“BPA Platform has played a big role in making that work. We’re no longer jumping between different systems to find information. Once orders are closed, BPA Platform automatically handles the next steps, such as closing purchase orders, generating invoices when needed, and so on. That’s been a huge benefit for the business.”
The project was driven by Compass Packaging International’s acquisition of a business that introduced a large number of new customers already operating on SAP R/3 Enterprise. To ensure continuity, Compass Packaging replaced its existing system with SAP Business One.
“Prior to deploying SAP Business One, we were using QuickBooks and an old MRP system, which was an archaic Hewlett-Packard platform. It was a very intricate system built around the shop floor, with many different components, such as shipping applications, operational workflows, and numerous processes moving through it,” explained Phil Copelas, President/Owner, Compass Packaging.
“The first step was implementing SAP Business One within Compass Packaging, which is the parent company. From there, we deployed it within the Supply Chain Solutions division and needed to build all the automation tasks to support their operations. That was the main objective.”
Following the deployment of SAP Business One and BPA Platform, both systems now underpin the company’s supply chain operations.
“A key part of making the system efficient is the number of automated tasks that we are running in the background via BPA Platform. We have numerous automated tasks that take away a lot of manual work, particularly for operational processes,” said Gabriel Mulligan, Financial/Business Analyst, Compass Packaging.
“As sales orders are received, the production orders that are needed to build the product are automatically created. If that wasn’t there, shortages would have to be calculated manually in Excel and production orders loaded manually into SAP Business One. It just wouldn’t be tenable given the numbers, which is about 80+ per day in the U.S. and 50+ orders per day in EMEA.”
New product introduction has also been streamlined despite requiring extensive data inputs.
“There are about 80 different fields required to add a part onto the system. Again, entering that information manually just wouldn’t be tenable to do manually and would also be too error-prone,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
Automation extends to production workflows, document handling, and finance processes, including invoicing and stock monitoring.
“Once a production order moves from planned to released status, it is automatically printed in the correct manufacturing area. Without this functionality, we would need to manually check which production orders had moved from planned to released, retrieve them, and then print them in the appropriate locations,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
“An AR administrator therefore doesn’t have to run a report of what sales orders have shipped today and then go into each sales order and create the AR invoice. That’s up to 20 to 50 invoices a day in both regions, which makes this particularly valuable.”
“BPA Platform also monitors minimum stock levels for certain assembled parts. If stock falls below the defined minimum, a production order is automatically created to replenish it.”
In addition to these automations, there are several BPA tasks that integrate SAP Business One with the shop floor database system.
“These tasks send information such as production orders, bills of materials, product data, sales orders and delivery information. XML files are generated whenever transactions are created or updated, ensuring the shop floor system stays synchronised with SAP Business One,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
Despite the complexity of integrating the acquired business, the transition was seamless.
“From an efficiency standpoint, there’s no way we could have absorbed that business into our previous system. Even though we do the same type of work, serving the same customers, handling just-in-time operations, fulfilment, distribution, and logistics, the complexity here is different,” said Phil Copelas.
“We had a specific date when the old system had to be turned off and the new one turned on. However, we made the switch over a weekend, tested everything, and by Monday morning the business opened as usual and the orders started flowing through immediately. It worked exactly as planned, and credit goes to everyone involved in making that happen.”
