Avnet

Serving customers in 60 countries, Avnet markets, inventories and adds value to these products and provides world-class supply-chain management and engineering design services.

JIWA Financials was initially installed at Avnet’s Australian Computer Marketing division in July 1998. Due to exponential growth in their operations, Avnet required significant expansion of their financial software. Avnet had two options. They could either integrate their operations with one of their overseas operations using a “larger” ERP or extend the functionality of JIWA Financials. They chose the JIWA Financials option.

JIWA Financials is now being used in Canberra, Melbourne, and two sites in Sydney. The JIWA Financials server is located in Sydney with the three remote sites connected live via Microsoft W2000 Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe.

JIWA Financials' Microsoft SQL based architecture has enabled JIWA Financials to be tailored to match Avnet's business needs. One of the more exciting developments has been the creation of a new warehouse picking system. Avnet warehouse staff are able to efficiently pick the required stock to fulfil orders whilst easily capturing the serial numbers of those items. Even more exciting is that Avnet's staff are able to do this at any location within its 2000 sq. metre warehouse.

This enhancement to JIWA Financials makes use of the ultra-portable Hewlett-Packard Jornada 680e handheld computers, running the Microsoft Windows CE operating system, fitted with radio frequency PC Cards. This enables live wireless communication with the JIWA Financials database at any point within Avnet’s warehouse. Also conveniently attached to the handheld computers are specially designed barcode scanners enabling accurate and efficient capture of serial numbers. This remote functionality integrates totally with the standard JIWA Financials product.

Avnet's Adrian Cresswell (Sales Operations Manager) has reported that warehouse processing efficiency has increased in some cases up to 500%. Another sometimes unrealised advantage of increasing the productivity of employees is job satisfaction. In this case, Avnet's warehouse employees are proud to demonstrate how their new system works.

As well as the general "tweaking" of JIWA Financials to snugly fit Avnet's operations, and the aforementioned warehouse picking system, other features that have enhanced Avnet's operations include:

• Price Uploader
  Allows Avnet sales staff to automatically upload prices for an unlimited number of inventory items from suppliers such as COMPAQ, Cabletron, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.


• Management Reporting
  Over 30 tailored Crystal Reports have been developed in addition to JIWA Financials’ 200 standard reports. These allow Avnet’s management to obtain the information they require to keep control of their business.


• Central Terminal Server
  The use of Citrix Metaframe on top of Microsoft W2000 Terminal Server enables fast private access to JIWA Financials for over 40 users at 4 locations.


• Stats Online
  Sections of Avnet’s website have been developed to display secure, customer-specific order information. These web pages are sourcing data directly from the JIWA Financials database.

Avnet Computer Group
Mr. Adrian Cresswell - Operations Manager


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