Success Stories

Winning Big at Betson

Betson Enterprises, a division of H. Betti Industries, Inc., operates thirteen distribution facilities across North America. Betson distributes, repairs, and provides technical client support for video games, pinball machines, jukeboxes, and other food and beverage coin-operated machines.

Betson has a complex inventory system to support the service and repair function within each of the thirteen facilities. Automating the data entry tasks for relieving and replenishing inventory was the objective set for the vendors competing for the Betson data collection project. During the initial demonstration portion of the sales cycle, Nutech's Screen Mapper caught the attention of the Vice-President of Operations, Bill Seibert, and his team. According to Seibert, Nutech was the only company they found with the screen mapping technology and Betson saw it as the ideal solution for their particular environment. Betson's ASW ERP is heavily customized, and they were not looking forward to having to make any additional modifications to accommodate the data collection system. The Nutech Screen Mapper would provide the seamless interfaces between the barcode scanners and ASW.

Hitachi Automotive, a Nutech 5-Star Reference Account, accommodated Betson's desire to see Viewpoint in action. The site visit also provided both companies an opportunity to share "best-practice" ideas and solutions. The combination of the Nutech Screen Mapper and Hitachi site tour was instrumental in Betson selecting Nutech Systems.

Developing the System Requirement Definition (SRD) was the first step in the project. The SRD identified the specifics of Betson's current processes and procedures. Nutech then used this information to show Betson how Viewpoint was going to manage their inventory system. How Viewpoint would not eliminate their critical processes; instead manage them behind the scenes. During this process, Betson soon realized that Viewpoint's flexibility would allow them to develop a data collection system in any way they chose. Armed with this new insight into Viewpoint, Betson began to think beyond the original scope of their data collection goals. The result, a more complex SRD, as additional processes and transactions were included.

Fast-forwarding to July 2004, the Viewpoint data collection system went live, and is more comprehensive than originally envisioned by Betson. Viewpoint has streamlined many of Betson's processes. Automatic invoicing and billing, within the service department, has saved countless hours from the service process and has generated huge savings. Time savings gained in the order to shipment process flow, has increased customer service and response time. Amongst other additional benefits, the production output of Betson's pickers has increased by 40%.

In December 2004, Betson implemented the Viewpoint data collection system at a second facility. Including all the benefits from the first implementation, Betson was eager to test the Viewpoint Supervisor View, also known as a Pick Scheduler, between the two facilities. The ultimate intention is to use the Supervisor View to monitor all picks across their thirteen facilities, from one location. The test was a great success.

Betson has been a remarkable company to work with giving Nutech many interesting and rewarding challenges. Has Viewpoint met Betson's expectations? According to Brian Kopf, Vice-President of Betson, "we were expecting inventory control and what we got was a huge amount of definition of our processes…what we saw during the demo turned out to be only a fraction of the full potential of Viewpoint."