Success Stories

The Butler Company implements Viewpoint for System21
“Everyone seems to be having more fun now…”

The Butler Company, headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, is a Distributor of animal health pharmaceuticals, supplies, surgical instruments and medical pet food supplies. Butler is the vendor of choice for more than 50,000 veterinarians and animal health clinics across North America.

Investigating the potential benefits of using a wireless data collection solution to replace their existing manually-operated warehousing activities, the Butler Company began talks with Nutech Systems early in 2002. Although they required a new system in their warehouses they preferred not to change the System21 and IBM iSeries/400 environment already in place. This did not pose a problem for Nutech. Nutech is staffed with analysts experienced with System21, and Viewpoint does not rewrite the ERP programs; it works harmoniously to enhance the power of System21.

Nutech began with a Site Requirements Definition (SRD), as part of the project design and management service. Once the SRD was completed, it immediately became apparent to Butler that Viewpoint would be their cost-effective choice. Butler began by implementing Viewpoint in their Dublin, Ohio facility as a pilot project. The objective was that once Butler was satisfied Viewpoint would perform as advertised; they would roll out the data collection system to their other facilities. In 2002 Butler had 18 inventory warehouses and damaged goods storerooms throughout North America, 5 of which also operated controlled substance warehouses.

The warehousing transactions that where implemented by Nutech included RF Menus, PO Receiving, DRP Receiving, Returns Receiving, Put-away, Inventory Adjustment, Warehouse Transfer, Cycle Count, Order Picking, Location Transfer, Item Inquiry, Label Printing and Package List Label Printing. Once the pilot project went live Butler began experiencing greater warehousing efficiency overall.

The ROI prepared by Butler reconfirmed the cost-effective value of the Viewpoint data collection system. According to Kevin Brunk, Manager of Business Systems Development at Butler, "Did we realize the benefits? Yes, our ROI (without capitalizing any of the expenditures) was 11% with a 2.4-year payback and an 80-95% reduction in picking errors. If we had capitalized some of the items rather than expense everything, we would have calculated 33.57% return on investment with a 1.7-year payback."

Nutech has the professional skills and resources to offer clients and prospects either a preliminary ROI analysis or a more in-depth ROI analysis after the completion of a System Requirements Definition. Using the ROI analysis, the client can financially support their decision to implement the Viewpoint data collection system by prioritizing those transactions that will provide the greatest payback within the shortest period.

Butler has increased their shipping capacity by increasing the lines shipped-per-labor hour and the shipping time by 3 hours per day, and have reduced the number of picking errors by 80-95%, which translates to a reduction from 20-25 errors to 1-5 per day in their Ohio facility. Helping to reduce the number of manual errors made Viewpoint a big hit amongst the employees, who also found the system easy to learn. In fact, "everyone seems to be having more fun now; it’s like everyone feels better about themselves and their jobs because they are using modern technology", Brunt told Nutech.

For Nutech, the implementation has been a very pleasant experience. The Butler Company has a great team lead by Kevin Brunk, who has greatly contributed to the smooth implementation and testing of the Viewpoint for System21 system. They have also been gracious enough to offer their company as a reference site for future visits by Nutech’s prospects interested in seeing Viewpoint in action.

What is the latest update? In combination with other warehousing efficiencies initiated by Butler, automating their data collection processes and procedures has helped Butler reduce their need for 18 warehouses to 14. Viewpoint for System21 is now running in all 14 warehouses.