Challenge

For years, PWX Solutions, which handles magazine production for multiple publishers and is one of the largest purchasers of magazine paper in the world, was managing their paper operations on a cumbersome AS400 system that could not communicate with modern programs and was becoming costly to maintain. Moreover, their system could no longer efficiently manage the paper requirements or invoices for their third-party clients.

PWX needed a new technology solution that could manage all the tasks performed by their legacy AS400 but was less costly to maintain, quick to set up, and could communicate with their customer and vendor platforms and programs.

Solution

Within one month, PaperManager was managing the company's forecast demand, paper purchasing, invoicing, and inventory; sharing data with the company's vendors and suppliers; and communicating with the company's ERP systems (Oracle and Workday).

Now that we are fully integrated with PaperManager, we can spend more time with our customers and supply chain partners. We could not run our business effectively without PaperManager.

--Dave Schirmer, VP of Paper and Supply Chains, PWX Solutions

Results

With PaperManager, PWX is better able to manage the invoices with their third-party clients, which translates to improved cash flow, fewer mistakes, and an overall better service. The time it takes to process these invoices has been greatly reduced. Since order confirmations and shipping manifests are now received electronically through PaperManager, the time spent entering data by hand has been reduced considerably, thereby decreasing errors and typos.

PaperManager's electronic file sharing capabilities also transmits paper orders faster than PWX's old legacy system, which has freed up staff to focus on more valuable tasks, such as managing forecasts. Providing their suppliers with up-to-date forecasts has helped them meet their paper demands. More importantly, with their staff freed up to accept new work, PWX has been able to take on more third-party clients without hiring and training additional staff or increasing their operational expenses.