ZAK Design: CSC Serves Dinnerware Manufacturer With Oracle Software Suite
Client: Zak Designs manufactures and distributes a wide range of consumer mealtime products and is a leading designer and distributor of licensed children's dinnerware and drinkware.
Challenge: To streamline business operations by improving disjointed legacy order management database and related financial systems.
Solution: Implement the comprehensive Oracle 11i E-Business Suite solution in less than five months.
Results: Significantly streamlined business systems with improved reporting and financial capabilities, including decreased time frames for report generation, faster order fulfillment and enhanced business visibility.
If you see children's dinnerware featuring the likeness of SpongeBob, Scooby-Doo or a popular Disney character, chances are it is a product of Zak Designs, a fast-growing privately held company based in Spokane, Wash. When Zak Designs was looking to replace its legacy applications with an Oracle software suite, they relied upon the experience and expertise of CSC's Global Oracle Practice to get the job done.
Founded in 1976 by Irv Zakheim, Zak Designs is an industry leader in the design and distribution of licensed dinnerware and drinkware products. With character-based merchandise in high demand, the company's rapid growth recently can be attributed to the fact that it has a number of exclusive licensing pacts with top entertainment companies such as Disney, Marvel, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon.
There's no business like e-business
Wanting to stay ahead of the game in the fast-paced world of retail distribution, Zak Designs sought a technology services company to manage the implementation of the highly sophisticated and feature-rich Oracle 11i E-Business Suite. CSC, with a proven track record of successful Oracle 11i implementations and upgrades, was selected by Zak Designs to oversee the project.
"We looked at several companies as possible partners for helping us implement Oracle," says Ray Shill, Zak's IT director. "CSC was by far the most honest and forthcoming company. The CSC team set up realistic expectations about the project, and delivered on those expectations with no surprises."
"It was a collaborative implementation," says Gavin Roberts, a principal consultant with CSC's Global Oracle Practice, who served as the project's manager. "The key thing is that we helped transition them off of their legacy applications onto a more mature and integrated platform that can facilitate their fast growth," Roberts says.
Shill adds, "With the growth that we had experienced over the last few years, and the limitations of our old business system, we knew that we would have to make a change fairly soon to something far more flexible and scalable. We were looking to build a foundation that would not have to be replaced."
As Oracle 11i implementations go, this one was completed in a relatively short time frame—less than five months. Roberts says to meet the stringent deadline, his team took an accelerated implementation approach outlined in CSC's Catalyst methodology for delivering services and solutions to clients. Prior to the Oracle 11i implementation, Zak Designs' order management and financial systems were fairly inefficient and disjointed. The project scope involved implementing a system that could unify and manage supply chain aspects such as ordering, distribution, packing and shipping, along with a wide range of financial components.
Leveraging CSC's global resources and experience
CSC's Global Oracle Practice has close to 500 Oracle applications practitioners throughout the world. A key component of the team is CSC's Portland, Ore.-based Oracle Development Center (ODC), which is staffed by technical professionals who do nothing but Oracle. Roberts says his team was able to take full advantage of CSC's global resources. "We were able to leverage the Oracle practice experience that we have, as well as the business process documentation that CSC has developed for our knowledge base," he says.
Roberts cites a key client benefit derived from the project: "They were able to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to pack and ship things out. It used to take them three or four hours to put together a specific report that they use on a daily basis to manage their open orders, and we were able to shave that down to a few minutes."
"The heart of our operations is simply managing sales orders and inventory," says Shill. "We significantly streamlined our processes in these areas using Oracle applications and implementation assistance from CSC."
Roberts says one reason the client was pleased with the end result was, "We definitely did not impede them. Some ERP projects put a blip on a company's income statement or their financial results for the year, but 2004 was a record year for Zak Designs and I think that they are happy with the end product and how that's going to position them for the future."
"We couldn't be more pleased with the results of our project," Shill concludes. "We hit the ground running the day we went live with minimal interruption to our business, and now have a solid foundation to build on going forward."
