For over 35 years, Conimar Corporation has been supplying stores with quality decorative houseware products from their manufacturing facility in Ocala, Florida. They provide everything from placemats and glass products, to cutting boards and coasters – each with a unique and colorful design for the home. Selling through numerous distributors and major retailers, Conimar products are marketed under the Chop-Chop and CounterArt brands and can be found anywhere from small kitchen and home décor shops to large, big box stores like Wal-Mart.
As a company, Conimar prides themselves on providing personalized service to each and every one of their customers. So much so, that should someone call during business hours—they will always reach a real person on the other end of the line. With this kind of high standard for service, it makes sense that Conimar would desire the same from companies who provide services to them.
Exceptional Support
For over a decade, Conimar has partnered with Mindover Software as their trusted business technology advisors. From regular upgrades and maintenance to the continuous improvement of systems integration and automation; Mindover Software is committed to ensuring that Conimar is always operating at the highest level possible.
A great example of this was when Conimar desired better integration between their manufacturing module, and ERP system. Eric Robinson, Controller and Head of Finance and IT for Conimar recalls, “We had been using an application that was completely separate from our Sage 300 ERP system which forced us to do a large amount of duplicate data entry. This not only wasted time, but it made inventory tracking fairly difficult.” Conimar voiced their concerns to Mindover Software, who in turn implemented a new manufacturing module which integrated directly with Sage 300 ERP. This change resulted in a drastically reduced data entry burden, greatly improved bin tracking, as well as a much greater capacity for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
High Level Expertise
As Conimar grew over the years, so did the necessity for increased automation and streamlined business processes; and Mindover Software was right there every step of the way. When Conimar began selling products to Wal-Mart, they quickly realized they needed to improve their ordering and invoicing process.
Lloyd Smith, President and Director of Operations for Mindover Software explains, “The situation with Wal-Mart was fairly unique in that Conimar was shipping to each individual store rather than to distribution centers. This meant that they had to process all invoices individually for approximately 3,000 stores every other day. As one can imagine, this was a very time-consuming process. What’s more, each time Conimar developed a new product, Wal-Mart would order the item for every store which could generate upwards of 3,000 orders at once.”
To assist Conimar in streamlining their invoicing process, Mindover Software implemented a program they had developed in house which automates billing processing by allowing users to create invoices for a wide range of items simultaneously. Eric notes, “The add-on solution that Mindover created and implemented was incredible. It saved us almost a full-time salary on the invoicing side.”
To further improve Conimar’s order process, Mindover brought in an EDI and consolidated reporting application so the sales staff could easily identify which items were selling best at each location. At the end of the day, through the efficiencies gained by the new application, Conimar was able to reduce the number of employees needed to enter orders from 4, to just 1!
The Value of a Great Partnership
Having Mindover Software by their side over the years has been incredibly beneficial for Conimar. In addition to their technological expertise, the experts at Mindover Software also provided guidance regarding best practices to make Conimar as streamlined and efficient as possible. Thanks to this commitment to continuous improvement of their ERP, reporting, shipping, and barcoding systems; Conimar was able to grow and expand their company, from offering 400 items to more than 900, without having to add any extra staff members.
Overall, Mindover Software has been a valuable partner for Conimar. Eric concludes, “They are one of the best IT companies that I have worked with. We can always count on them to do what they say they will and to be there whenever we need them. I have recommended them several times and would do so again and again. They not only know all of the ins and outs of the software and how to best configure it for your needs, but they have tremendous expertise regarding business process automation as well. We have never had a question that they couldn’t answer for us.”
