AIDC is child's play at David Halsall International

David Halsall International is the UK's leading toy importer and distributor. The company has a turnover of £63 million, 140 staff and offices in Paris and Hong Kong.
With over 30 members of staff at any one time attending trade fairs, order taking was a major task. Traditionally, details were written on order pads, which were then passed to order processors for manual input to the back office computer system.

After a major trade show, it could take as long as two weeks for all of the orders to be entered. Another problem at the shows was the risk of missing sales opportunities, simply because the manual order taking process was so onerous. The company needed to streamline its system, to maximise sales and speed up data entry.

Paradigm software enabled Halsall to develop its own sophisticated order taking system in-house, using scan-enabled portable data terminals for data capture in the field.

The terminals link into the back office system, allowing orders taken remotely to be transferred into order processing at the end of each day without any re-keying. Local printing provides customers with hard copies of their orders, while those orders can be included in the production run for the following day.

The benefits brought by Halsall's new system are already being felt. Sales levels are maximised by faster and more accurate order taking, and customers are enjoying a significantly improved service.

Article courtesy of Aim UK