AquaPhoenix Scientific manufactures industrial water treatment test kits, chemicals, and reagents. The company is also a distributor for thousands of products and is particularly adept at sourcing materials from leading  suppliers around the world and creating custom-labeled and packaged kits for science, arts, education, and more.

COMPLEX OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES MAKE GROWTH DIFFICULT

Manufacturing testing kits comes with quite a bit of complexity according to Mike Reinert, Senior Manager of Information and Communication Technology at AquaPhoenix Scientific. “We have different sized bottles, different colored caps, different instructions, we print about 64,000 different labels, and everything gets customized. Yet we get orders out the door very quickly
- in about half to two-thirds the time of our competitors,” he says. As the business grew, AquaPhoenix the inventory management and customization components of the manufacturing process were becoming too complex to manage without a more comprehensive software solution. The AquaPhoenix team began to explore ERP solutions that would help speed up internal processes while reducing operational costs in order to support sustainable and profitable growth.

CHOOSING AND IMPLEMENTING AN ERP SOLUTION

AquaPhoenix evaluated a range of ERP systems and decide that Sage X3 was a great fit for their needs but implementation of such a comprehensive solution wasn’t as simple as they anticipated. “Coming off of QuickBooks, we discovered Sage X3 was far more complex then we were accustomed to,” he says. “In addition, our original implementation partner seemed as if they were in unchartered waters along with us so there was a lack of knowledge on both sides.”

Eventually, they got Sage X3 up and running but AquaPhoenix didn’t feel like they were taking full advantage of their new technology investment. Mike said, “It ended up being a very basic install. I wouldn’t call it a failure because we saw improvements in some areas, but not the type of success we anticipated or hoped for.”

FINDING THE RIGHT PARTNER

Hoping to resolve nagging problems that stemmed from the original install, the team at AquaPhoenix Scientific reached out to the Sage X3 experts at RKL eSolutions. Mike recalls, “Right out of the gate, RKL eSolutions was able to fix the frustrating SQL Server performance issues that were forcing us to take Sage X3 offline two or three times - for 20 to 30 minutes at a time - every
day. That alone was a huge boost in productivity.”

By taking the time to learn more about their business needs, RKL eSolutions also helped AquaPhoenix to unlock functionality in Sage X3 that was never fully utilized. Mike points out, “We know it was never properly set up and there are still big holes in how
we use it. But RKL eSolutions is helping us fill some of those holes, customize the system a bit, and take better advantage of the product and technology that we’ve invested in. They’ve become a very important technology partner that is now at the center of
everything we do - or plan to do - with Sage X3.”