Amix Salvage & Sales Ltd

Sage 300 ERP and Sage CRM Renews Operations for Amix Salvage & Sales

More than 40,000 automobiles pass through the Amix Salvage & Sales Ltd (Amix) processing yards every year, on their way to be stripped, crushed, and shipped to metal-hungry markets in the Far East. Amix is one of the largest metal recyclers in British Columbia, running recycling centers, commercial scrap yards, and mobile collection operations. The company has seen its business volume soar in recent years, and to keep up with changing technology and changing requirements relies on Sage 300 ERP* and Sage CRM as its business management solutions.

Invest in Efficiency
Amix began using Sage 300 ERP more than a decade ago, when it was still a DOS-based product. For all those years the solution worked very well, but when Dave Dungey was hired as controller, he recommended that Amix take the opportunity to improve its operations by taking advantage of the technology advances in the latest version of Sage 300 ERP. “It’s a bulletproof product, so it was still working fine, but by upgrading, we opened up a lot of opportunities for improvement, such as automating data entry tasks,” Dungey says.

With the help of the company’s Sage business partner, the upgrade went smoothly and quickly, and all of the data Amix needed was migrated to the new version.

Take Advantage of New Opportunities
Amix is now determined to maintain its software at the current version level. “We’re just starting to make use of Sage CRM,” says Dungey. “But we already see how it will boost our marketing capabilities, help us analyze customer demographics, and give us a complete view of our customer interactions.”

Sage 300 ERP and Sage CRM also offer integration with Sage Fixed Assets. “This will give us the ability to accurately track our fixed assets in house, and automatically calculate depreciation,” says Dungey.

Leverage Your Technology Investment
Before, Amix was using Sage 300 ERP primarily for accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger tasks—handling its order entry and inventory tasks offline. “Now we have assigned item codes and have begun tracking a perpetual inventory,” says Dungey. “That’s a major step forward in efficiency.”

Challenge
Amix Salvage & Sales has used Sage 300 ERP for years but until recently was running an older version. The company recognized the opportunity it had to boost efficiencies by upgrading to the new Sage 300 ERP solution.

Solution
Sage 300 ERP and Sage CRM equip Amix with the tools it needs to manage its business today and provide enormous opportunities to boost efficiencies throughout the organization.

Results
A new payroll data import saves 15 hours of manual data entry every week. And the addition of the Order Entry and Inventory Control modules of Sage 300 ERP boosts accuracy and efficiency. Sage CRM will enable the company to more effectively market its services to customers.

Amix operates a recycling yard and a retail sales yard in separate locations across the province. Through the company’s VPN (Virtual Private Network), the yard personnel access Sage 300 ERP to enter orders and check inventory levels.

Sage 300 ERP is now running in the company’s retail store, which sells sheet metal and other products to the public. “Before this was a manual process, and you can imagine the time involved,” explains Dungey. “Now they enter sales orders directly into Sage 300 ERP. It’s more efficient and accurate.”

Amix is utilizing the Optional Field Creator component in Sage 300 ERP to create user-defined fields to store additional information about various entities in the software, such as item codes. “We use those fields to record unique information about our items, and we can track that information from a transactional level all the way through to the General Ledger module for reporting and analysis,” Dungey explains.

He adds, “We plan to add the Project and Job Costing module soon. It will allow us to track the costs associated with operating our trucks, trailers, and machines.”

Streamline Payroll Processing
Amix has used the Sage 300 ERP Payroll module for years, but since the upgrade to the latest version, the company is enjoying newfound efficiency. The company’s Sage business partner designed an import utility to automatically bring the data from the company’s time clock system into the Payroll module, automating the time collection and payroll process. “By eliminating the manual time entry process, we are saving 15 hours each week,” says Dungey. “That is the equivalent of a part-time position that we have saved in this process alone.”

The next step in its move toward further efficiency is to implement a more sophisticated electronic time clock system that can track job data. “We’ll then bring that data into the Project and Job Costing module so we can track time spent servicing our vehicles, for example,” Dungey says.

Expand Your Budget Capabilities
Dungey is impressed with the budgeting capabilities he has with Sage 300 ERP and its integration with Microsoft Excel ®. Dungey is able to create analytical reports, spreadsheets, graphs, and charts and update his budgets automatically. “I’m able to look at history and make informed projections for the upcoming year’s budget. Plus, I can use a familiar tool like Excel to do it.”

Leveraging the capabilities of Sage 300 ERP and Sage CRM, Amix Salvage & Sales is moving forward to make every level of the organization more productive.

“As we incorporate technology in our business processes, we can see the enormous potential for additional efficiencies,” concludes Dungey. “Sage 300 ERP and Sage CRM are helping us to get there.”