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Success Stories
Brief Company Overview
Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. is the world's largest African-American-owned and operated publishing company. JPC brands include EBONY and JET magazines and Fashion Fair Cosmetics. Fashion Fair Cosmetics was introduced in September, 1973 at Marshall Field’s in Chicago. Fashion Fair’s products can now be found in nearly 2,000 fine stores in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Africa, the Caribbean, France and other countries around the world. US retail outlets include Carson’s, Lord and Taylor, Macy’s, Bergner’s, Dillard’s and Gottschalks.
Challenges
General Issues with existing system:
- Fashion Fair was using an IBM System 38 and a customized EDI solution
- The system prohibited Fashion Fair from expanding its services
- The system was costly to maintain
- The staff supporting the legacy system was preparing to retire
Within the system Fashion Fair needed to be able to:
- Improve the entire order and supply chain process
- Help manage and reduce the number of chargebacks
- Capture additional information via EDI
- Implement a stand-alone and comprehensive financials module
Solution Implemented
Microsoft Dynamics GPTM – Financials, Inventory, Sales Orders, Purchasing
Implementation - Timeframe and Details
Target: Needed to be live before the Holiday buying season. Project started in the fall of 2001
Phase 1: Went live in less than one month
- Implemented Dynamics GP – Financials.
Phase 2: Went live within three months of project start date
- Implement Dynamics GP – Inventory, Sales Orders, Purchase Orders and a new EDI solution
- Migrate existing data
- Integrate third party fulfillment warehouse
- Create and implement custom modules
Benefits and ROI
- Placed Fashion Fair on a scalable and supported technology
- Better decision making due to having greater insight into the business – from orders to manufacturing to inventory
- A custom Profitability module now provides Fashion Fair with more insight into their customers
- With the system in place Fashion Fair can now look toward the future and expand its capabilities. For example, plans are under way to implement demand planning
Quotes from the Client
"John Carr has brought together a company of people you can trust, and that is what makes for a great company."
"Great company and great people to work with! They have a customer first attitude and take the initiative to make sure we are satisfied. Metaphor Software does whatever is necessary to get the job done and done right."
-J. Lance Clarke, Senior Vice President