EXTOL Helps Mrs. T's Pierogies To Market

Published: June 6, 2006

by Alex Woodie

When you're the nation's leading producer of pierogies, and you're scraping and fighting for every penny and sale in a retail world dominated by multibillion-dollar manufacturers and "Channel Masters," automating IT processes is critical for survival. Such is the case of Ateeco, the Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, company that makes more than 11 million pierogies every week under its Mrs. T's brand. It just automated its EDI processing with OS/400 software from Extol.

Mrs. T's frozen pierogies come in an assortment of flavors, including potato and onion, potato and cheese, potato and broccoli, potato and chives, potato and jalapenos, and many other variations on the basic potato theme. Thankfully, there is not as much variation in the EDI standard, which has afforded Ateeco some maneuvering room when it comes to processing orders.

EXTOL Integrator saves Ateeco an estimated 1.5 hours per day by bringing automation to several aspects of the company's business, including order entry, checking orders, and accounts receivable. "It has made us more productive, we just let the processes run," says information systems manager Tim Coyle. "Nobody even wants to remember before EXTOL."

Out of a total of 200 employees, Ateeco's IS department needs just two employees to manage the iSeries and its applications. "Automation is a productivity issue," Coyle says. "Deploying that hour and a half we save each day benefits the company in other ways."