Infor Gives Southern Distributor an A+ for ERP Selection

May 6, 2008 Alex Woodie

B&D Industrial, a mid size distributor of industrial equipment in the South, will standardize its business on ERP A+, an i OS-based application Infor, the software company announced last week. The new ERP system, which perhaps was better known by its previous owner, Daly.Commerce, will help B&D consolidate the customer, product, and financial information from its various businesses following recent acquisitions.

Based in Macon, Georgia, B&D Industrial provides industrial equipment and services to companies in several industries, including mining, manufacturing, and engineering. The outfit employs about 350 people in 40 facilities across Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama, and brings in about $90 million a year.

Recent acquisitions have brought new people and products under the B&D roof, but it has also created an integration challenge for the company’s IT department. Its existing legacy system was no longer capable of handling the load, so B&D set out to find a fresh ERP system that could provide a solid foundation for its existing businesses, and pave the way for future growth.

That search led B&D to ERP A+, an integrated package of ERP software for distributors that was originally known as Application Plus before its developer, Daly.Commerce, was acquired in 2004 by Agilisys (as Infor was previously known).

B&D is expected to see several benefits from the ERP A+ installation, including monitoring inventory levels across all business units, consolidating customer and financial information from all business units, and implementing paperless processes. “With Infor ERP A+, industrial distributors like B&D Industrial can merge information from multiple locations, enabling them to deliver on their commitment to customer service and cost effectively run their end-to-end operations,” says Thad Zylka, vice president of the distribution and supply chain group for Infor, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia.