The Company
Nearly three and a half decades ago, Jim Fisk decided
to create some detailed maps of Burnt Hills, NY, to
help a group of people doing some canvassing for a
church.
From that humble beginning a company – JIMAPCO – was
born and has since become an 18-person business with
a hard-won reputation for offering great maps of the
northeastern United States.
Chris Fisk, JIMAPCO’s vice president, says, “We
map every street and road from the Canadian border
to just above New York City, and from the Finger Lakes
to western Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut.”
She says, “We sell our maps directly into stores,
which then resell them, but we also sell to map distributors,
such as Rand McNally, which sells across the country.
As a result, it’s possible to walk into a Texas
store and buy one of our maps of the Northeast.”
But JIMAPCO does much more than simply make maps
and offer them for resale. JIMAPCO also acts as a distributor
for the maps of other companies. And at company headquarters
in Round Lake, NY, there is a retail facility that
maintains thousands of titles for sale that do not
go out for distribution.
Fisk says, “JIMAPCO is, in effect, three companies
rolled into one. We have all the challenges of a manufacturer,
including running a production facility, maintaining
inventory, and getting products produced on time. But
we are also a distributor, so we have to keep track
of sales of every product to every customer.”
“Finally,” she says, “The demands of our
retail operation are very similar to those of virtually
any retail operation anywhere.”
Installing EXEControl
So, in 1994 when Fisk went to look for a software system
to help run JIMAPCO more efficiently, she wanted one
that could recognize and handle these three distinct
functions within one company and bring them together
in a way that made sense for company management. That
brought JIMAPCO to the EXEControl System from Ebeling
Associates.
“It was clear from the beginning that EXEControl
was built to do the sort of thing that we needed, “Fisk
says. “And it soon became apparent that it could
do it very easily.”
Manufacturing
In manufacturing, the system allows JIMAPCO to keep
a close watch on sales trends so that the company can
be in production in a timely way before stocks of a
particular product run out.
When severe ice storms hit northern New York State,
the software flagged JIMAPCO managers that maps of
that area were being depleted at an enormous rate.
JIMAPCO was able to reprint the maps on an emergency
basis so that utility crews – many of whom were
from out of town and did not know the area – could
make repairs and get the lights and heat back on.
Distribution
“For the distribution portion of our company,” Fisk
adds, “EXEControl helps us to keep track of sales
of every product to every customer. It helps us to
know what is selling and what is not as well as which
customers are doing well and which may need some attention.”
“The
software has proven extremely useful for decision making,” she
says. “Maps are not like candy
bars – you can’t deliver the same thing
to Syracuse that you do to Albany and expect it to
work just as well.”
Retail
EXEControl also includes a point-of-sale system that
JIMAPCO uses in its retail store for handling retail
transactions and tracking inventory as product is sold.
Summary
“The most compelling feature of EXEControl,” Fisk
says, “is the ability to generate the kinds of
reports that are most useful to our business. Any kind
of report that we want, we can generate almost immediately.
The system is extremely flexible, and it is made even
more so by the ability of EXEControl Global Solutions’ technical
support people to jump online and become ‘co-pilots’ with
us.”
She adds, “The service has been absolutely incredible.
Whenever there is a need or a problem, the answer is
just a phone call away. Our specialty is making maps;
EXEControl Global Solutions’ is computer systems,
software and service, and they do that very well.”
“Here’s a perfect example of what I mean,” Fisk
says. “One day I was running two reports to get
different snapshots of the company, but the bottom-line
figures didn’t agree even though they should
have. A call to EXEControl Global Solutions revealed
the problem: I had omitted a crucial step. Even better,
a 20-second phone call had saved me hours of fussing
and trying to find the answer myself.”
Fisk concludes, “EXEControl makes a terrific
software system that really meets our needs, but it
is the way they conduct their business that makes it
truly superior.”
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