Sage Pro Adapts to 20 Years of Growth and Change

Sumikin Bussan International, Corporation is an international trading company headquartered in Shaumburg, Illinois. The company’s principal activities are domestic wholesale, import and export of steel pipes, textiles, meat and seafood, machinery and nonferrous products. From the time Sumikin Bussan’s American operations began nearly 20 years ago, its business model and its holdings have varied significantly. One thing has not changed in that time is its reliance on Sage Pro ERP and the service and support
of Silverware.

“We met Silverware in the beginning, and they have been our support and development team ever since,” explains Jeannie LeDoux, accounting manager at Sumikin Bussan. “Sage Pro works as well for us now as it did back then. Silverware has helped us modify it over the years to meet our changing needs. It works so well for us we’ve never considered changing.”

Tailored Business Solution
Over the years, the company has turned to Silverware to design and implement various enhancements to the software. Sage Pro has remained adaptable to Sumikin Bussan’s changing operations due to the software’s inherent customization abilities. With Sage Pro, upgrades of modified code are painless. “Our upgrades have always gone smoothly, with no down time,” says LeDoux.

Fits Diverse Business Needs
Over the past two decades, Sumikin Bussan has grown from a staff of eight to a staff of over 80, with remote sales representatives operating in Canada, Mexico, Japan, and every state in the U.S.A.. During that time, LeDoux says, the company’s operations have grown more complex, and the daily transactions have increased substantially. “Our organizational structure now includes several divisions, and three separate corporate entities,” she explains. “Each is very different — one is a manufacturer, for example, the others are primarily wholesale distributors. We need to generate separate financial statements for each division and each company, and also a combined income statement for the company as a whole. With Sage Pro we can do this.”

Sumikin Bussan’s wholesale distribution divisions utilize the Purchase Orders, Inventory Control, Order Entry, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, General Ledger, and Intercompany Transactions modules. One of Sumikin Bussan’s divisions manufacturers machine tooling equipment. For this division, Silverware implemented the Sage Pro manufacturing suite of modules, including Production Entry, Work Orders, and Project Accounting.

“It’s a testament to the software’s flexibility that it works as well for a manufacturer as it does for a distributor,” notes LeDoux. “I believe we’re using just about everything Sage Pro has to offer in one division or another.”

Reporting Flexibility
LeDoux says management frequently asks for reports that compare the various divisions’ activities over time. “Sage Pro has a very flexible report writer and I can get just what we need,” she says. “I especially like that every report can be exported to Excel so that we can do further analysis or e-mail those reports to managers.”

Data Integrity
Sumikin Bussan is a publicly held company, so must comply with the Sarbanes Oxley Act. “It’s imperative that we can trust the integrity of our data, and we can with Sage Pro,” explains LeDoux. “Our auditors are very impressed with the audit trail, data security, and documentation that Sage Pro provides.”

Trusted Business Partner
It’s the combination of powerful, flexible software like Sage Pro, and a trusted business partner like Silverware, that LeDoux credits with her company’s continuing success. “Silverware is an incredible company with incredible people,” she says. “They know the product inside and out, and they also understand accounting and real-world business operations. They are our life-blood in managing our computer operations and the accounting challenges we have faced. In 20 years, they have never let us down.”