Success Stories: Columbus Brick

Columbus Brick, one of the Southeasts' largest manufacturers of brick depends on Microsoft Dynamics for financial management. To optimize the distribution of their products, they decided to deploy RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, utilizing a third party product called HackTrac.

Although it is an excellent inventory management solution, no software existed to integrate HackTrac with Microsoft Dynamics; so Columbus Brick asked Synergetics to help them solve this problem by developing software to integrate the two systems.

The integration software works in two ways. First, it merges inventory changes from HackTrac into Dynamics, immediately applying any HackTrac updates to Dynamics, thereby ensuring that salespeople have real-time knowledge of what is available. Additionally, any changes to customer information or new inventory items are sent back to HackTrac in real time, enabling HackTrac to maintain up-to-date information without double entry.

Synergetics also created invoice verification software that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics to transparently analyze invoices for errors which were commonly being made by Columbus Brick’s sales force. Once the analysis is complete, invoices are flagged; and a complete report is sent to the sales manager, providing the opportunity to correct the invoices before they are sent to customers. What was once a daily, 45-minute process is now a quick, routine process that can be run in the last five minutes of the workday - saving Columbus Brick several days worth of work per year.