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INTERNSHIP REPORT SUMMARY AT SOUTH SIDE SUPPLY
Brief History
My Assigned Duties
My Accomplishments
People that I worked with
Brief History:
Job Description: The intern will be responsible for analysis of current business processes and helping the company to gain efficiencies by more effectively utilizing new technology (Microsoft Business Solutions). This might include customizing, executing and analyzing new reports and integrating our system with our customers and vendors to place and receive orders. The intern would also assist in the development of an interactive website to increase sales.
Requirements: Applicant must have knowledge of Windows based programs and web site development. Some accounting background is preferred. The individual must have the capability to learn quickly, apply problem-solving skills and be self-motivated. Applicant must be able to work in a relaxed, family-oriented environment.
Company Information: South Side Supply is a small, family owned and operated industrial supply company based in Wabash, Indiana. South Side Supply was founded in 1977. The business primarily supplies industrial and welding supplies to customers. Over the years, the customer base of the business has grown to reach many regions in Indiana and Michigan. South Side Supply employs 9 employees, 3 of which are full time sales representatives.
My assigned duties:
- Website: Design a website for South Side Supply. Industrial Supplies / Welding, with address and phone numbers. Incorporate a web tool for online ordering through our business partner called Production Tool Supplies (PTS).
- Part numbers: Get in touch with PTS and Weatherhead companies such that we can get their part numbers and download them into our database for ease in customer transactions and to keep up with the latest prices.
- Set up email and fax through the computer because our fax machine kept getting interrupted by the radio waves from the radio station next to us. Setting up and ‘efax’ system would save us a lot of wasted paper.
- Find ways in which we can more efficiently utilize the new software that they had called Microsoft Business Solutions (Great Plains) in order to come up with sales and inventory reports sorted by multiple criteria.
- Software Installations:
Security Software: Set up Security for the network of computers. We had 6 Hp work stations at the site plus a server that run on a SQL database. Therefore I installed Spybot in order to ensure that they were free from Trojans and other forms of spyware. I scheduled these to run on a daily basis to ensure the safety of the network.
Web Design Software: Installed various software packages to aid in the design of the SSS website. These included Macromedia Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash and Microsoft Frontpage.
Data Analysis Software: Installed Microsoft Access, Excel and Word which sync with MS Business Solutions in order to help modify and analyze data in order to come up with sales, financial and inventory reports.
Also installed Integration Manager (IM) which is a package that complements Great Plains. IM is the tool used to import and update data entries in the Great Plains database.
Active-Fax: An email faxing system so that we can send fax messages through email.
- Data Imports:
I imported over 150,000 part numbers from PTS tools, a much larger industrial supply company. This way we built up our database. We had some problems with working with some of the parts especially during the Purchase Ordering but for the most part this was fixed.
Imported updated Weatherhead items which would save us on costs immediately since we have been selling these items at below ideal list prices since we did not configure in things like freight. Now we have weatherhead parts with different price levels for different customers.
- Data Analysis and Report Making:
Run monthly financial reports for Mike that showed sales summary. This way we could determine how much profit we made each month. This report was modified so that we could also see how much money we made on a daily basis.
Also run a report that determined a way for Mike to pay is Salesmen based on the profits that they generated in their sales. All this was done with the smart lists tool in Great Plains and manipulating Excel worksheets.
- Website / WebExpress www.southsidesupply.com
We designed a website for the company ŕ www.southsidesupply.com integrated together with WebXpress such that customers can order for items online through this tool. The Original Idea for the website was to have a database driven website that would support online orders such that our customers would be able to order for items online and use their credit cards to make payments to us and we would sync this information with our accounting system.
Many of the hosting services offered online carts and software for generating online shops but these were geared towards a small variety of items. e.g if you were selling floppy discs, or computers or movies. Our requirement was unique in that we needed for a way to import all our part numbers, descriptions and related price information to enable customers to order. This they did not have.
- Modified the system settings to bring up a warning sign that prompted for a password whenever the price entered was lower than the cost. It was further modified such that incase one wanted to override these settings they would have to enter a password that would give them privileges to do this.
- Held Constructive meetings with Tom Polk and Andy Nifong:
During the last few weeks I had weekly meetings with Tom Polk from Wabash Electric and we designed a flow system for transition of South Side Supply as they tried to utilize Great Plains.
I documented the minutes of these meetings and instructions for Pinnacle so that they can assist SSS in designing a SQL program to properly integrate the PTS tools data faster into our database without problems.
- During the first week, I studied how the company operated and took part in the day to day activities in the company. I was taught how to do various tasks like transaction entries and posting receiving batches. It was during these first weeks that I fixed a few minor problems that they had been having like:
-The printers used to print 2 copies of each document. I changed the default settings to fix this.
-My colleagues were used using the enter button on the keyboard in data-entry tasks, but in Great Plains they had to adjust to the TAB button. I fixed this by modifying the settings.
-Some items that had been imported could not be back-ordered in the system. I had to modify the settings in item options such that these items could be back- ordered.
Companies and People that I worked with and helped me out.
Mike Elward – Company CEO and Supervisor
Tom Polk – IT Technician and Project Supervisor/ Consultant
Dave Dork – IT Department at Production Tool Suppply (PTS)
Andy Nifong - Integration Manager Expert at Pinnacle Group
Michael Case - ITS Director at Manchester CollegePTS WebXpress:
Problems: We have to do double entry into the system and as such this is not an efficient method of data entry. It would help if we managed to get a hold of the item numbers once customers order online through email or any other means and as such link it into our system.
Suggested Solutions: If PTS could only send us the item number in the order confirmation email then we could write a program to send this data into our database and use integration manager to update our database in order to accommodate online orders without double entries. However, when we called Dave Nelson at PTS to request for this, he never did give us any constructive help. Another solution was to get the EDI files but that costs a lot of money. In summary, we are going to use WebXpress as it is since it is free anyway.
PTS Online Tools updates:
Problem 1: PTS tools integrate but do not fill the Originating Cost field and as such are difficult for Mike to use in a Purchase Order.
Suggested Solutions: We need to figure out which exact fields are required. We also need to know why our imports are not working efficiently. We considered using direct SQL imports into our database.
Problem 2: PTS provides updated lists of its part numbers with the latest prices and discounts which we download in CSV format and integrate into our database. However, PTS has no way of keeping track of its deleted items; therefore we face the risk of populating our database with junk records.
Suggested Solutions: We could ask Pinnacle for some programming help whenever running integrations with PTS tools such that whenever we are importing the new items, they are compared with already existing items in the database and tagged accordingly. Possibilities are New, Old, Discontinued. Old would be the items that are imported but are already in our database. Discontinued would be items that are in our database and do not fall in either new or the old category. This way, we can purge all the discontinued documents at the end of the year.
Problem 3: The PTS tools that we update every month comprise of so many item numbers (150 000) that integrations are as slow as 6 days plus (considering that there are possibilities of errors in integrations). We need to find a more efficient way of importing such a large amount of data. Excel cannot handle these files.
Suggested Solutions: 1. We could use SQL tables with the help of Pinnacle to directly insert these item numbers at a faster speed. Drawback: This is a very dangerous way of importing data as there is no safety catch. Anything goes!
Another solution is to run IM off the server and this seems to work 3 times faster at speeds of 1 record/sec. Also this way no one is inconvenienced by losing their workstation.PTS: When importing tools from PTS, Tom, Andy and I run integrations on three items which seemed to have problems with updating the originating cost. It was being imported as $0 for some reason. After installing a newer version of IM, this problem was fixed for the first three items. I tried to run a few integrations with more items and still faced the same problem.
Weatherhead: South Side Supply is losing a lot of income through Weatherhead items because we buy their tools from different vendors at cheaper costs than Tork Products, however, even though our selling prices and discounts are above cost, they do not figure in the cost of freight etc. and as such, we end up making losses in the long run.
We calculated different price levels for Weatherhead items: Each, Each 2, Each MTD and Alloy. As such, most of our customers that buy in bulk were taken care of. In the IM, we created relational data tables for the source files such that each item had these different price levels. The integration was successful with only 94 of 11000 items failing to integrate.
3. General Maintenance: We want to figure out a way to delete old Purchase Orders that are no longer useful to South Side Supply. The way that Great Plains is set up, you cannot go in to delete them. Therefore we need to use the tables to go in and delete these old PO’s that we do not need. Andy said that this was pretty easy and that he would take care of it.
