MALLORY AND CHURCH REDUCES CHARGEBACKS, IMPROVES COMPLIANCE AND REPORTING WITH BLUECHERRY ENTERPRISE SUITE
Invests in 2-Year Review Before Selecting BlueCherry to Replace Legacy Back Office System to Improve Efficiency, Compliance and Supply Chain Management
NEW YORK, NY (September 5, 2003) — After a two-year search, Mallory and Church, the 95-year-old wholesaler and distributor of men’s neckwear and hosiery, today announced it has replaced its legacy system with Computer Generated Solutions, Inc.`s (CGS) BlueCherryTM Enterprise Suite.
The announcement – made jointly by Mallory and Church Director of Information Systems, Mark Henderson and Paul Magel, Senior Vice President of the CGS Application Solutions Division – marks the culmination of an extraordinary two-year search by the Seattle-Washington-based company for the right tools to reduce chargebacks, improve compliance and add greater visibility throughout its supply chain – issues of growing concern throughout the apparel industry.
"Chargebacks were a significant cost of doing business," says Mallory and Church’s Henderson. "And meeting the ever-changing requirements of retailers meant custom modification to our legacy system. We looked at our current software provider and felt they could not meet our needs in the future and that was the start of a two-year process. We talked to people we knew and visited prospective vendors at trade shows to see the latest versions of their product and to get a sense of how well they knew the apparel trade."
Mallory and Church left no stone unturned. The company formulated a budget, timeline and worked on a business process review – analyzing workflow down to individual operators as a means of providing prospective vendors with a clear idea of what was needed. Henderson then conducted multi-hour phone interviews with the 12 vendors identified, winnowed that group to 6 and then to the 4 ultimately invited to Seattle to demonstrate their products in Mallory and Church’s environment. Henderson and his key operators evaluated each vendor on functionality, scalability, price and how the software would integrate with his company’s financial systems.
According to Henderson: "BlueCherry met our needs and nobody knew the apparel business better than they did," adding that even with the completion of a very smooth implementation, his company continues to explore the software’s full potential and that Mallory and Church already is "more efficient. Chargebacks are reduced. We feel our product is going out more compliant – and now we have the documentation to argue."
"Mallory and Church clearly understood that changing their back office operations was not a decision to be made lightly," adds CGS’ Magel. "This was not just another ‘fashion statement.’ They devoted significant time and effort to due diligence at the beginning of the process to ensure the system they adopted – in this case the BlueCherry – addressed their very specific pain points, improving efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, reducing costs and chargebacks. We are so very pleased that Mallory and Church singled out CGS and BlueCherry from what was a very crowded field. "
Nearly a century old, Seattle-based Mallory and Church Corporation (www.malloryandchurch.com) is one of the largest manufacturers of men’s neckwear in the United States (and hosiery since 1994) to virtually every department store and to better specialty stores under the labels Nautica, Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis, IZOD and Bill Blass, as well as its own name.
BlueCherry (www.cgsinc.com/softwaresolutions/index.html), a CGS application, offers a suite of multi-platform enterprise resources planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and sales automation systems specifically designed to meet the needs of softgoods manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
Computer Generated Solutions, Inc. (CGS) is a leading provider of system integration, software, training, and managed services to businesses and government agencies worldwide. CGS offers a broad array of services including e-business consulting and application development, ERP, CRM and Shop Floor solutions, system integration, learning services, help desk, and professional staffing. Established in 1984 and headquartered in New York City, CGS maintains a presence in 29 locations around the globe including the United States, Canada, and India. For further information, visit http://www.cgsinc.com/.
For more information:
Paul Magel, BlueCherry, CGS, 212-408-3800 or pmagel@cgsinc.com
Marcia Golden, DJD/Golden, 212-366-5033
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