With the introduction of Cloud-based storage solutions, many businesses are choosing to replace physical en-premise servers with cloud-based options, to eliminate expensive hardware purchases and maintenance, as well as a larger team to manage them.
One of our customers, a wholesale supplier of DIY products, approached us at the end of last year, with a requirement to change to a cloud-based label printing solution, after making the decision to move to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a cloud-based ERP solution. The move meant that all physical, en-premise servers would be removed and therefore the customer required a replacement for their existing, server-based NiceLabel installation.
As a multi-site business with retail shops, the customer needed a label printing solution that could provide a method of pushing out promotional labels from Head Office to each shop, as well as the facility to be able to label products at the shelf-edge, when restocking or reducing items.
The problem faced with allowing each shop to design and print their own labels, was that often branding continuity is lost and errors can easily be made, for example promoting the wrong product or incorrectly reducing an item.
The solution proposed by Barcode-IT, was to move to Label Cloud Business, which offers users the full range of functionality currently available within NiceLabel's award winning label design and print software, but hosted in the Cloud and easily accessible by multiple sites, regardless of location using the web printing portal. Including access to a 5GB SQL cloud database, Cloud Document Management System and role based access, Label Cloud Business is ideal for multi-site organisations to control and manage their label printing.
Using Label Cloud Business, our customer's head office can build custom label designs, allowing them to send the labels that need to be printed to each shop, as and when necessary. A web-based, custom user interface accessed by each location, allows each shop to print the required number and type of labels and re-print any that are damaged for any reason during the print process. The label designs, connect directly to their cloud-based database to populate the label templates, ensuring that data is always correct.
To allow product labels to be printed at the shelf edge when restocking, our in house software team will build a bespoke application to run on a PDA style mobile data capture device. The user will simply scan the shelf edge product barcode, select the number of labels required and print the labels directly to a mobile printer. Again, all of the required information will come from the cloud-based ERP database, to avoid errors during printing.
If you are considering moving to a Cloud based ERP and would like some advice on barcode label printing and data capture options, contact us for a discussion with one of our consultants on 01200 441977 or e-mail us at sales@barcode-it.co.uk