We see them everyday. They are in parks, on football fields, golf courses and farms and yet we are oblivious to the complexity of what they do and the strategic planning that is undertaken to ensure that there are efficient solutions for irrigation.

Sprinkler systems can be made up of eight different components that are pre-determined by things like the type of crop, soil type, wind velocity and application rate for water spray. Nozzle sizes are selected depending on the performance levels required for the application, the degrees in which a sprinkler spraylet plate rotates is chosen subject to what is being watered, and volume capacity and pressure of the jet of water is determined by the amount of coverage needed specific to that application.

For leading irrigation manufacturer Nelson Irrigation all of this is second nature and knowing what nozzle goes with what spraylet plate is as easy as ABC. Nelson Irrigation specialise in agricultural irrigation equipment that helps save water, save energy and do a better job of irrigation. Nelson Irrigation plans, designs, manufactures and sells a full range of proprietary irrigation products that are sought after by farmers, residential users, councils, hotels, and landscapers alike.

With over 20 product ranges that each has over 200 options for resale, it is imperative that Nelson Irrigation has an automatic database system that can match this technical knowledge and be capable of configuring every product as an individual line item each and every time to suit the exact requirement of the customer.

The problem with their previous software was that it did not have the ability to individually itemise each and every product configuration on their Invoices and this was becoming a major problem for their resellers. Invoices were being sent out and resellers were finding them difficult to understand. With only one available line listed per Invoice the individual components that made up the total product were not listed or even identified. Whilst Nelson Irrigation had an extensive and efficient resellers book their Invoicing capabilities were less than impressive.

According to Danny MacQueen, Nelson Irrigation were looking for product configuration software that could be easily adapted and customised to suit their ever-changing needs. One that had the flexibility to provide three and four line items per Invoice and that could clearly and easily identify the series of configurations that made up each final product.

Nelson Irrigation wanted a product configuration solution that would resemble their resellers book and have the ability to link the data to their Invoicing, Inventory, Manufacturing, Accounting and tracking systems. They sought a flexible system that could clearly itemise each product configuration on an Invoice and have the ability to customise orders accordingly. Nelson was also looking for a system that could easily be maintained in-house and would therefore constantly match the current sales book for resellers.

“We have an extremely efficient resellers book that has recently grown to 400 pages in size and lists all available options, variations and possible configurations for our full irrigation product range. We wanted an Invoicing system that would resemble this and we found it in SYSPRO Product Configurator.” Mr MacQueen said.

The objective of SYSPRO Product Configurator is to facilitate rapid product configuration, within sales-orders, by non-technical people and allow easy customisation of products to meet specific customer requirements.

With SYSPRO Product Configurator quotations and orders can easily be configured by non-technical staff, freeing up qualified staff, engineers and designers. Proven engineering data can be saved and re-used, to eliminate errors from quotations and ensuring that each order is profitable.

Linking directly into SYSPRO’s production module, the Product Configurator can directly generate work orders. Order management is integrated with purchasing and financial data in a single system.

Nelson Irrigation also wanted the ability to allocate stock from the SYSPRO Product Configurator database directly and automatically to sales orders and hence be able to match inventory levels at all times from the same system.

According to MacQueen “Our old system was extremely confusing and inconvenient and it was not familiar with all of our product configurations and did not have the capability of customising individual sales.”

“We investigated quite a number of solutions and one of the main reasons that we chose SYSPRO Product Configurator was due to the service providers behind the product, ProActive Integrators (PI). We really wanted a local company that we could rely on and access for training and implementation planning,” Mr MacQueen said.

The team helped Nelson Irrigation transfer from a DOS based system with extremely different parameters, which saved valuable time and dramatically reduced operator errors. They also helped Nelson Irrigation configure SYSPRO’s product and option selection to resemble the resellers book and adapted the modules so that they could have the flexibility to modify the parameters at any stage in the future, should they wish.

SYSPRO Product Configurator helps controls Nelson’s inventory by automatically allocating components from the inventory to make the non-stocked items configured within the customer sales orders. Once the components are moved into a sales item and then transferred onto an Invoice, they are taken out of the inventory and stock levels are real time and accurate.

SYSPRO also has the ability to trigger alerts for inventory levels, stock-outs, delivery times and dates and much more. It has an accurate reporting function which can develop and identify inventory levels, sales levels and orders ready for processing.

“SYSPRO Product Configurator is easy to use and has been trouble-free. Nelson Irrigation can now provide accurate and detailed Invoices that match the configuration of the sale and we have a system that resembles our resellers book. ProActive Integrators taught us how to look after ourselves and we know that the local support and backup is there if we ever need it in the future.” Mr MacQueen said.