Cutsey on track with sportswear giant.

Lee Park, located off Memorial Drive in North Bay, Ont., features the "Gateway to the North" arch, erected in 1928, to divide southern Ontario from Northern Ontario. However, this geographical separation between North Bay and those to the south is only symbolic. For here, along the shores of Lake Nipissing, a boater and angler's paradise, the city of North Bay has modeled itself as Canada's northern gateway to the world. No company better symbolizes this than Cutsey Business Systems Ltd.

The North Bay-based enterprise had found its niche as a specialist in warehouse-distribution software with clients in North Bay, southern Ontario and beyond this country's border into the United States. Some of the company's largest clients include U.S. shirt maker American T-Shirt, of Honolulu; the largest distributor of T-shirts, Alfa Shirt of Philadelphia; the largest distributor of video products on the U.S. West Coast, Video Product Distributors of Folsom of California; Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto; and a plastics manufacturer that makes plastic paddle boats for attraction rides at Walt Disney Plastitech, of North Bay.

The company that once was a regional supplier of computer equipment and software to northeastern Ontario now competes with such technological giants as Ariba, in Mountainview California; i2 technologies, of Dallas; PeopleSoft, of Pleasanton, California; and SAP, in Waldorf, Germany. However, this wasn't always the case, admits owner and president John Cutsey.

Eleven years ago, Cutsey says, he realized that his company would have to evolve if it wanted to stay alive and so he moved from the computer supply business into software. Cutsey says there is no disadvantage in being located in Northern Ontario.

For starters, the difference between the Canadian and American dollar has been a great advantage, says Cutsey, and North Bay is not really remote. In fact, the city is within less than a day's drive of a good third of the American population including such cities as Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.

Cutsey's marketing efforts are totally focused on the United States now -- so much so that the company that once did 99 per cent of its business in the Sudbury and North Bay areas now does 95 per cent of its business in the United States.

However, Cutsey believes that being in North Bay has a greater strategic advantage aside from the fact that the Canadian dollar is lower than the U.S. dollar or even the proximity to the United States.

"The people who work for us are from Northern Ontario and the chances of turnover are less," Cutsey says.

Recruiting locally for people with roots in the community is good for two reasons, says Cutsey. The first reason is that it is important in software development to have continuity. The second is that it is quiet in Northern Ontario in the winter months and there are no distractions for programmers.

The ability to get down and get to work without distractions, and ensure that the same programmer will be with a project from beginning to end, recently paid off big dividends for Cutsey's company. The company landed one of its largest contracts to date with adidas America Inc., of Beaverton, Ore., to customize enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for managing adidas America's warehouse and retail operations as part of adidas' online sales initiatives.

Last summer, adidas' application service provider (ASP) Pandesic LLC, of Sunnyvale Calif., was folded by its parent companies Intel Corp. and SAP. According to Dieter Schoenegger, chief technology officer with adidas America, the timing wasn't good -- just six months before going live with two new Web sites.

The company considered halting its plan to sell its sporting goods and clothing apparel online through two e-commerce sites. The first was a general consumer site and the second was for the sale of uniforms and equipment to soccer clubs.

Instead, the subsidiary of Herzogenaurach, Germany-based adidas AG found Cutsey.

The company had developed FDM-4 (which stands for financial distribution management -- fourth generation language, says Cutsey) an ERP solution. FDM-4 is a sales and service delivery software that allows customers, business partners and suppliers to access and make changes to internal transactional systems from anywhere, 24-hours a day, without the assistance of back-office personnel.

Faced with possibly abandoning adidas America's plans to continue with its online business, Schoenegger needed to know if Cutsey's FDM-4 had the flexibility to adapt into their system the 17-digit stock keeping unit (SKU) reference numbers that indicate the style, color, and size of sporting apparel, says Schoenegger adidas has some 25 sports categories with over 25,000 SKUs they want available online and replacing the Pandesic applications that adidas had planned to use meant a lot of work, Schoenegger says.

Cutsey designed and built a prototype for Schoenegger that demonstrated they were able to do exactly what he needed.

By putting together a prototype version that Schoenegger was able to see, he could ask questions of Cutsey's programmers such as: what happens if we do this or that, says John Cutsey.

The applications did require extensive customization work by Cutsey's programmers before adidas America could implement them, according to Schoenegger. But the entire project took just three-and-a-half months, allowing the company to move forward with its plans for both the consumer storefront and the business-to-business site aimed at soccer teams.

The FDM-4 was able to store and use all these numbers, be brought online to replace the earlier software by late January, one month ahead of schedule and at a cost of less than $2 million US, says Schoenegger.

The new applications were also integrated with adidas America's distribution centre system in Elizabethtown, Ky., which is run by United Parcel Service Inc.'s UPS Logistics Group in Atlanta.

Even more impressive is that Cutsey beat out such big names as Ariba, i2 technologies, PeopleSoft and SAP for the project -- who all said it would take much longer to implement, boasts Cutsey.

Cutsey staff use WebSpeed, an embedded database system from Progress Software Corp., in Bedford, Mass., (an object-oriented base) as part of their FDM-4 software that Schoenegger describes as being very flexible. It was this flexibility that ultimately won Cutsey the adidas job.

"This was our first B2C (business-to-consumer) site and required some new skills and work never encountered before, such as implementing coupons and credit cards," Cutsey admits.

Running adidas' site

More than 25,000 apparel, footwear and accessory items are offered for sale through sportswear manufacturer adidas America's business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) Web sites. The company's chief technology officer Dieter Schoenegger says their B2B2C e-business environment enables them to provide Web customers with up-to-the-moment product availability information and fulfilment of online orders without a hitch.

The product Cutsey Business Systems implemented in less than four months is Progress Company's FDM-4 ERP solution for B2C and B2B. The product enables individual customer special pricing to be displayed based upon customer login and password. Inventory is only committed once a customer presses the submit key to process their order, therefore, inventory is not tied up by a user who has not yet confirmed an order. Product groups drill down to specific items displaying product numbers only or pictures. An express order entry is available for customers who know the product number.

The user also has the option to view and print the invoice as well as any order comments attached to this order. The tracking number for each box shipped is listed to allow for the tracking of multiple boxes for one order. Box detail allows users to see the contents of the box that was shipped.

Integrated to Cutsey's Enterprise Solution, FDM-4 displays inventory balances for products in real-time. If the product that the customer has requested is not in stock, the availability of that product in other warehouses is shown. The user also has the option to search for similar items. FDM-4 enables adidas to digitally recreate their paper catalogue so customers can click on any product they see to view specifications and order the product.

Products can be searched by a brand name or by a combination of brand name and product category. An advanced search feature allows products to be searched based on their related features or price range.

Users can choose to order one item at a time or several different items in multiple colours and sizes all on one screen. Inventory status for all sizes across all warehouses can be displayed and the user has the option to accept back orders from their default warehouse or to select items from other warehouses. The ability to zoom in on a product image and to change the colour of the shirt on the model, or the colour of an item is intended to encourage customers to make a decision without seeing the product first-hand.

FDM-4 offers a customizable graphic invoice that loads automatically into e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook to allow invoices to be e-mailed to customers. Customers can also view invoices and print them without having to place a call to a customer service representative.

Customers can also view the status of a previously placed order. Their order status screen displays the current status of the order, including the planned ship date or if it has been shipped. The order confirmation screen verifies billing and shipping information and allows the user to attach notes to the order such as "must ship today" and "call with shortages."