“What used to take me 45 minutes for a single shipment now only takes 10 or 15 minutes.”
-Nancy McMullen

Company Name

    WinSystems, Inc.
    Arlington, TX
    www.winsystems.com

At a Glance

Industry: Computer hardware Shipping Solutions Version: Professional 9 Shipments: 40/month ERP: Metasystems

Interview

Nancy McMullen,
Export Compliance Manager

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WinSystems

 

WinSystems of Arlington, Texas, averages 40 export shipments a month to 53 countries in every continent.

 

With that kind of volume, export compliance manager Nancy McMullen had been searching for shipping software to replace her aging and unreliable software program prone to daily crashes and unacceptable downtime. Explained Nancy, “The software was getting to where it couldn’t support the load, and it did not screen for anything; I had to do all of that manually.”

WinSystems sells embedded computers and system solutions for many industrial needs, limited only by the customers’ end use. Their goal continues to be to provide solutions for the wide array of design problems that present themselves to their growing base of 9,000-plus customers.

Nancy desperately needed replacement software that had all the features she desired—especially something with built-in restricted party screening and other compliance capabilities. Nancy also knew she would have to find software that was affordable, but most of the options she found were $50,000 and more.

After a Google search and more research, Nancy ultimately found Shipping Solutions Professional 9. She presented the software to her boss as the most viable option: It had all the options she needed at an affordable $2,499.

Shipping Solutions’ Compliance Module Prevents a Big Fine

After downloading the trial version of Professional 9 and working with it for less than a week, Nancy was hooked. “By about the third day of the trial I was like, ‘Okay this is it!’” she exclaimed. Her recommendation to her boss: “Please buy it [Shipping Solutions] now – this will be an excellent investment.” Nancy also insisted the company purchase the optional Annual Maintenance Program (AMP) after the first year. Without it, she quipped, “The software is not going to be any better than what we are replacing.” At the time we talked with Nancy, she had just renewed her AMP.

WinSystems-Center

She wanted the AMP so she could have access to restricted party screening lists and to stay up-to-date with fast changing export regulations. Nancy screens every shipment through what she and her international sales engineers call the “bad guy list.”

Nancy loves the compliance module that’s built right into the software. “Since I installed the Shipping Solutions software, I let it do the hard part for me,” she shared. Already, the restricted party screening feature flagged a shipment that was going to a consignee that appeared on one of the government lists. “The match,” she said, “came back 100 percent!”

“The money we spent to renew the AMP for Shipping Solutions probably just saved us 100 times that in a fine we could have incurred if the shipment had gone through,” she told her boss. “Having peace of mind is really awesome,” Nancy added.

Faster Export Document Preparation

With up to 10 shipments a week or more, the time savings Nancy has realized with Shipping Solutions is significant. “What used to take me 45 minutes for a single shipment now only takes 10 or 15 minutes,” she observed. With the software’s database capabilities, she’s able to save shipments and part numbers easily. “For me to be able to go in, call up the part numbers, or simply copy a shipment, is a big time saver,” she explained. Most of her customers routinely ship to and bill to the same addresses, and have a set group of parts they order regularly.

In addition to the time-saving features she uses every day, Nancy’s also looking forward to integrating the software’s other features into her workflow. She likes the feature that integrates Shipping Solutions with software used by both UPS and FedEx, two of WinSystems’ most used carriers. She’s also eager to integrate her company’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software with Shipping Solutions. Mastering the Data Exchange Manager—the tool that enables that function—could just be her next task.

But in the meantime, “Without Shipping Solutions I can’t imagine exporting as frequently as we are because our international business has increased so much. Going through it [the process] manually the way we used to, with our current volume of shipping would be overwhelming,” she sighed.

Nancy concluded, “Overall, Shipping Solutions is an exceptional value for the tools and capabilities it provides. I have recommended it to customers and other business contacts, and will continue to do so as opportunities arise.”

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"We use Shipping Solutions by InterMart. Using this software greatly reduced the amount of time it took us to generate Word or Excel based documents. It also provides for consistency of information between the documents —no more  incidental typos!"

Jodi Schneider
American Dairy Brands

"This is such a great tool! I love the Windows look and the ease with which it works. I feel very confident recommending Shipping Solutions to all my customers who export." 

Mary Apking
Alco Spring Industries, Inc.

"Thank you so much for developing an export software program that is actually user friendly! I am so thrilled to have this new tool at my fingertips. I just installed it this morning and cannot believe how easy it is to use."

Joy Keller
OS Walker Co.