With continued growth and strong margins in recent years, BigByte Corporation has positioned itself for a possible succession of ownership. Looking to add top-tier customers, accelerate growth, and provide the due diligence a buyout would require, the company realized it had to improve its business processes and implement an integrated enterprise  resource planning (ERP) platform. BigByte chose the SAP Business One application, with cloud hosting by Softengine and Virtustream, for these needs.
Quality Service and Competitive Pricing
Based in Fremont, California, BigByte Corporation is an independent provider of global warranty management services, after-sales tech support, product repair and refurbishment, and complete reverse logistics services for integrators and original equipment manufacturers.
Providing a full range of services for optical disk drives and LCD and plasma displays, BigByte also manufactures a test and parametric measurement system for LCD and plasma flat-panel displays.
During 20 years of economic highs and lows, BigByte has consistently provided quality service at competitive pricing. As electronics technology has advanced, BigByte has always satisfied new demands for support from its customers. The company has implemented a quality management system in accordance with the 9001:2008 quality management standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
BigByte has grown steadily in recent years, adding global electronics leaders such as Apple, Panasonic , and Cisco Systems as its customers. Revenue for 2011 was $4.4 million. When he joined BigByte in 2009, chief operating officer Michael Franklin knew the company needed better IT support to handle the large service volumes required by a growing base of high-end customers.
"The company was using homegrown software to manage shop-floor activities," Franklin says. "The financials were run on Peachtree and did not integrate with the shop-floor software, leaving us poor control over our inventory. All reporting was manual using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Business managers had to pull together multiple reports and create Microsoft Word documents to provide invoices and documents for our shipping and receiving departments. Data was often inconsistent and had to be corrected."
Besides greater data integrity, BigByte wanted real-time visibility of more than $300,000 of in-stock, available, committed, and on-order inventory located in 28 warehouses. Although much of the company's inventory is maintained on consignment from customers, stronger inventory control was a key requirement for further growth.
Also important were support for warranty tracking and flexible reporting tools with drill-down capabilities. In addition, BigByte wanted to make sure it was properly aligned with continuous improvement certifications, such as those from ISO, and could handle the due diligence requirements that would be necessary if the company entertained the sales process. (continued...)
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