International Dance Shoes Case Study

Background

International Dance Shoes is a renowned worldwide manufacturer and supplier of ladies, children’s and men’s dance shoes.

Specialising in Latin and Ballroom shoes for more than three decaces, their shoes are the first choice for many leading amateur and professional dancers including the supply of virtually all the shoes to the performers on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. Carefully hand-crafted at their home in Milton Keynes, England in the UK, International Dance Shoes are available across the globe.

Challenges & Installation

Shoes, unlike many products, come in so many variations, sizes, widths, colours; this added to the fact that International Dance Shoes make such a specialist product means creating a stock record can be problematic, and then the subsequent identification of each product extremely difficult increasing the opportunity for packing errors.

The objective of the ExPD Asset-i bespoke tracking system was to ensure the shoes or ‘assets’ are correctly identified at the point of manufacture, then correctly picked and packed to eliminate any despatch errors.

Furthermore, the need to accurately document exactly what has been dispatched to each customer and country, and be able to instantly report by style, size, quantity is essential to be able to continue the high level of service and support to clients.

Drawing on thirty years specialising in barcdoe technology, ExPD developed a bespoke system to control the International Dance Shoes’ stock.

IDS now has an online system accessible via any of their PC’s with internet access, ensuring staff can quickly and effectively add new products using ‘add wizard’, print packing sheets, and retrieve valuable information instantly without the need to return to stock PC.

The core system is web-based and uses Android mobile computers/phone for scanning and recording transactions. The mobile application allows the despatch department to scan every item at the point of packing, using an Android PDA, eliminating any errors and dynamically creating the packing list on completion. The packing list is automatically emailed to the client, the admin department, and sent to the printer meaning operators can concentrate their time on getting more items despatched.

Result

ExPD’s barcode tracking software, was deployed and met the full requirement within a couple of weeks of install, ExPD worked closely with Justin Patel, Director at International Dance Shoes to ensure the system provided the functionality and information required.

Justin Patel, Director at International Dance Shoes, commented: “We had a system which did the job, but due to technical reasons we had to upgrade. ExPD understood the business requirements and delivered an exact fit solution on time and on budget. They have provided a system which surpassed our expectation, the guys we dealt with were a pleasure to work with and we hope we continue to enjoy such a positive business relationship.”

ExPD bespoke development services provide a solution to numerous application types, whether asset tracking is education, vehicles tracking at Airport car parks, parcel handling, stock and inventory management, manufacturing inspection processes, QA auditing, etc.