Oki (UK) Ltd’s plant in Scotland manufactures and distributes printers across Europe.

SkyMobile is installed in their manufacturing plant and warehouse where hand-held terminals receive finished goods into the warehouse. SkyMobile is used in the warehouse for bin put-away, picking, store location transfers, packaging and dispatch. The bar-code hand-held solution also caters for complex batch and serial number tracking throughout the warehouse and despatch function. The entire system was implemented by an iQlink consultant in less than six weeks and Oki are now planning to extend the solution to another warehouse in Europe.

Warwick University’s campus is spread across 290 hectares. Its catering facility serves food and beverages to several thousand undergraduates, seminar delegates and staff every day from several stores, kitchens and outlets across the campus.

iQlink and its partner Chelford installed SAP IM and SkyMobile to handle goods receipt, goods issue, stock transfer and inventory count. SkyMobile had two unique advantages over the alternative solutions. The off-line capability enables stock checking inside their many walk-in freezers where there is no RF or GPRS signal. The level of encryption SkyMobile provided also met Warwick’s stringent security standards which are designed to prevent very computer-literate people from hacking into the application.

Amoun Pharmaceutical in Egypt moved from a custom built system to SAP in January 2009 and installed SkyMobile simultaneously in their central and distributed warehouses running SAP WM.

iQlink developed a multi-language application in English and Arabic which involved right to left wording and the ability to choose between English and Arabic text on the hand-held screen and bar-code label printer. iQlink has developed a multi-language capability that will be deployed at two more SkyMobile customers over the next few months. Also developed was a configurable printing solution using the VTI server to print configurable bar-code labels from the application.

Rieber & Søn is one of Norway’s leading food conglomerates whose main markets are in Western, Central and Eastern Europe where the Group has considerable market shares in the retail grocery sector.

Rieber has selected iQlink and SkyMobile for its SAP CRM based mobile merchandising application which will enable over 200 merchandisers from Norway to Poland to record information in the store, check and order stock, and make enquiries from the SAP CRM System. Rieber merchandisers and demonstrators will also be able to record time and expense data from the handheld and update SAP. Go live is scheduled for summer 2009 and iQlink is working with its partner DvW on the implementation.

Waterstone’s is Britain’s largest book chain with over 300 retail stores. Following the implementation of a new central book hub in a warehouse that occupies over two acres, iQlink, SkyMobile and SkyConnect were selected to provide a number of application solutions.

At each store, an application running on Symbol hand-helds provides proof of receipt and returns updates to SAP. In the warehouse, SkyMobile provides stock movement, picking and dispatch control. SkyConnect enables the integration of VoxWare, a voice activated picking solution, to the high speed VanderLande materials handling carousel. Over twenty stores are now fully live with the new system and a rapid roll out program adds new stores in a controlled manner. iQlink’s partner Unipart manages the outsourced central warehouse.

A highly successful Formula 1 high performance engine builder relies on SkyMobile in their warehouse, on their production lines and at the race tracks.

iQlink has implemented a bar code RF application at the central warehouse, and SkyMobile is also used to track the progress of each engine build and display its status on large plasma screens in the assembly area, saving the management team large amounts of time otherwise spent in identifying delays and problems. SkyMobile is also used at the racing circuits on practice and race days where it manages the inventory of engine assemblies and parts in the mobile containers and pits.

The Drinks Group within Mars has selected iQlink and SkyMobile to mobilise its SAP CRM Customer Service system and allow its engineers to link to SAP from their mobile device across three European countries.

iQlink will connect the handheld terminals to SAP CRM and use the multi-language enablement that it has developed. Two of the factors that played a significant part in winning a very competitive tender were the ability to use the mobile devices that the company had obtained a number of years ago and the quality of the reference sites that Mars contacted. Implementation is scheduled to start soon and go-live will commence during the summer.

Northern Rail operates around 290 trains, almost 500 railway stations and provides nearly 2500 local and regional train services every weekday which makes it the largest rail operator in the UK. The company operates three rail maintenance depots where carriages, electrical engines and diesel locomotives, wheel assemblies, and braking systems are dissembled, cleaned, inspected, maintained and repaired or rebuilt.

iQlink implemented the SkyMobile IM template to manage the engineering stores and provide bin location management without SAP WM. Issues to Works Orders are carried out from a hand-held device and process automation in SAP, controlled via ECS greatly simplifies the steps the user is required to take.

Warburtons employs over 4,500 people and is actively managed by the fifth generation of the Warburtons family – Brett, Jonathan and Ross. The company produces more than 2 million bakery products a day which it distributes across the UK from its thirteen bakeries and eleven depots.

Aware that its BlackBerry smartphones could do more than email and diary management and with many of the management team frequently out of their offices, Warburtons started looking for additional business functionality that would improve their managers’ productivity, speed up decision making and be economically beneficial in a very short time.

Damien Ghee, Warburtons Director for IT and Programmes saw PO approval as one such process and realised that there were systemic delays when the manager responsible was away from their desk.

In conjunction with its mobile service provider O2 and iQlink, Warburtons implemented the SkyMobile SAP PO approval application in less than one month.

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Since this case study was written, iQlink has developed a shopping cart approvals application that runs on BlackBerry smartphones and accesses SAP SRM. The application replaces the mobile PO approvals system that iQlink developed in 2007.

The SkyMobile user interfaces on the BlackBerry are so user friendly that directors and managers approve the requisitions from their BlackBerry when they are sitting at their desks rather than use the equivalent SAP Gui transaction.

Operating across 40 countries, Princes is the UK’s leading importer of canned food and one of the country’s largest soft drinks manufacturers. Princes brand names include the well known Princes label, Napolina Italian foods and Shippams spreads, Aqua-Pura natural mineral water and Crisp ‘n Dry cooking oil. Princes manufactures across nine production sites in the UK, supplying own brand juices, drinks and oils to many of the country’s leading supermarkets. 

Princes was the first UK company to use SkyMobile, realising that the WM solution template from iQlink was a good fit for their needs. All other solutions that they considered were more complex, requiring skilled resources (mainly ABAP programmers) and more time to implement. The iQlink solution also reduced the risk and the costs of support, and avoided the need for any additional middleware.

The iQlink solution from Sky Technologies enables warehouse staff to scan stock / pallet labels and confirm transactions. The solution automates the 5 SAP transactions above, saving staff time and reducing errors.

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Since this case study was written, Princes has rolled SkyMobile out to a dozen of its warehouses. Princes were initially attracted to SkyMobile by the ability to automate a complex process in SAP using ECS and reducing data entry on the operators’ hand-helds to just two screens.

iQlink has since built a PC based PO approvals system so that Princes’ Managers can review and process purchase orders using a much friendlier interface than before. In its latest SkyMobile activity with Princes, iQlink is building an application that will integrate weigh-scales with SAP.