Vasanta Set For Growth With Manhattan Associates Supply Chain Technology

LONDON and ATLANTA, March 21, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Manhattan Associates, Inc. (Nasdaq:MANH), the global supply chain optimization provider, today announced that Vasanta Group, one of the largest office supplies group in the UK and Ireland, has successfully completed the first phases of its installation of Manhattan SCALE™: Supply Chain Architected for Logistics Execution.

Vasanta Group consists of four main business units: VOW, Supplies team, Caboodle and ISA retail. In a phased deployment approach, VOW became the first of Vasanta's businesses to go-live with Manhattan SCALE at the company's new 265,000 square foot state-of-the-art distribution centre (DC) in Normanton, West Yorkshire. The DC is now processing more than 5,000 orders a day for the VOW and Supplies team businesses.

The extensive product range that Vasanta supplies to multiple channels means the Normanton DC is a relatively complex operation. To support the order volumes being processed by the DC and to support the future growth of its different business divisions, the Manhattan solution was integrated with radio-frequency (RF) technology, a conveyor system and the shipment tracking systems of UPS and Parcelforce. This is to enable carrier compliant labels to be printed and provide end of day manifest information for seamless integration with the carriers.

Vasanta also plans to integrate Manhattan SCALE with its new proposed ERP platform from Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Kevin Carrick, Group IT director, Vasanta Group, said, "We required a solution that was not only flexible and agile enough to cope with the complexity of our organization's operations but that would complement our broader systems infrastructure including our Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP platform. Only Manhattan SCALE answered these needs. The solution allows integration with our sophisticated MHE, but also clearly demonstrated its broad functional footprint, high degree of configurability and scalability without the constraints of a bespoke programme. After already experiencing a strong return on our investment with Manhattan at the Normanton site, we are considering a company-wide rollout of Manhattan SCALE over the coming years, which will extend to our operations in Ireland."