News Release

M1 by Bowen & Groves Meets Stoddart's Criteria

Brisbane based Tom Stoddart Pty Ltd is one of Australia's leading metals fabrication companies with a strong commitment to maximum productivity and competitiveness. The company has selected the M1 ERP software of Bowen & Groves as the best fit for its operations.

Brisbane based Tom Stoddart Pty. Ltd is one of Australia's leading metals manufacturing companies.

Founded in 1959, the company today operates three manufacturing sites in Brisbane with a workforce complement of about 350 people.

There are also representative offices in Sydney & Melbourne.

Stoddart is a diverse metal fabricator supplying products and services throughout Australasia and North America ranging from commercial kitchen supply and installation for the building industry to standard foodservice equipment to contract fabrication of metal products and componentry.

With a focus on quality and delivery, its clients include Australia's largest building and construction companies, a distribution network of foodservice equipment dealers throughout Australasia, Bluescope Lysaght, McDonalds and Federated Departments Stores of the US just to name a few.

Recent projects of note include the $11m kitchen, bar and general metalwork packages at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane and the supply and rollout of 1500 contact toasters for McDonalds Australia and more recently McDonalds China.

In a quest to maintain maximum productivity and competitiveness as an Australian manufacturer, the company recently underwent a significant evaluation process for a dedicated ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning ) software system in conjunction with the Queensland Manufacturing Institute (QMI).

General Manager Tony Stoddart said "we worked with QMI to evaluate our own business and draw up our formal requirements which led to a tender being prepared.

"Four suppliers of ERP software programs were selected as initially appropriate to our needs and their detailed responses were sought.

"From this process the Bowen & Groves M1 program was selected as the best fit for our particular requirements.

"Of paramount importance to us was to find one package which could handle our diversity.

"We are certainly what you would classify as a mixed mode manufacturer and M1 scored particularly well as a modern and up to date ERP platform, while we were also impressed by the flexibility it offered to customise the program to our own specific requirements.

“The team at Bowen and Groves are impressive and the feedback gained from their user group was very positive and certainly gave us a lot of confidence that we had made the right choice.

"We are currently preparing for the installation of M1 in our manufacturing and business management activities with an intensive commissioning phase commencing in January next year.

"Bowen & Groves has exhibited a willingness to work with us and have demonstrated their support and commitment to the success of this project" Tony Stoddart concluded.

M1 by Bowen & Groves is the Australian developed ERP software for the manufacturing sector which in recent years has gained a local and international user base of over 350 installed sites.

International users include manufacturing and metals industry businesses in the UK, the USA and Canada.

Aleta Kane, Chief Operating Officer of Bowen & Groves, said that the latest Version 3.5 of M1 developed for a Microsoft SQL server with a Microsoft Outlook look and feel runs on all Windows platforms and incorporates hundreds of additional enhancements to various modules.

"M1 now has new major enhancements in the areas of e-commerce and multi-site/multi-company management.

"Multi-company includes functionality such as inter-company purchasing and financial consolidation and the latest release of Webgear includes full shopping cart and payment processing functionality.

"M1 is a truly scalable software product that is suitable to meet the needs of small enterprises but offers medium to large complex businesses the key functionality needed at an affordable price." Aleta Kane added.

For more information on the M1 by B&G™ ERP software see www.bowen-groves.com

About Bowen & Groves

Bowen & Groves is setting the standard in Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP), for the small to medium manufacturer. Founded in 1992 Bowen & Groves is a privately owned software development company operating in the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. M1 by B&G™ sets the standard in affordability and ease of use. Bowen & Groves can be reached at sales@bowen-groves.com or via their website, www.bowen-groves.com