Distribution, warehousing and 3PL provider automates production orders, sales processes, picklists, and tax management following SAP Business One integration
Compass Packaging International implemented SAP Business One and BPA Platform to replace legacy systems following the acquisition of a new business. The project enabled the organisation to integrate manufacturing, warehousing, finance, fulfilment, and logistics operations into a single platform while introducing extensive automation across production, inventory, finance, and shop floor processes.
The result was a fully integrated ERP environment capable of supporting continued growth without increasing headcount, while maintaining uninterrupted service during a business-critical migration.
Key Takeaways
- Replaced multiple legacy systems with SAP Business One
- Used BPA Platform to automate manufacturing, finance, inventory, and supply chain processes.
- Enabled the successful integration of an acquired business while maintaining uninterrupted customer service.
- Reduced reliance on manual spreadsheets and repetitive administrative tasks.
- Created a scalable automation framework capable of supporting continued business growth without increasing headcount.
- Continued refining and optimising automated workflows following go-live to improve operational efficiency further.
Company Overview
- Company
- Compass Packaging International
- Industry
- Manufacturing, Fulfilment & Third-Party Logistics (3PL)
- Headquarters
- Tewksbury, Massachusetts, USA
- Global Presence
- United States, Ireland, Singapore, with distribution centres worldwide
- Core Services
- Fulfilment, warehousing, distribution, manufacturing, and 3PL services
Case Study at a Glance
Project Type
ERP modernisation, business integration, and process automation
Core Technologies
SAP Business One , BPA Platform, Data Transfer Workbench (DTW), XML integrations
Business Challenge
Replace legacy systems following a business acquisition, integrate operations, and improve efficiency without increasing headcount.
Implementation Objectives
Consolidate business systems, automate high-volume processes, support business growth, maintain customer service during migration, and create a scalable operational platform.
Solution Architecture
Deployed SAP Business One and introduced Codeless Platforms’ BPA Platform as the core integration and business process automation solution to manage the entire supply chain.
Key Automations
Production order creation, product master creation, picklist generation, production document printing, accounts receivable invoicing, VAT determination, inventory replenishment, and shop floor synchronisation.
Business Results
Fully integrated ERP environment, reduced manual processing, improved operational efficiency, automated financial and manufacturing workflows, successful integration of the acquired business, and zero customer downtime during the migration.
Operational Scale
Automated creation of production orders for approximately 80+ orders per day in the US and 50+ orders per day in EMEA, alongside 20–50 automated AR invoices per day in each region.
Future Projects
Revisit and review numerous automated tasks to see if they can be improved.
Business Challenge
Supporting Business Growth
The primary driver behind this project was Compass Packaging International’s continued growth. As part of its expansion, the company acquired a business that brought with it a significant number of new customers. This acquired company was already operating on SAP R/3 Enterprise, which meant that to ensure a smooth transition and maintain operational continuity, Compass Packaging needed to replace its existing system with SAP Business One.
The previous technology landscape consisted of:
- QuickBooks
- Legacy Hewlett-Packard MRP system
- Multiple standalone operational applications
- Manual manufacturing workflows
- Numerous disconnected business processes
Project Objectives
The implementation focused on five measurable business goals:
- Replace multiple legacy systems with SAP Business One
- Integrate the acquired business without disrupting customers
- Automate high-volume operational processes
- Improve efficiency without increasing headcount
- Create a scalable platform capable of supporting future growth
“Prior to deploying SAP Business One, we were using QuickBooks and an old MRP system, which was an archaic Hewlett-Packard platform. It was a very intricate system built around the shop floor, with many different components, such as shipping applications, operational workflows, and numerous processes moving through it. Some of those processes were still necessary, while others were no longer relevant.”
Phil Copelas
President/Owner, Compass Packaging
“The first step was implementing SAP Business One within Compass Packaging, which is the parent company. From there, we deployed it within the Supply Chain Solutions division and needed to build all the automation tasks to support their operations. That was the main objective.”
Alongside this change, the company also set out to implement a wide range of automated tasks across multiple areas of the business, as Phil further elaborated.
“Another key goal was to avoid increasing headcount while improving efficiency. Many of the processes that the team were already running, or planned to run as part of the acquisition, needed to be replicated through automation, while also positioning the team to operate more efficiently going forward.”
Solution Architecture
After deploying SAP Business One and introducing BPA Platform as its core integration and business process automation solution, both systems now play a central role in managing Compass Packaging’s entire supply chain. They support not only the company’s manufacturing operations but also a range of critical back-office functions.
“SAP Business One gives us control over all the major parts of the supply chain, particularly the manufacturing and also the back office activity like product management, customer master data, accounts receivable, accounts payable and purchasing – everything really.”
Gabriel Mulligan
Financial/Business Analyst, Compass Packaging
“However, a key part of making the system efficient, is the number of automated tasks that we are running in the background via BPA Platform. We have numerous automated tasks that take away a lot of manual work, particularly for operational processes.”
Automated Business Processes
Production order automation
One of the most important automated processes for Compass Packaging is for its manufacturing department, where BPA Platform creates production orders based on sales order demand. This is extremely essential as manufacturing operations are spread across several production areas, including assembly, the media room for media replication, and demand print production.
Previously this required:
- Manual shortage calculations
- Excel spreadsheets
- Manual production order creation
“As sales orders are received, the production orders that are needed to build the product are automatically created. If that wasn’t there, shortages would have to be calculated manually in Excel and production orders loaded manually into SAP Business One. It just wouldn’t be tenable given the numbers, which is about 80+ per day in the U.S. and 50+ orders per day in EMEA,” explained Gabriel Mulligan.
Product master creation
Another important process is new product introduction. Adding new parts to the system requires a large amount of information because of the number of user-defined fields needed to support shop floor processes and client requirements.
“There are about 80 different fields required to add a part onto the system. Again, entering that information manually just wouldn’t be tenable to do manually and would also be too error-prone.”
Gabriel Mulligan
Financial/Business Analyst, Compass Packaging
Instead, new product information can be automatically uploaded using a structured Excel template, which is imported into the system either through SAP Business One itself or through the Data Transfer Workbench (DTW).
“There’s an Excel upload file that can be loaded through an SAP Business One activity or through DTW, which is a tool that works alongside SAP Business One to upload structured data into the system,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
Production document automation
Once production orders move from Planned to Released status, BPA Platform automatically routes and prints documentation in the correct manufacturing area.
“Once a production order moves from planned to released status, it is automatically printed in the correct manufacturing area. Without this functionality, we would need to manually check which production orders had moved from planned to released, retrieve them, and then print them in the appropriate locations.”
Picklist automation
Picklist generation is handled in a similar way. When all components for an order become available, the system automatically creates the picklist, as Gabriel explained:
“Previously, operators would have had to repeatedly check whether shortages had cleared before creating picklists themselves.”
Finance automation
On the finance side, BPA Platform also creates AR invoices automatically for anything that has shipped that day.
Typical volume:
- 20–50 invoices per day
- US and EMEA regions
“An AR administrator therefore doesn’t have to run a report of what sales orders have shipped today and then go into each sales order and create the AR invoice. That’s up to 20 to 50 invoices a day in both regions, which makes this particularly valuable,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
Tax automation
Tax handling is another area where automation plays an important role, especially within the EMEA region. Depending on the billing and shipping locations, different tax treatments may apply.
“In some cases Irish VAT needs to go on invoices. Therefore, we created an automated process to automatically work that out to ensure the right tax code is applied to the invoice, as all of the logic is built into a specific table in SAP Business One. This stops any possibility of applying tax when it shouldn’t be. Without this automated process, someone would have to manually determine the appropriate tax code for each invoice line,” said Gabriel Mulligan.
Inventory automation
Minimum stock levels are continuously monitored.
“BPA Platform also monitors minimum stock levels for certain assembled parts. If stock falls below the defined minimum, a production order is automatically created to replenish it.”
Shop floor integration
In addition to these automations, there are several BPA tasks that integrate SAP Business One with the shop floor database system.
- Production orders
- Bills of materials
- Product records
- Sales orders
- Delivery information
“These tasks send information such as production orders, bills of materials, product data, sales orders and delivery information. XML files are generated whenever transactions are created or updated, ensuring the shop floor system stays synchronised with SAP Business One,” explained Gabriel Mulligan.
“These were the main BPA Platform tasks that were needed to make the whole process efficient and to cut down on the cost drivers of having to manually create transactions or work things out in Excel.”
Business Acquisition
Seamlessly incorporated an acquired company into existing business operations and the wider technology ecosystem.
Value-Added Efficiency
Significantly improved operational efficiency by automating business processes and reducing manual effort.
Superior Customer Service
Removed outdated processes and introduced automation to deliver faster, more reliable customer service.
Business Results
Operational Improvements
Following the implementation of the new system and automation framework, Compass Packaging quickly began to see measurable benefits across the organisation.
Connecting key business processes and reducing reliance on manual tasks has enabled the company to improve efficiency, accuracy, and visibility across both operational and financial functions. Team members can now access the information they need more easily, while automated workflows ensure critical processes continue to run smoothly in the background.
- Fully integrated ERP platform
- Automated manufacturing workflows
- Integrated financial operations
- Reduced manual administration
- Improved visibility across departments
- Automated downstream processes
- Simplified access to operational information
“What we’ve ended up with is a fully integrated system. It’s not just the manufacturing side, we also have all of the financials connected to it. Accounts receivable, accounts payable, and everything else are integrated into the same platform. BPA Platform has played a big role in making that work.”
Siobhan Callan
Director of Business Development, Compass Packaging
“We’re no longer jumping between different systems to find information. Everything is live and available to us. Once orders are closed, BPA Platform automatically handles the next steps, such as closing purchase orders, generating invoices when needed, and so on. That’s been a huge benefit for the business.”
“BPA Platform has significantly improved efficiency and reduced manual effort. It’s a very good product and very well laid out. One thing that stands out is how it handles errors,” enthused Gabriel Mulligan. “If something fails to process, maybe because a field is missing or there’s an invalid value, the system is very intuitive. It provides clear warning messages and alerts so you can immediately see what went wrong. Once the issue is corrected, it’s also very easy to resubmit the task. Overall, I’ve found it works really well.”
Acquisition integration
One of the main challenges for Compass Packaging was incorporating the new business into its ecosystem, especially with the existing systems it had in place. However, deploying SAP Business One with BPA Platform provided the perfect solution.
“From an efficiency standpoint, there’s no way we could have absorbed that business into our previous system. Even though we do the same type of work, serving the same customers, handling just-in-time operations, fulfilment, distribution, and logistics, the complexity here is different.”
Phil Copelas
President/Owner, Compass Packaging
“The real difference is in how customers interact with the business online and how automated the order flow needs to be. Some customers send hundreds or even thousands of orders, many of them very small. The system automatically consolidates and batches those orders so they can be processed efficiently. Without adopting what was already working, we simply couldn’t have taken on the business in its current form.”
“Before making any changes, our priority was to replicate the services our customers were already receiving. We couldn’t disrupt anything they depended on. We weren’t really fixing anything fundamental. Our main focus was removing some outdated processes. Things that might have made sense twenty years ago but weren’t necessary anymore. Even then, we were careful not to remove too much, since the system originally had around 100 BPA tasks built into it.”
“Timing was also critical because the acquisition had a hard deadline. We had a specific date when the old system had to be turned off and the new one turned on. However, we made the switch over a weekend, tested everything, and by Monday morning the business opened as usual and the orders started flowing through immediately. It worked exactly as planned, and credit goes to everyone involved in making that happen.”
Continuous improvement
Once Compass Packaging’s systems had been up and running smoothly for a few months, the team decided to revisit and review numerous automated tasks to see if they could be improved.
“In some cases we reduced them, and in others we improved them so they better matched the services we actually provide. That helped eliminate a lot of manual effort and repetitive tasks, which has made the operation more efficient overall. We’re very happy with where it is now,” said Phil Copelas.
“Over the past two years, we’ve continued improving it. Looking back, if we were implementing it today with the knowledge we now have about the business, we could probably be more than 50% more efficient. When you’re setting up automation for a business you don’t yet fully understand what you need, but you don’t necessarily know what you don’t need.”
Phil Copelas
President/Owner, Compass Packaging
“At the time, the system we inherited had been built for a $120 million company, which was much larger than the business unit we were integrating. Even so, it allowed us to make the lateral transition we needed while maintaining service for our customers. Most importantly, those customers experienced no downtime at all. We didn’t miss orders, nothing was interrupted, and the operation just kept moving. It worked perfectly.”
