This family-owned-and-operated bakery, located just 50 miles south of Dallas, Texas, has been baking the world-famous DeLuxe Fruitcake for over 100 years. And while this may sound like a quaint little company, Collin Street Bakery is today the world's largest manufacturer of Fruitcake, and this year alone the company will ship to 196 foreign lands.

Project Goals

Collin Street's goals were to modernize its accounting system, to have more timely and accurate financial data, and to develop an integrated, automated customer service application to support the hundreds of thousands of incoming inquiries that the company fields in its Corsicana, Texas, call center. The task of tracking all invoices and cash receipts for over 1,000,000 customer orders per year and providing accurate financial statements is the challenge that was presented to Tamlin Software.

Tools, Technologies, and Implementation

To meet an aggressive schedule and to deliver a solution that would satisfy the project goals, Tamlin applied the JAD process to define the requirement details. Before completing the development of the customer service system, a prototype system was developed to simulate the peak-season load of database inquiries. The prototype was deployed throughout the call center to test response times and guarantee fast access to information for call center operators.

Visual AccountMate® served as the backbone and basis for the new accounting system. Tamlin modified VAM to create an interface with the customer service front-end and also to accept order and invoice data from the company's mainframe-based order entry system.

Project Results

Since converting to the new system, Collin Street has a better means to address the vast amount of incoming information and has enjoyed more timely and accurate financial data. And now, the company responds to all customer service inquires from its huge customer base through the new system developed by Tamlin.

Client Contact
Scott Holloman, CFO
Scott@collinstreetbakery.com