Customer Profile
Sales have nearly doubled over the past two years, and that would not have been possible in part without the benefit of the total solution eNSYNC has delivered.
InkCycle’s success has been well recognized, as The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce recently selected InkCycle as its Small Business of the Year. To compete for this award, InkCycle had to maintain or increase sales and number of employees, show a commitment to good business practices, have outstanding employee relations, and demonstrate a commitment to community service.
Business Problem
In 1992, as the Cold War was coming to an end and the defense industry in the United States was pulling back the reins, Rick Krska was looking to open a new chapter in his book of entrepreneurial endeavors. Rick had owned and operated numerous enterprises over the years, always giving way to bigger and better opportunities. After fourteen years of service in management with AlliedSignal Aerospace, Rick took his knowledge of technical production processes and put them to use in learning the remanufacturing industry. Thus, InkCycle, Inc. was born, offering a cost-effective and environmentally safe alternative to costly OEM (original equipment manufacturer) cartridges.
In the months that followed, Rick engaged the help and support of several of his colleagues who were also being relieved from their duties at AlliedSignal. Selling by day and building cartridges by night became the norm as the company was established, all running from a small workbench in the basement of Mr. Krska’s home. Today the company inhabits over 42,000 square feet of office and manufacturing space and employs more than 120 people.
As the business evolved, Mr. Krska realized that the emergence of the inkjet printers in the market, at significantly lower cost than laser printers, would provide yet further opportunity to expand their product line. By 1997, InkCycle, a division of LaserCycle, had emerged and today is the largest producer of re-manufactured inkjet cartridges in the world. This has required a total commitment to research and development and the ability to design and build state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to automate the production processes. LaserCycle and InkCycle have grown exponentially over the past several years due to a commitment to quality and customer service. Every cartridge is quality tested and carries the Certified Perfect Print® guarantee of 100% satisfaction.
Solution Delivered
“eNSYNC brought our new IFS business system ‘live’ in just nine months. This was an incredible accomplishment, given our limited resources and fast-paced growth. Without IFS Applications, it would have been very difficult to execute our good business practices which helped us win this distinguished award.” explained Rick Krska.
In addition to full implementation support for CRM, financial, manufacturing, distribution, and service management, several other key features were added to the system. InkCycle uses e-Store for retail sales, credit card processing on-line with Payfuse integration, and Vertex integration for retail transactions requiring complex retail sales taxes.
Also working for InkCycle within the IFS Suite are ScanWorks® for bar code data collection, eWorks for EDI communication with vendors and customers, FaxWorks for automated faxing of order confirmations and other documents. eNSYNC Solutions has also integrated the Federal Express and United Parcel Service web servers for retrieving real-time shipping rates. These rates are acquired at the time the customer order is generated, so the shipping costs that are charged to a customer are as accurate as possible. It also gives the customer service representative the ability present all the applicable shipping services to the customer, allowing the customer to chose the level of shipping service based on transit time and cost. eNSYNC’s development group supplied all integration services, taking full advantage of IFS’s component-based architecture.
“We are very proud of InkCycle’s accomplishment and proud to be a valued business partner with such a great company,” says eNSYNC president Roger Resley. “When I think back to that first sales call, I shudder to think what might not have been. It’s been so rewarding to represent a great product like IFS and to help a good company achieve great things.”
