Junction Solutions Offers Innovative ERP Solutions for Retail, Food/Beverage Industry

By Nicole Zaro Stahl, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Benefits Include Better Operational Performance, Lower Cost, Expanded Delivery Channels, and More

Retailers today realize how important it is to accommodate customers who want to make transactions across multiple channels, such as buying an item online and exchanging or returning it in a physical store. For safety reasons, food producers are increasingly facing the need to track their products from "field to fork," so, for example, they can identify the source of the lettuce in a packaged salad, right down to the parcel of land where it was harvested.

These two seemingly disparate scenarios have a common thread: both can be enabled by the vertical-specific software applications from new Hacienda tenant Junction Solutions.

Focusing specifically on the manufacturing and retail environments, Junction Solutions' innovative offerings target the critical functions that make businesses run better: enterprise resource planning, (ERP), supply chain management (SCM-demand, order, warehouse, yard and distribution management), human capital management, merchandising, order entry management, call-center management, and eCommerce engagement and fulfillment.

The benefits translate into concrete results: better operational performance, lower costs, expanded delivery channels, and stronger relationships with both suppliers and customers, explains Jeff Grell, President and one of the company's three founders.

Grell and his partners, who together started and sold a previous software venture during the dot-com boom, established Junction Solutions in 2002 to build on Microsoft's offering in the ERP arena, now known as Microsoft Dynamics AX. "We were amazed by the technology," he remarks. "It was the most advanced ERP platform we had ever seen, and we liked it so much we took our deep domain expertise and built a thriving business around it."

The platform's depth and flexibility, along with Junction Solutions' IT prowess and industry-specific expertise, combine to create a uniquely comprehensive end-to-end solution for both the retail and food businesses. "We compete with other tier 1 ERP vendors. The smaller and mid-size players simply don't have complete solutions that take a business through the entire value chain the way we do," says Grell.

This past June, Junction Solutions was honored as 2010 Microsoft Dynamics Retail Partner of the Year, an award reserved for just a handful of companies singled out from the substantial worldwide population of Microsoft partners. The Pleasanton company was recognized for its industry knowledge and expertise, as well as "consistent, high-quality, predictable" customer service. The award announcement also noted that Junction Solutions "has demonstrated business leadership and success through strong growth in new customer additions and revenue."

With multiple locations in the U.S. and in Europe, Junction Solutions is a truly distributed organization. The corporate headquarters is located outside of Chicago, and other large offices are in Denver and Atlanta. The Hacienda site, at 4695 Chabot Drive, is the West Coast regional headquarters, housing senior executive management, eCommerce business development, and consulting services management. "This office serves as a base for several large account management and implementation/integration teams and fluctuates in size depending on the number and scope of client projects under contract," Grell relates. "We also have an office in the U.K. that serves the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) marketplace."

For more information, visit www.junctionsolutions.com.

Photo: Jeff Grell is president of Junction Solutions and one of the company's three founders.

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