288 Group – Improving Stock and Inventory Management Through Legacy System Integration.

Logo of 288 Group in navy blue on a white background.

288 Group Ltd is a long-established, privately held UK retail and direct marketing group that operates as the parent company of several consumer-facing brands, most notably The Westminster Collection. Founded in 1986 and originally known through its predecessor The Westminster Collection Limited, the group has evolved from a traditional stamp wholesaler into a multi-brand e-commerce and direct marketing business focused primarily on collectables such as commemorative coins and stamps. Today, its collectables division works in partnership with postal administrations, mints and official bodies to design, market and distribute themed and limited-edition coin and stamp products to a large consumer base 

288 Group manages complex stock and inventory processes across multiple internal systems, including MyMenu and PRISM. The organisation relies on accurate product and inventory data to support purchasing, sales, and customer fulfilment.  

Efficient manufacturing and stock management processes are critical in the business to make sure timely availability of stock with operational efficiency. Reliable system integration between the legacy systems and the ERP system plays a key role in supporting scalable and controlled business growthand customer satisfaction.  

Business Challenges.

As operations scaled, 288 Group faced increasing complexity in managing the discrete manufacturing process using BOMs (Bills of Materials) to produce final products. In addition, managing stock levels in the frontend legacy systems while ensuring the ERP system was up to date for accounting and financial reporting was challenging. The existing systems landscape lacked integration and standardisation, creating operational friction and limiting the organisation’s ability to maintain accurate, reliable inventory data. Without integrating the legacy systems MyMenu and PRISM with the ERP system, managing the operations manually was challenging and an obstacle to business growth.  

Key challenges included: 

  • Fragmented Systems Architecture – The Sage-200 ERP System operated independently from the bespoke legacy systems MyMenu and PRISM, requiring stock and inventory data to be maintained separately across platforms. The absence of system integration resulted in duplicated effort and inconsistent records. 

  • Manual Stock Data Entry and Inconsistent Inventory Data – Creating and maintaining new stock item master records across the Sage200 ERP System, PRISM, and MyMenu systems was a time-consuming process. Additionally, entering inventory stock data manually across multiple systems significantly increased the risk of data entry errors and discrepancies, resulting in inconsistent inventory levels and undermining confidence in stock accuracy that required frequent corrective intervention. 

Collectively, these challenges made existing inventory management processes inefficient, error-prone, and increasingly difficult to scale in line with business growth. 

ACS-APT Solutions:

ACS-APT studied and understood the client's current process and the challenges it faces. A detailed, tailored solution design plan was prepared to integrate the ERP System and legacy systems’ stock and inventory framework, eliminating manual processes, improving data consistency, and creating a scalable foundation for inventory management across the systems. The solution focused on end-to-end integration automation and controlled data flows between Sage 200 and the legacy systems. 

The end-to-end integrated solution delivered – 

  • Automatic stock item and BOM record creation from one system to the other, keeping product codes unique across systems. 

  • Automated Stock and Inventory movement from legacy systems to the ERP system and vice-versa. The automated process records and transfers stock and inventory data accurately and consistently between systems. This removed reliance on manual data import/export and reporting and ensured timely, reliable visibility of inventory levels across the systems: Mymenu, PRISM, and the Sage200 ERP System. 

Key benefits - 

The solution's success was driven by a clear focus on automated end-to-end system integrations, data integrity, and alignment with existing operational systems, delivering measurable improvements without adding unnecessary complexity. 

  • Automation at the source  

  • Single, consistent view of inventory  

  • Standardised and controlled processes 

  • Operational efficiency and time savings 

  • Minimal or no disruption to existing operations during the project implementation 

Conclusion.

Together, these integrations replaced fragmented, manual workflows with structured automation, significantly improving accuracy, reducing administrative effort, and enabling inventory processes to scale in line with transaction growth. The result is a more efficient and scalable inventory management framework that allows teams to spend less time on administration and more time on operational execution. Thus, achieving efficiencies and cost savings, as well as timely reporting and high customer satisfaction. Ultimately resulting in expanding the new product lines and bringing in more business opportunities to grow the business.