Type ESOP Key people Dan Byrnes
Ray Rouleau Founded 1973 | Area served United States Founder Howard H. Aiken | |
 | ||
Industry Route Accounting Software Headquarters Colchester, Vermont, United States Products >25 Distributor Solutions
>15 Supplier Solutions | ||
Vermont Information Processing, Inc. (VIP) is a small business in the Route Accounting software industry with a large software suite for soft drink bottlers, wine and beer distributors, and brewers. VIP's Route Accounting Software runs on an IBM iSeries in the Cloud and is accessed through Microsoft Windows; Mobile Solutions run on Windows Mobile, iOS, and Android.
Contents
History
Vermont Information Processing was founded in 1973 by Howard Aiken. The company purchased third shift computer time from a local bus company and focused on providing sales analysis services to distributors of soft drinks, wine, and beer. Distributors mailed retailer invoices to VIP where they were keyed into a mainframe computer for processing, the sales analysis reports were returned to the distributors via United States Postal Service mail.
The transition from a service provider to a software development firm started in 1975 with the advent of affordable IBM mini computers for distributors. The original VIP software applications had an emphasis on route accounting functions as well as the backbone sales analysis suite.
The mainstream use of handheld computers started in 1978 with beverage salesmen using the devices to enter retail orders in the field and transmit them to the minicomputers. In subsequent years, handheld computers were heavily used by warehouse and delivery personnel.
In 1979, VIP grew to 15 employees, and moved to new headquarters in Colchester, Vermont. The business expanded to over 30 people by 1991 and the company built and occupied a 32,000 square foot office building.
2001 was a pivotal year for VIP. The company branched from its solid base in distributor software and started offering services for beverage suppliers. The VIP employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) also started in 2001 with 30% of the company being owned by the employees. VIP welcomed the change back to its roots of providing services to both distributors and suppliers, this time via a Cloud computing solution named ASP rather than the 1970s method of using the US Postal Service.
VIP is a Solutions Provider for IBM
Axces Systems, a supplier services firm from New York, was acquired in 2002. In 2003 and 2005, VIP acquired beverage software competitors MicroVane of Kalamazoo, MI and Wholesaler Computer Systems (WCS) of St. Louis, MO. In 2015, VIP acquired BDN Systems from Neilsen to compliment the growth of the Supplier Services.
In 2007, VIP implemented regression testing to expedite the testing of new features and versions.
VIP, now 100% employee owned, counts over 1,000 distributors and 100 suppliers as customers who use its software suite. The company has offices in Charlotte, San Diego, St. Louis, and Kalamazoo in addition to the headquarters in Colchester.
Route Accounting Software
The core of VIP's software solution is the Route Accounting Software. Route accounting software is used by companies to keep track of product as it moves through the distribution process from the time it is received from the supplier to the time it is delivered to the retailer.
Warehouse Management System
VIP has a Warehouse Management System, WMS, that incorporates handheld technology that can transmit information about inventory movements and transactions in real-time to the Route Accounting Software.
Day care
VIP has had an on-site daycare facility providing education services to children of employees of the Colchester office since 1991.
User's Conference
VIP holds a User's Conference annually in the fall and it is attended by VIP Route Accounting System customers, business partners, hardware vendors, and other interested parties.