Improved Sales Order Capture allows for big growth at Big Save Furniture
Big Save Furniture, one of New Zealand's largest furniture
retailers has developed a reputation for providing modern,
contemporary furniture with great customer service at good value
prices to become one of the best known brands in Kiwi homes
today.
Since its establishment in 1973, Big Save has grown to 20 stores
countrywide and now employs more than 350 staff. With this
growth came the necessity to put into place robust systems that
would allow for added future growth as well as increased
efficiency.
Growing Pains:
When Ray and Tom McKimm, owners of Big Save, approached Olympic
Software in 2005, his company faced a heavy reliance on manual
processes. Particularly, the methods used to record and capture
sales orders. Templates had been created in-house to provide
quotes, process sales orders and record customer payments.
This manual system did not allow much room to accommodate ad-hoc
changes to an order and Ray and Tom knew that with continued
growth, this system would not provide the detail, visibility on
supplies or accuracy they needed. The manual interaction between
branches was also becoming ineffective and time consuming.
The Solution:
In order to provide sales staff with an easy to use system that
allowed them to accurately provide quotes, link quotes to orders,
record sales and view stock on hand and movements, Olympic Software
designed the SOC System (Sale Order Capture) system. The idea was
to provide Big Save with an automated data capture system
integrated with their backend ERP application (Dynamics GP).
Combined with this is a workflow solution to manage stock requests
and transfers between branches and distribution warehouses, reserve
stock and non-inventory item creation.
Over time SOC has provided a framework to drive standard
procedures while evolving to encompass more business processes and
provide more efficiencies for Big Save.
At inception, the system involved linking quotes, sales dockets,
and inter-branch stock transfer requests. In time, SOC provided a
framework to drive standard procedures with the handling of loans
and product returns.
The Ordering Process Today:
Today, when a salesperson deals with a customer, he has the
ability to record all aspects of that engagement on his PDA and see
the whole process from initial enquiry through to delivery without
needing to rely on multiple systems for information that would
typically involve people and paper-interruptions.
