Published on the 18/03/2019 | Written by Velocity Global Ltd

AT A GLANCE

• Commercial Transport Spares

INDUSTRY

• Wholesale & Distribution

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Speed up and automate product listing.
• Improve POS efficiency and customer service.
• Enhance business reporting and analytics.
• Improve cash flow and forex management.

SOLUTION

• Pronto Enterprise Management (including financial, asset, inventory, POS and CRM modules).
• Yellowfin Business Intelligence.

THE BENEFITS

• Fast order processing and product search.
• Enhanced business-wide reporting and forecasting.
• Growth enabled with no increase in staff.
• Improved purchasing decision making.
• Lower inventory costs.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Velocity Global Ltd
W: www.velocityglobal.co.nz

New Zealand
E: chris.morris@velocityglobal.co.nz
T: +64 9 358 4445

Established in 1983 and based in the Christchurch suburb of Hornby, Canterbury Transport Spares (CTS) is a leading supplier of heavy truck, bus and trailer parts. For nearly 30 years the company has sourced parts from around the world for customers across New Zealand and the Pacific Islands – and managed the business using a local developer’s DOS-based financial system.

However, in early 2011 CTS general manager Michael Swinburn says a range of performance issues forced a system change. “The major issue was the inability to enter data quickly,” he says. The system was also particularly poor at foreign exchange and managing overseas creditors and shipments. The result was a lot of manual data entry and no central repository of information.

Swinburn says CTS considered both off-theshelf and bespoke software but a recommendation from an Australian business contact put Pronto ERP and Velocity Global at the top of their shortlist.

“Pronto off-the-rack had most of the capabilities we were after. This meant we could move to it quite quickly, and as a result the project could be deployed fast.” Initial requirement briefings with CTS enabled Velocity Global to demonstrate how the Pronto ERP suite would be a close fit with the parts supplier’s needs says Swinburn. “I detailed all the areas where I wanted to improve the business and make it more administratively efficient,” he says, “and I was impressed with the demos. It quickly became apparent that out of the competing software applications, Pronto would deliver the most benefit for us.”

Implementation was quick – from initial consultation to completed deployment in under six months. Previously an audit accountant, Swinburn says he had seen plenty of ERP transitions “go pear shaped” at client companies, but the installation at CTS was relatively trouble free.

“Implementations are always stressful,” he says, “but I’m very happy with how ours went – all the key things that needed to work, worked immediately.” Once in place, Pronto quickly proved its worth in enabling CTS to better deliver on its company credo of being ‘able to identify and deliver the right part, first time’. With around 90,000 line items in its range, cross referencing parts had been difficult – but was available out-of-the- box with Pronto. “We’ll hold a part under our own number,” says Swinburn, “but it will have an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) number as well.

Often a customer will quote an OEM number or product dimensions, meaning counter staff had to use CDs and parts manuals to serve them.” Pronto has automated the importing of product data so CTS can load multiple cross-references against one product number meaning point-of-sale staff can find an item very quickly.

Although CTS has been in his family since its foundation, Swinburn says Pronto has been able to provide him with insights into the business that were never before possible.

“Using Pronto and Yellowfin [Business Intelligence – also supplied and implemented by Velocity Global] we’ve developed dashboards so that when I’m away from work I can quickly look on my iPad and see what’s happening in sales – which areas are performing well and what product range needs attention. I can drill down and find out exactly what’s going on.” One interesting insight has been an accurate analysis of any product’s contribution to profitability. “When you think about some of the low-margin items that we compete a lot on price with, you tend to think they’re not big contributors,” says Swinburn. “But now we can see more clearly how quickly they’re turning over and you realise they’re actually making a good contribution to our overall bottom line. And of course it’s highlighted areas where we’ve got a significant stock holding and got us thinking about how we can get that turning over more or perhaps just trim back our stock levels.”

Pronto’s capacity for foreign exchange calculation on parts imports has also proved invaluable says Swinburn. “Our old system couldn’t handle foreign currency translation,” he says, “so the inventory and purchasing just showed the NZD amount. But over the last couple of years the exchange rates between NZ, the UK and Europe have changed dramatically.

So now to be able to compare suppliers based on up-to-date exchange rates is really helpful. For example, with the pound being so weak these days a lot of British suppliers are now looking more competitive – compared to, say, product sourced out of Australia.”

Cash flow management is also greatly enhanced Swinburn observes. “If you’ve got a couple of containers coming in at once, you can be up for a large amount of cash,” he says.

“Previously we just used to total them up roughly based on what was on the purchase orders but now we’ve got far greater clarity. I have a much better idea of when peaks and troughs are going to occur in our cash flow and being able to automate our cash flow projections has been a real godsend.”

Swinburn says he next plans to apply the system to the customer side of the equation. “Ultimately we want to have a portal on our website using Pronto where customers can log in and get invoices and statements and so on. We’ve got Pronto CRM in place and we’re adding a lot of contact information and getting to know our customers – so as time allows I’d really like to apply that CRM functionality to its fullest extent. With Pronto and Yellowfin the amount of information we have and the tools we have to pull data out of the system is head and shoulders above where we once were. It’s saved us a lot of man-hours – our business has picked up but we haven’t had to increase staff levels. I think we’re only beginning to scratch the surface and I’m dreaming up reports all the time that I want to see in Yellowfin to better understand what’s actually driving our business forward.”

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AT A GLANCE

• Digital Mobile

INDUSTRY

• Retail

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Replace Digital Mobile’s disconnected legacy business management systems with an integrated solution

SOLUTION

• Pronto Xi Enterprise Management System (EMS)
• Yellowfin Business Intelligence

THE BENEFITS

• Integrated company-wide reporting
• Increased productivity and accuracy
• Improved inventory management and debtor control
• Enhanced pricing compliance
• Visibility company-wide via reporting dashboards

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Velocity Global Ltd
W: www.velocityglobal.co.nz

New Zealand
E: chris.morris@velocityglobal.co.nz
T: +64 9 358 4445

Digital Mobile is Vodafone NZ’s largest premium dealer, operating over 75 locations nationally.

Founded in 1993 the company has a reputation for excellent customer service, but by 2009, its disconnected business management systems were struggling. “We had five independent systems for managing the business,” says CEO Justin Lobb. “The financial management system wasn’t integrated with our point-of-sale system, which wasn’t integrated to our Vodafone provisioning tools which weren’t integrated to our CRM platform and so on.”

Coordinating the systems often meant manually re-entering data from one to another. “It was time consuming and subject to errors.” Evaluating their options, Lobb’s team went looking for a solution that could consolidate the company’s business management processes. “We set about finding a system that would allow us to operate wherever possible under one platform.” The ‘must have’ list was extensive. “It had to have all our financials in one location.

It had to deliver CRM and point-of-sale, it had to have inventory management and it needed to integrate with our website.”

Three platforms made the shortlist, but Pronto (supplied by Velocity Global) was a step ahead due to existing deploy-ments in Australia. “Most mobile phone retailers there are operating on Pronto,” says Lobb, “so it already had some of the unique capabilities we wanted and we could see it working at a couple of sites.” Also critical to Digital Mobile’s selection process was the choice of implementation partner.

With Velocity Global being part of the Velocity Group internationally, Lobb says he had confidence in the company’s expertise, but was also looking for a true partnership throughout the process. “What appealed about Velocity,” he says, “was that they weren’t so big that we’d wind up being a small customer and not get the right attention. They were large enough and experienced in the platform but also small enough to allow us to make our mistakes as we both went through the process.”

“It had to have all our financials in one location. It had to deliver CRM and point-of-sale, it had to have inventory management and it needed to integrate with our website.”

Justin Lobb, managing director, CEO, Digital Mobile

And, as Lobb explains, part of the process is about making choices – and realising that although anything is possible in IT – a good implementation partner will tell you straight what the consequences might be.

“Chris (Velocity Global CEO Chris Morris) was very good at saying ‘sure that can be done, but it’s going to be expensive’ or ‘here’s what a workaround might be’.” In the case of Digital Mobile’s CRM solution, it was clear that concessions would have to be made.

“We’d been using Salesforce,” says Lobb, “which is a fantastic CRM product but it didn’t integrate with anything – it didn’t keep track of our inventory and it didn’t manage our debtors. Conversely, the Pronto CRM platform is good but not industry-leading so we analysed the pros and cons and said ‘can we implement Pronto as a fully integrated system’ and we absolutely could, but with the understanding that there would be some compromises. CRM is a compromise but overall our productivity went up – because we didn’t have to do re-keying and flat file transfers anymore.”

Team building made easy
Interestingly, the Pronto implementation allowed Digital Mobile to develop its own internal staff resource. “We took employees out of various parts of the business and turned them into the Pronto team,” says Lobb, “and they went through documenting existing processes and writing up a new process with Velocity – making sure any customisations were implemented to match. We ended up with a broadly skilled core team – not just a few people who know the system end to end.” Velocity were very active in engaging with Digital Mobile’s Pronto team, Lobb says, following up on issues promptly and attending every management meeting.

“They were committed to making sure their team and ours were talking regularly and were never at cross purposes.”

Velocity also committed to an important technical ‘must have’ that Lobb identified as a potential hurdle for future deployments. “One of golden rules we had,” he says, “was that the system we implemented would not have a single source code change. Part of our agreement was that any work done didn’t compromise our ability to go from one version to another.” At Velocity, Chris Morris says this was easily achievable as Pronto comes with a tool set that avoids changing any core code. “Every business is somewhat unique, but Pronto allows us to craft a solution for a customer that fits their business as closely as possible – without modifying the core of the product.”

More in store
With Pronto POS, CRM, inventory management, ERP & financial reporting installed and integrated, Lobb says Digital Mobile now has one platform for its entire business.

“We have a complete view of every transaction,’ he says, “and there’s so many upsides. We’ve been able to reduce our overall headcount. Our inventory management costs have fallen dramatically. We’ve increased the productivity of our retail teams and we’ve reduced discounting with stricter control & compliance.”

For management reporting, Digital Mobile uses dashboards developed by Velocity using Yellowfin Business Intelligence – giving Lobb and his team ‘at-a-glance’ company-wide reporting. “Using the new operations dashboard we can immediately see if a store didn’t complete its daily banking or didn’t get a stock take done, and because the CRM is integrated with our debtors ledger, customers who haven’t paid previous bills can’t get stock from us because it pops up with a credit hold, so our debtor control is much improved.”

Looking ahead, Lobb says he’s just commissioned Velocity Global to manage an implementation of Pronto at an unrelated business.

“It’s more than we need for this other business,” he says, “but we’ve gone with them because it allows us to get very consistent in our approach and we now understand where the opportunities are to leverage Pronto. We’re really pleased with it and this decision is a testament to both Velocity Global – and the Pronto system itself.”

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AT A GLANCE

• JJ Ltd, farm machinery specialists

INDUSTRY

• Agriculture

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Company wanted an easy-touse ‘set and forget’ ERP system that provided a clear, accurate view of the business

SOLUTION

• PRONTO Xi ERP, implemented by Velocity Global

THE BENEFITS

• System provides a clear, accurate view of what’s happening on a daily basis, and is extremely reliable.
• Input is easy, and reporting is accurate and complete.
• Simple for staff to use, it also features a drill-down function allowing users to access information using a different range of fields.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Velocity Global Ltd
W: www.velocityglobal.co.nz

New Zealand
E: chris.morris@velocityglobal.co.nz
T: +64 9 358 4445

If you’re always on the phone to your business system provider and forking out for ongoing changes, it’s a sign the relationship is simply not working.

Efficient business systems should be silent partners, working quietly in the background without complaint.

Since installing the PRONTO Xi ERP system, in 1996, farm equipment supplier JJ Ltd has required minimal support from its business system software provider, Velocity Global, says general manager Paul Jones.

In fact, there have been a number of years in which JJ Ltd has not needed to call on Velocity for support at all. The savings on a system that you can set and forget are significant. Excluding a recent upgrade and some minor customisation, JJ Ltd has kept investment in its ERP system to the low monthly service fee.

“We chose to install PRONTO Xi for greater efficiencies, and a clear and accurate view of the business on a daily basis,” says Jones.

“We haven’t looked back. The system is extremely reliable and I wouldn’t like to think what our business would be like if we didn’t have it.”

Complex business
What makes JJ Ltd’s experience even more remarkable is the complexity of the company’s business needs.

One of New Zealand’s leading farming equipment retailers and servicing operations, JJ Ltd is a complex business. It has an extensive parts division, high-value product sales, service workshops and used-product sales.

“We have 13,600 customers, 56 staff located in five different locations, a stock inventory of 61,000 farming machinery, equipment and parts, and a repair and maintenance division, to service machinery and prepare used machinery for resale,” says Jones.

“The nature our business demands that we have an accurate picture of the business at all times, seamless communication between divisions and total flexibility to change stock levels and ordering.”

“If our system was unreliable the business would suffer. In our experience, PRONTO Xi is very reliable, and, on the whole, we really haven’t had reason to need a lot of support from Velocity,” he adds.

Over 13 years, PRONTO’s ERP system has built up a comprehensive history of the company’s business, products, services and customers, ensuring transparency and efficient sharing of information between sales, workshops, parts and accounts.

A key area where the ERP system has delivered significant benefit to the business is in managing the company’s extensive stock inventory. With 61,000 line items housed at various locations, stock management and visibility is fundamental to running JJ Ltd efficiently.

“We need to keep tight controls on minimum and maximum stock levels, and the length of time we carry parts. We need to know where all parts are, and we also need system flexibility when external influences impact on the types of parts in demand,” says Jones.

“With our PRONTO Xi system we have multiple re-order policies for line items and the flexibility to change them to support business requirements. For example, when we hit winter and anticipate that certain parts will break more often, the stock system changes minimum and maximum levels and other factors to reflect this. It means we can tightly manage our stock levels and alter them to suit changing times of year and other factors.”

Easy to use
“It is essential for JJ Ltd that input is easy and reporting is accessible, accurate and complete. In these areas, PRONTO is excellent and it makes the business more efficient,” says Jones.

“It’s simple for our staff to use. It’s fast and more efficient, but still captures all the required information.

It has a great drill-down function, so you can easily access information using a range of different fields.”

“For example, we only have two administration staff, but the area is run very efficiently. Because PRONTO tracks hours against products, stock levels, parts used, the status of warranties etc, we have all the information we need to make pricing decisions, bill customers, manage debtors and creditors, and have a clear picture of the general ledger.”

Moving ahead
In 2000, Velocity implemented the specialist Workshop System for the company. This is a customised program in PRONTO Xi that captures time-sheet information for the service team, and correlates hours and internal costs to machines and service jobs.

“Workshop gives us complete visibility of workshop hours; hours spent on individual machines; the status of warranties and internal costs. It’s an integral part of our system,” says Jones.

Another cost saving for the company is that the latest release of PRONTO Xi, which Velocity has just finished implementing, has not needed any additional customisation to maintain functionality. The new version incorporates the customised functionality of the previous releases, through more sophisticated tools, and adds new features, but without requiring core modifications or a legion of programmers.

This meant
Velocity could upgrade JJ Ltd’s system in just two weeks.

“Rather than delaying upgrades we can now benefit from the enhanced features of new releases as they come out without the cost of customising each version to our needs,” says Jones.

“We’ve had PRONTO Xi for over 13 years now. It is fundamental to our running an efficient business and is a reliable system that we are very happy with. And the savings and efficiencies of a business system that you can rely on are considerable.”

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AT A GLANCE

• Clearlite Bathrooms

INDUSTRY

• Manufacturing
• Distribution

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

• Upgrade from 20-year-old legacy financial and stock control system to one that could support business’ past and future growth

SOLUTION

• PRONTO-Xi integrated business solution

THE BENEFITS

• Full visibility into the operation for senior management; manufacturing and customer service teams are no longer bogged down in repetitive paperwork, as they now have an IT-based system; finance department enjoys more accurate reports; and better stock control has resulted in a reduction in capital requirements for business.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Velocity Global Ltd
W: www.velocityglobal.co.nz

New Zealand
E: chris.morris@velocityglobal.co.nz
T: +64 9 358 4445

Clearlite Bathrooms is a one-stop centre for bathroom fixtures and fittings. Through acquisition and organic growth, the company has become the largest home-grown manufacturer and distributor of bathroomware in New Zealand. It offers a complete range of showers, vanities, baths, spas, vitreous china, mirrors and bathroom furniture.

Most of the company’s products are manufactured in-house at Avondale and on Auckland’s North Shore.

With its growth in scale and, staffing levels consequently increasing to over 120, the three decades-old company knew it had to ramp up its IT capabilities. For almost 20 years, Clearlite’s IT requirements, from financials to stock control, had been met by Nixdorf’s Comet software, running on an old proprietary operating system. While the text-based system had served the company well in the past, it couldn’t support future growth or indeed the company’s present needs.

“The information was not very visible. Enquiries on-screen were very limited, and getting information was cumbersome and quite laborious,” says Gene Sanford, Clearlite’s business processes and IT manager. “We needed something to speed up the process.”

Faced with the choice of either upgrading the existing software or going for an alternative, Clearlite opted for the latter.

Best fit
In June 2007, Clearlite started evaluating various integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. “A number of the systems I saw we had to dismiss very quickly,” says Sanford.

“I looked at three in-depth. PRONTO-Xi was the best fit for our business. It was adaptable and you could change it around without too many problems. Some of the other products were nice, with lots of bells and whistles, but you needed an IT department to run them, and we don’t employ a lot of IT people.”

Out of PRONTO-Xi’s suite of integrated business solutions, Clearlite selected nine modules, including Distribution, Financials and Manufacturing. The software was rolled out, with minimal customisation, across the 40-user site over a six-month period, beginning in early 2008.

Installation was completed on time and within budget. “It’s a testament to Velocity Global,” says Sanford of Pronto’s local partner, which did the implementation.

“The proposal Velocity presented to Clearlite was right on the mark. “They understood us and we understood them.”

As well as undertaking the installation, Velocity also did the data conversion, while Sanford himself wrote all the internal manuals and trained the staff.

“We gave ourselves three months to ready our people and prepare for the process, and then six months to go live.”

As scheduled, Clearlite went live on July 1, 2008. “Everyone was ready. We had put in significant effort to get things right in the early days of planning. Our target was to get 90% of our processes to go live on Day One and we achieved this. Everything went brilliantly.”

Catalyst for change
The new installation has resulted in benefits throughout the organisation, providing Clearlite with the kind of information visibility it didn’t have in the past.

“The implementation of PRONTO-Xi has been a major leap forward for the business. The integration offers full visibility of the operation and the traceability is great,” says Sanford.

For senior management, PRONTO-Xi offers information they didn’t have in the past. “Senior management had no access to the old system. They have access to this new one.”

And the executive information system is a definite plus, as it provides summary information and drills down to links suitable for senior management. “It gives so much information at the finger tips,” says Sanford.

For the manufacturing and customer service teams, the shift from manual spreadsheets and repetitive paperwork to an IT-based solution is a blessing. Pieces of paper flying back and forth are now a thing of the past. “It has improved the productivity of our teams,” says Sanford.

The financial module, which incorporates accounts payable and receivable, has provided the finance department with more accurate reports. With Financial Report Writer, the company now has quick access to comprehensive reports and is able to easily drill down to underlying transactional data, allowing staff to concentrate on interpretation rather than processing of figures.

And the tools in the distribution module have enabled Clearlite to manage and track its stock better. This has resulted in a reduction in the capital needed to run the business and also improved stock integrity. And it has helped improve customer service.

“The visibility of information makes us more responsive to customer demand,” says Sanford.

“PRONTO-Xi continues to serve as a catalyst for change. The transition has gone really well, and we’ll continue to build on top of what we’ve got, which will help us improve the business further,” Sanford concludes.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION

Velocity Global Ltd
W: www.velocityglobal.co.nz

New Zealand
E: chris.morris@velocityglobal.co.nz
T: +64 9 358 4445

When Greg Ford opened his first TradeTools store in 1987, the focus was squarely on delivering specialist tools at the best prices in Australia. Fifteen years and seven stores later, TradeTools Direct is a success story by anyone’s measure.

The challenge of growth
With growth came the challenge of business process automation. As Iain Woods, TradeTools Direct IT director, explains: “All invoices, credits, in fact all paper work was manually written by sales staff. It was a very time consuming process and took approximately two staff at least two days a week to perform.”

Understandably, given the paper-based system, the location of stock was not tracked. So when a customer asked for products not stocked in a particular store, the sales person would contact other stores until the items were located.

Indeed, the call was made so often that a dedicated two-way radio system was installed to speed up the process. Once the products were located, they would be couriered to the requesting store as quickly as possible.

As Woods notes: “Inventory in its own right was not viewed as an across store task as there was no tool available to view store stocks.”

The customer service vision
The decision to implement a computerised system was driven by a vision of complete customer service, and TradeTools Direct selected PRONTO Software because of its fully integrated point-of-sale system and comprehensive accounting functions.

Included in TradeTools Direct’s decision matrix was local support, which was seen as a key differentiator by Roger Brailey, PRONTO Software’s state manager, Queensland.

“PRONTO has a complete support structure in Brisbane and that includes application code programmers who can update the source code if required. We provide a level of responsiveness that is unmatched,” Brailey says.

Complete integration
PRONTO’S integrated inventory and accounting functions means TradeTools Direct’s POS terminals directly support features such as trade accounts and standard pricing policies.

“With the point of sale, TradeTools Direct achieved better front-end control. Lots of builders run accounts, which were easily linked to the accounting system for invoices and statements,” says Stefan Keller, senior Pronto consultant.

From Woods’ point of view, PRONTO takes management of TradeTools Direct to a higher level.

“Pricing is now managed across all stores centrally giving consistency. Reordering is automated and we actually know which items are selling and can weed out dead stock,” he says.

Importantly, stock is visible in real-time across all stores at the touch of a button. Additionally, PRONTO’s implementation methodology highlighted significant amounts of uncounted stock.

“During the implementation,” explained Brailey, “TradeTools Direct found stuff they had forgotten about, outback, all over the place.”

Woods agrees: “PRONTO has forced us to look at our stock. Whilst going through this process we have made some $500,000 in stock adjustments which has reflected positively to our financial position.”

High value proposition
At the end of the day, TradeTools Direct measures the success of its PRONTO system not only by financial terms. In keeping with Ford’s original vision, every TradeTools Direct customer receives exceptional service from any staff member. That is the real return on investment – ensuring that each customer keeps coming back.

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