Since 1986 Van Acht (www.vanacht.co.za) has been supplying South African home owners and builders with quality wooden, aluminium and uPVC doors, windows, garage doors, gates and awnings. They recently implemented Granite Warehouse Management Software (www.granitewms.com) from Cradle Technology Services (www.cradle.co.za) at its head office in Kya Sands, Randburg.
Priding itself on its service excellence, it needed a simpler, easier to use system that would allow it to gain greater stock accuracy and reduce transaction errors and the subsequent write-offs.
Not new to the world of Warehouse Management Systems, Van Acht was experiencing problems with their existing warehouse system including:
* High complexity which incited continual confusion.
* Most of the system's available functionality was not in use.
* Additional labour was required to operate the system.
* The system took more time to use.
* The promises that accompanied the system's implementation were not met.
* The system was not live.
* Inventory control was extremely difficult as there were continual variances between the accounting system (PASTEL) and the WMS.
As a result of the dis-satisfaction with their exsiting WMS, the business sponsors were uneasy about implementing Granite. An agreement was reached to run the two systems in parallel (over a period of four weeks) to decide whether Granite was a worthwhile investment. On the second day of the four-week trial, the sponsors were convinced that Granite was exactly the solution they had been in search of. The existing system was removed and Granite was immediately implemented.
Immediate benefits realised with GraniteWMS included:
* Less time to ensure accurate stock balances.
* Reports are retrieved with ease.
* Customers are finding it easier to purchase products from the company.
* Granite has served as a tool to 'tighten up on controls' within the business.
* A 50% reduction was obtained in stock write-offs.
* The system is operating in real-time enabling business managers to view all business transactions with ease.
* The system enables users to perform a variety of tasks at once.
* The system dramatically reduced the time required to complete tasks as it was 'fast' and 'efficient'.
"Within the first week of using Granite customers were thanking us for the improvement in our services" - Deon de la Harpe, Financial Director at Van Acht.
The concluding Granite review
"Granite is awesome, as a system it is brilliant. Since the first day that we were introduced to the system, from the presentation to the implementation, it has worked. Granite is not only an excellent product, it is accompanied by excellent customer service. It made my workload so much easier and although I always thought to have a 100% stock accuracy in warehousing is never possible, Granite and discipline from the staff proved me wrong." Stefan, Buyer/Stock Controller/ Manager at Van Acht.
Granite was developed from the need for an easy-to-use yet powerful and scalable system that can deliver measurable results in terms of traceability, accuracy and efficiency. With barcoding at its core, it is simple to use and embraces scanning versus typing, which achieves greater user acceptance and satisfaction.
"At Cradle we believe in the elegance of simplicity. Keep the software simple, implement between 80% and 95% of the available functionality, and ensure that everyone understands that the system is nothing without the operators and you may just end up with an efficient, well-run, accurate warehouse." - Craig Collins, CEO and Project Director at Cradle Technology Services.
Now with more than 85 implementations, including in the United States, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sierra-Leone,Namibia and the United Kingdom, Granite WMS's is scalable, simple to use, easy to maintain and support. It provides granular trace-ability to SAGE's globally established ERP solutions - SAGE Evolution and SAGE 300 (formerly known as Accpac), or it can stand alone.
Granite provides a functional fit giving you just what you need
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