Multi-flor, supplier of flooring products and solutions to retailers across southern Africa, has made significant improvements to its inventory management within four months of implementing SAP Business One.
Key to the achievement in reducing stock and controlling seasonality was that SAP Business One provides Multi-flor real-time access to comprehensive business information, says the company's financial manager, William Schutte.
"Having shifted our business focus away from supplying contractors to supplying retailers, the nature and complexity of our line items changed. Our previous software, which was specific to the contracting industry, couldn't give us the information we needed," says Schutte.
"We also felt it prudent to go with more readily available software, from a vendor with a good track record that provides a more complete package to manage both the front and the back-end of our business.
"SAP Business One addressed all our business requirements. Although it wasn't the least expensive option we looked at, it has proved to be by far the best value for money."
Martin Boruvka, business development manager for Grenville Systems Development (GDS), Multi-flor's consultation and professional services partner, says SAP Business One gives Multi-flor a single, unified solution that caters for all business processes and management requirements throughout its value chain.
Schutte agrees. "SAP Business One constituted a real leap forward for us. It has proved the business power of having realistic information in forward purchasing and stock holding. We've been able to significantly reduce stock holding because our ordering, planning, and importing patterns are coming from a more logical point. We're no longer dependent on a few people who've been doing the job for a while and 'have a feel' for what customers will need when. We can directly and objectively compare our customers' previous sales and future projections with our own and plan much more accurately. We can hold more of the right stock at the right time, and don't have to hold everything for each season.
"Also, for the first time in the 30 years of the company's existence, we're getting other company information on a daily basis - almost before we need it! We can see daily turnover, sales, and margins - all the way down to customer-specific margins. Previously, we used to know we were making a certain margin, but we didn't know where.
"Another plus is that we can see the figures of each sales team, so we know where to put our marketing and sales emphasis.
"With all that information, we've been able to adjust a lot of things internally, improving performance throughout the organisation."
Boruvka says that because Multi-flor management decided to find out exactly what SAP Business One could do before implementing it - even sending employees on certification courses - they were able to exploit the solution's wealth of functionality "pretty much from day one. All we needed to do was guide them in relation to their business processes based on our sales and distribution experience. You just can't overestimate the value of taking direct ownership of your own implementation, in terms of speeding your time to benefit."
"SAP Business One had all the functionality we needed out of the box therefore we didn't have to customise it, but we did configure it very precisely to our needs," Schutte says. "We were also very clear about those needs that made it easier for GDS to give us a system that does exactly what we want it to do."
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