Linen House is based in Melbourne and has grown to become one of the most innovative and successful wholesalers of bed linen and homeware in the Southern Hemisphere. Today it employs 80 people and has expanded with subsidiaries in New Zealand and South Africa.

In the competitive manchester and home wares markets, swift and accurate order fulfilment and information flow are business imperatives. As the company secured major retail customers this became even more critical. Linen House originally managed its front office via an Epicor system and additional processes with other bolt-on systems, which made data integrity and information flow from one operation to another very cumbersome.

As a consequence, allocating receipts with numerous transactions for major customers could take as long as five hours. Reconciliation difficulties meant that GST BAS returns took a minimum of four hours, and balancing subsidiary ledgers to the General Ledger could take a full day. Even input of electronic orders was only a semi-automatic function that would take three to four hours.

Linen House recognised the need for a comprehensive business management solution that could support and synchronise all of its key operations, from order processing through distribution, to invoicing and other customer communications. It also wanted more powerful reporting capabilities that could help it assess all operations and plan further expansion. The company recruited experienced systems integrator, Enabling, to provide a seamless, enterprise-wide solution.

Solution
Following a review of possible options, Linen House selected a 50-user Sage solution incorporating Accpac ERP, Sage CRM and Accpac Warehouse Management, along with an EDI management solution that enables electronic orders and invoicing to be exchanged via the major retailers to their exact standards. It also purchased five years of Sage’s Support Plus on all products.

Following a three month implementation, the system went live in Melbourne in November 2005. Such was the positive return of the system; it was subsequently rolled out to a subsidiary company, Aura Lifestyle Pty Ltd, in July 2006.

Results
Following the installation, Linen House immediately experienced several major time and labour savings through:

• Seamless flow of information through all of the Accpac modules, coupled with the quality task-flow enforced by the system.
• Automated action alerts that ensure the system is operating within the parameters it was designed for.
• Warehouse visibility of the order, enabling preparation of the picking process before the order has even formally been received by the warehouse.
• Invoices and carton contents reports are automatically generated upon completion of each order being picked, along with the freight manifest being electronically forwarded to the transport company each evening.
• Order Entry for electronic orders has been reduced to just 20 minutes, drastically reduced the time required for administration tasks – by up to 50 hours per month.
• Accpac ERP enforces stringent quality control processes which eliminate costly human errors.
• GST BAS returns are down to 20 minutes – and, more importantly, they balance to the cent with an accurate audit trail.
• Receipt allocation to major customers and balancing ledgers significantly reduced.

Future
“The most important aspect of this is that we can now generate very accurate and timely reports, which gives us the up-to-date cross-organisational picture we need to make critical business decisions. Combined, all these improvements are creating a very sturdy foundation from which to launch our expansion plans" says Mark Bartolozzi, operations manager, Linen House.

For more information
Enabling Solutions
www.enabling.net
Ph 0800 ENABLING

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