Its founder, Reginald Murray Williams, started making boots, clothing and pack-saddles for fellow stockmen in 1932 in South Australia’s remote Gammon Ranges.

To support the company’s exciting journey into the new millennium, R.M.Williams selected the Lawson solution to fine-tune key business processes critical to the growth of the business. Today, the company known as the ‘Bush Outfitter’ is able to utilize the Lawson system to analyze sales trends, manage stock levels, and better understand its manufacturing processes. As a result, it continually achieves shorter lead times and delivers on promises to customers.

Business benefits
R.M.Williams has come a long way since the first pair of hand-cobbled boots was sold for 20 shillings over three-quarters of a century ago. Today, the Australian-owned bush fashion icon produces an impressive array of boots, clothing and accessories from its factory in Salisbury, South Australia.

Goods are sold to customers through stockists and retail outlets across Australia, the UK, the US, Europe, South Africa, Japan, Canada and New Zealand.

Around 95 percent of R.M.Williams’ footwear range is produced in the Salisbury factory, with 20 percent custom made to order.

The company also provides a premium boot repair service which promises customers a 72-hour turnaround.

Both footwear and apparel ranges each contain summer and winter lines which are delivered to customers in four drops each season. In addition to this, the company also supplies a range of craft items from belts, wallets, saddles, key rings and flask holders to swags, chaps, whips and gloves.

“Compared to its humble beginnings, the company is incredibly complex these days with our three diverse product ranges. Due to this, we’re constantly on the lookout for ways to more accurately monitor our lead times to ensure we uphold our promise to deliver goods to customers on time,” says Peter Cosh, the general manager of finance and administration at R.M.Williams.

“It’s critical that we have an ERP system that is able to supply accurate information to all levels of management on a timely basis. We’ve found that Lawson can provide us with this system.”

The company
R.M.Williams is the leading name in the Australian bush outfitting business.

With sales increasing each year, the company's retail and concept store program has grown to more than 100 locations in Australia and New Zealand, with overseas stores in London and New York.

R.M.Williams’ boots have led many Australian and overseas aficionados to nominate the company as "the best boot makers in the world", and in 2000, R.M.Williams invested over USD 1.6 million, in an addition to its factory in Salisbury.

Why Lawson?
Lawson has had a partnership with R.M.Williams since 1999 when the company initially decided to upgrade its existing ERP system to become Y2K compliant. Lawson for Fashion was chosen as it allowed the company to deal with this, as well as the additional challenges of coping with rapid expansion, the introduction of new product lines, and the need for enterprise-wide integration.

“We chose Lawson based on its strong experience in the fashion industry. We also wanted a solution that would grow with us,” says Cosh.

“We’ve made the right choice as our company has enjoyed 10 percent year-on-year growth since our partnership began with Lawson,” notes Cosh.

Cosh adds, “The Lawson solution has allowed R.M.Williams to instigate lean manufacturing principles throughout the organization. Rather than adhering to the traditional way of making large batches of shirts 500 at a time and then distributing them for sale, it is now able to align production more closely to demand by manufacturing in smaller batch sizes.”

In real terms this means instead of R.M.Williams’ entire product range turning over every six weeks, it now manufactures according to the style, color and size matrix on an ‘as needed’ weekly basis.

“The benefit of this is that we’ve been able to reduce our finished goods stocks, which is a far more cost effective and efficient way of running our business,” remarks Cosh.

In 2006, R.M.Williams embarked on a project to further refine its business processes and gain greater visibility on operations. Together with the Lawson Professional Services team, it began implementing Lawson Business Intelligence which is designed to provide organization-wide reporting and analysis via rolebased dashboards, helping to deliver accurate and near real-time information.

“Lawson Business Intelligence has provided us with very flexible and detailed reporting that keeps management up to speed with all aspects of the business.

For instance, we receive daily reports on overdue debtors, which prompt us to liaise with our credit department. We also receive key indicators on manufacturing orders that haven’t been closed off in the system, which again prompts us to scrutinize business processes to ensure they are being adhered to and information is being managed properly.

Daily stock reports, sales reports and cash flow management reports also help us to keep a finger on the pulse of how our stock levels are going, how sales are tracking compared to the same period last year, and alert us to what outstanding purchase orders are in the system.

“Without the Lawson solution incorporating Lawson Business Intelligence, I firmly believe we would not have been capable of growing our business at the rate we’ve been experiencing,” continues Cosh. “The system gives us the visibility and flexibility we need to ensure demand is being met, standards are kept high and issues are resolved early.

As a result, we’ve been able to reap the rewards of this efficiency, and most importantly, deliver on our promise to customers.”

The Lawson solution also provides R.M.Williams’ wholesale agents with greater online access to Salisbury factory information. Furthermore, it also allows the company to fully integrate with its retail store point of sale system.

“Our agents now have better insights into stock levels and have a quick and efficient mechanism to request information and provide feedback. The Lawson solution also allows us to receive order information daily from companyowned retail stores, which means we’re in a much better position to react quickly and synchronize production with demand,” says Cosh.

The implementation
In addition to Lawson Business Intelligence, R.M.Williams has implemented a comprehensive range of Lawson solutions including Lawson Supply Chain Planning, Lawson Supply Chain Execution, Lawson Procurement, Lawson Manufacturing Operations, Lawson Customer Order Processing, Lawson Finance Management, and Lawson Business Performance Warehouse.

The system is used by over 100 users across the enterprise.

“The implementation had its challenges and the project team had some steep learning curves to climb. However, despite the ups and downs, the results have been worth the pain and our investment is paying off,” says Cosh.

“Now that the Lawson system is firmly in place, we’ve been able to implement a regime of continuous process improvement and training. We can also more effectively identify the key business processes that are critical to the growth of our business and utilize the system to get us where we need to be.”

Future plans
As part of its commitment to continually improve processes, R.M.Williams has several plans in place to expand the functionality of the Lawson solution.

“Implementing Lawson Demand Planner is certainly a very big part of the ‘Available to Promise’ project we’ve instigated to ensure we deliver on customer expectations.

This will allow us to better manage our factory production and capacity planning. Further to this, we also plan to implement Lawson e-Sales to gain a single view of customer-facing processes, which will help to reduce the cost of order administration by offering customers online access to products and services,” concludes Cosh.





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