Growth is critical to any business and Vynco Industries is a New Zealand-based company on a growth curve. Bucking the increasingly global trend of sourcing and importing products from China, Vynco is focused on designing, engineering and manufacturing electrical products in New Zealand.

The company also maintains around 7,000 inventory items, some with long 90-day lead times which require pinpoint accurate tracking and management to ensure inventory is always on hand. The problem was the functionality available in the 15 year old CBA system had been outgrown and it lacked the capacity to scale in order to meet the company’s future growth requirements. Any system upgrade needed to enhance the company’s ability to continue to attract and retain distribution agreements with high profile international brands such as General Electric.

Greentree was evaluated alongside its similarly positioned mid-market competitors including Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision) and Dynamics GP (Great Plains), plus Sage. Simon Vale, General Manager at Vynco, says that he liked Greentree’s offering in terms of its price and functionality.

Keeping a finger on the sales pulse
Vynco also chose to implement the Greentree IQ*
business intelligence module. This plug-in integrates
the specialist BI tool QlikView into the Greentree suite.

Greentree IQ* complements Greentree by allowing management to look at anomalies and trends in sales data, providing strategic insights for better quality decision making. Vale became enthusiastic about the possibilities.

“This is a fantastic tool which we use primarily for sales reporting but it’s so much more than just a reporting tool. For example, we use it for tracking our customer communication performance and various inventory applications. By tracking, monitoring and reporting various sales related activities, management has a much clearer overall picture of exactly what’s going on.”

Whilst Greentree IQ* monitors communication performance, the ‘Approvals and Alerts’ workflow module sends information to the appropriate person’s desktop to notify them that a customer call needs to be followedup now. It’s also invaluable for notifying the appropriate person when inventory falls below a certain level, is sold below a certain margin or a sale is above a certain value.

With 90-day lead times on some items, running out isn’t an option.

He says that approvals and alerts have enabled Vynco to automatically manage business processes by getting critical information to the right person at exactly the right time. The key benefits are that sales aren’t lost due to items being unavailable or customer calls not being followed-up.

Chain of command
Approvals and alerts have helped Vynco automate the daily processes in their business. Vynco has designed workflows that mean critical transactions, documents, or records are automatically monitored and approved through the appropriate chain of command without the need to print out any documents.

Greentree delivers alerts via e-mail, SMS, follow-up flags or PDAs. For example, an automatic email notification can be sent to a customer advising of a delayed order delivery.

The workflow module provides personalisation of the user’s desktop so that each person only gets the information most relevant to them. Information is automatically refreshed and pushed to the appropriate desktop where it prompts for specific action to be taken.

This has significantly improved staff productivity and efficiency.

Vale explains that Greentree has enabled Vynco to implement best practice in critical business processes.

For example, instead of new or inexperienced staff having to spend a lot of time remembering the physical location of stock or where it has been moved to, Greentree allocates and tracks its exact location. This has made order picking more accessible to all staff, not just those with years of experience.

Order picking staff now get up-to-speed much quicker than was previously the case.

Future plan
Vale is now looking at how to achieve greater document management efficiency through autoscan and faster, more accurate inventory management and order picking through the introduction of hand-held devices and Mobility. He’s also looking to explore and understand the opportunities for greater organisational performance through Business Process Management (BPM).

*Greentree IQ, powered by QlikView the world’s leading Business Intelligence software

> Greentree International
W: www.greentree.com
Graham Hill
P: +64 9 366 3892
E: graham.hill@greentree.com








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