Bigsave Furniture has based its business on providing high quality customer service and excellent value for money. Key to helping the company fulfil this promise is an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system from Microsoft Business Solutions. Delivered in partnership with Turtle Bay Ltd, the new Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains system is helping boost Bigsave's sales by more than 20% - while providing the company with access to real-time inventory information and accurate and speedy financial reporting.

Legacy ERP system causes pain and staff frustration

Bigsave Furniture is a made-to-order business, driven by the promise of selling high-quality product. According to Bigsave's financial controller Steve Macris, accurate inventory and pricing information are just some of the factors critical to helping deliver on that promise.

"The furniture business is quite unique," he says. "The customer doesn't buy something and then simply walk out the door with the product in hand. Our success is based on selling the customer a high-quality product and then delivering on that promise in a few days time, so an excellent back-end technology system is essential."

Macris says Bigsave's legacy ERP system did not handle its financial, sales and inventory management efficiently and was expensive to maintain.

"We were always fiddling with the system. It got to the point of engaging our IT consultant every time we needed to make a change to it. As a retailer, we don't have in-house IT expertise and it ended up costing us a lot of money to maintain."

Additionally, the legacy system was not Windows-based and not very user-friendly. It also had several limitations. Most concerning to Macris was that he couldn't guarantee the accuracy of information when using the system and it wasn't enabling growth.

Real time access to information key driver to new solution

Bigsave embarked on a project to find a new ERP solution that catered for the company's needs in mid 2001, with "accuracy, accessibility, flexibility and security" as just some of the key system requirements. As the project champion, Macris worked closely with administration staff to define their needs and drive change management within the organisation.

After short-listing three products, the company choose to implement Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains, supported by Turtle Bay Ltd.

"We wanted a solution that delivered on our needs in its standard form. Microsoft Great Plains is user-friendly and feature-rich and the out-of-the-box functionality met all our key business requirements."

Macris adds: "While I preferred to be the project lead, our partner Turtle Bay provided excellent product and technical support, set-up recommendations and user training."

Bigsave staged the solution roll-out across the company's 10 branches, with go-live completed in February 2002. Installed at the head office in Wellington, the solution is accessed remotely by more than 22 users across the country via Citrix MetaFrame. In total, 37 concurrent users can take advantage of the Microsoft Great Plains solution.

Bigsave is leveraging Microsoft Great Plains across a Microsoft platform, including SQL Server 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000. The benefits of having a standardised platform according to Macris are "product compatibility".

"All the Microsoft technologies work in synch. We're a furniture retailer and don't want to invest in in-house IT expertise. With a standardised Microsoft technology platform, we have the assurance that the products can be easily installed and maintained and any issues quickly addressed."

David Guy, Partner Group Manager, Microsoft Business Solutions comments that increasingly New Zealand companies such as Bigsave are reporting more value in running a standardised Microsoft technology platform.

"Companies looking to streamline business processes while minimising costs are finding added value in a single vendor solution, which is seamlessly integrated from the front-office through to the back-office systems."

Data integrity, accessibility and timeliness setting new precedent

According to Macris, some of the key benefits in using Microsoft Great Plains include the "high level of security and the accuracy, timeliness and depth of information". In particular, he has been impressed with the real-time access to the company's stock inventory.

"We now have the ability see exactly what stock each branch has stored within 24 hours at the most. Stock information is entered daily so the data is always accurate and up-to-date, which means we can resolve any issues instantly. Ultimately, this is helping us improve customer service.

"We've also been able to standardise pricing tickets across branches."

The difference Microsoft Great Plains has made to his day-to-day work says Macris is that he no longer has to worry about the back-end system but can "just get on with his job".

"We no longer have to employ an IT consultant just to work out what our debtors are," he says. "Microsoft Great Plains generates the sheet balance automatically so that I can focus on following up bad debts without having to worry about the system part."

Macris says the company's financial reporting has improved considerably since adopting Microsoft Great Plains, citing the FRx reporting tool as "fantastic".

"I can't think of a better reporting tool in the market. If our margins go down, I'm on to it right away - the information is really detailed. "The integrity of debtor and creditor information is also faultless - this is a huge improvement to what we used before."

By enabling branches across the country with remote access to the solution, Macris says the company is also reducing administration time and courier costs. With its previous system, staff could not access information remotely and had to physically send information to another branch.

"It could take up to 72 hours for one branch to receive pricing information from another store. The process was so time-consuming that we had a full-time staff member in charge of courier administration.

"With the new system, we can access the information instantly and administration staff are doing more productive work, for example, receipting imported products into the system." Macris says it's the first time in a long time the company's ERP system has delivered on its expectations. "We're used to people making false promises but both Turtle Bay and Microsoft Great Plains have delivered on everything we were promised."

In addition to streamlining business processes, Microsoft Great Plains has helped accelerate the company's growth, bringing the company "out of the dark and into the light".

"The difference between our existing and old ERP system is phenomenal," says Macris. "We couldn't grow with our old solution but with Microsoft Great Plains our sales are growing at a rate of 20% percent per annum. We're also on track to double our profit this financial year and Microsoft Great Plains has been one of the tools which has helped us achieve this."

For more information about this case study contact
Anne Frith
09 362 5865
askdynnz@microsoft.com
Microsoft New Zealand
P O Box 8070, Symonds Street, Auckland

November 2003

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