A Struggling System
Our client was facing significant challenges with their internal processes, making it difficult for staff to track assets and manage stock effectively.
To support their business growth and scalability, they needed to integrate their warehouse and finance systems and improve their stock management processes.
The Problem
One of the main challenges throughout this project was redefining the warehouse stock and finance system that were acting as two different entities rather than a single system which made it extremely challenging for employees to manage stock and orders in an efficient way.
Another problem that was frequently occurring was due to the nature of the organisation, as there are different levels of quality grading required for stock, this meant the same item can be priced differently depending on its quality, which the current system was unable to differentiate between. The current stock management system also highlighted several issues around the documentation of stock and meant that there was a heavy reliance on employee experience and knowledge of the organisation in order to correctly monitor stock levels.
This lack of documentation also meant the organisation had no way of knowing key information around which product or stock which was being sold, the full lifecycle, how much of a certain product is selling and the lease information of products that are in stock and available for customers to purchase or lease.
How We Helped
The Curve’s Mission
At the beginning of this project The Curve and the client outlined some core objectives that would be the focus of the project and would be used to measure success against ensuring progress and impactful changes.
These objectives included ensuring that the integration between the warehouse and finance systems enabled seamless communication and accurate stock tracking, taking the burden and reliance off of employees and onto a system that was continuously up to date which offered insights into how stock was moving throughout the organisation.
With an appropriate stock tracking system in place that provided key information such as stock and ownership lifecycles, updated documentation and correct individual pricing depending on the quality of the stock, employees were no longer feeling the pressure to have stock details memorised and could instead rely on an up to date system.
Our Approach
During this stage The Curve helped the organisation identify its core goals and objectives that it needed to accomplish in order to achieve the growth that it is aiming for, this consisted of reviewing the entire sales and supply process in order to identify the problems and issues.
With these issues and challenges identified, The Curve started planning and developing a Business Central solution that not only overcomes these issues but did so with the organisations goals and objectives in mind. This meant that for the first time there was a system in place that could actively help achieve growth whilst improving efficiency and cost control within the organisation.
The Curve set about designing a bespoke solution that was tailored to the organisations needs and specific business use case. In this instance, this solution was built around using the API from the existing warehouse management system in order to create and update records in Business Central where stock items, Purchase Orders and Receipts could all be created and stored, providing the clarity and level of reporting that was required.
As the current stock system was managed through an Excel spreadsheet, it meant employees were required to remove stock once they had sold it, however in some instances two of the same items were sold even if there was only one in stock due to it not being removed from the spreadsheet quick enough. With the new Business Central system in place to track stock more effectively, the business can now scale the sales teams without needing to extensively train each team member how to remove stock from the spreadsheet whilst following the other processes, not only will this save time and effort but also takes the burden off of experienced employees.
Outcomes
The new Business Central implementation has provided a stable and scalable platform to continue improving processes throughout the organisation. With the end sales process being managed effectively by Business Central, other processes such as the lifecycle tracking and stock quality grading will also be transitioned to Business Central in order to ensure a seamless process that is all contained within one system and instance.
Overall with this new Business Central system in place the organisation has the ability to scale and accommodate future growth in a much more controlled and effective manner whilst also removing errors and stock irregularities. As well as this, with the Business Central system providing the enhanced traceability of stock items, this will also provide the stock and asset tracking that is crucial for the financial clarity and reporting throughout the organisation.