WaiveStar supply chain enabled with Sage

Since its launch in 2000 WaiveStar’s success has been accompanied by some significant growing pains. Disparate systems and an influx of new staff and customers meant the company needed to streamline its financial and accounting systems as well as implementing a Customer Relationship Management solution...

Melbourne based WaiveStar specialises in delivering supply chain management solutions such as procurement, warehousing, mailing, fulfillment and distribution, to small, medium and large organisations nationwide.

It’s clients include well known brands such as Blockbuster, Suzuki, Crazy Johns and Sony Ericsson. In addition to its supply chain offerings, the company provides graphic design services and marketing & promotional products such as brochures, posters and point-of-sale stands.

WaiveStar delivers these services via a custom built online tool known as WaiveNet, which has been a crucial component of the company’s success. When WaiveStar commenced operations it had just three staff (including founder and CEO Michelle Power), and one major customer.

The group experienced exponential growth of up to 90% per annum, however, resulting in the company winning the Victorian Government Business Growth Award in 2005. By the end of 2006 staffed numbered 35 staff and WaiveStar had over 40 customers to manage. This rapid growth and success, however, presented a host of new challenges to the organisation.

Growing pains
As WaiveStar infrastructure and innovation manager Ayda Hornak explains, the company’s original financial and administrative systems were incapable of effectively managing the increased level of business.

This generated significant administrative burdens, personnel issues and inaccuracies. “What the growth led to was a lot of time in admin,” says Hornak. “Employees were entering customer information into at least seven different databases, including Excel spreadsheets, small CRM systems and disparate accounting systems. It took two staff in finance two days a month to process the invoices for one customer.”

With multiple points of data entry across the business came mistakes in customer information and records handling - leading to dissatisfaction and lost business opportunities.

All of these problems pointed to the need for an integrated CRM/ERP system, says Hornak, where all staff had access to a single application and point of entry.

As well as addressing these deficiencies and reducing administration errors, any new system needed to be customisable enough to integrate with WaiveStar’s proprietary online supply chain management system. It would also need to cope with WaiveStar’s unique and complex invoicing procedures.

A flexible remedy
WaiveStar went to tender in 2006, looking for a solution that would;

a) Meet its unique requirements

b) Reduce the administrative burden on its finance department.

c) Improve the level of customer service and position the company for the future.

Initially eight different options were reviewed before drawing up a shortlist of three. Pricing across all three solutions was similar, but Sage came out in front says Hornak, due to its flexibility and superior CRM model. Enabling, a leading solution provider of business management applications, implemented the first phase of the new system in a three month project.

“In working with us, Enabling showed a tremendous level of integrity and exceptional customer service,” says Hornak. “The level of knowledge within the group was a massive advantage. They were extremely innovative and flexible when it came to meeting our unique requirements and the challenges that arose during the project.”

With Sage Accpac ERP and CRM software, Enabling was able to restructure WaiveStar’s back-end business processes into a centralised solution.

This was achieved by making use of standard functionality and features, as well as utilising the software architecture to develop components to compliment the core application offering.

A significant component of this design was use of inbuilt workflows within CRM, assisting WaiveStar with streamlining a wide range of day-today business processes and dramatically improving the accuracy of data.

The project commenced in January 2006 and was completed that April with critical success factors being the dedication of both project teams – enabling key milestones to be met and direct transfer of valuable knowledge to be shared.

It was this successful implementation and the confidence in the flexibility and breadth of the Sage solution that lead WaiveStar to put in a second phase of the project.

The results
What once took days to complete is now done in a matter of hours. Hornak reports that 60% efficiency gains have been achieved across the entire business, while the accuracy of data has improved dramatically through the automation and integration of key business processes.

“Productivity gains have been significant,” she says. “Via the integrated solution, WaiveStar’s accounts team can now access quotes and sales orders stored in the CRM system quickly without the need to consult and cross reference multiple databases”.

Another key benefit of the solution is the level of reporting it offers. “The senior management team now has more time and more insightful information mined from the integrated CRM/ERP system on which to base business decisions – eg: identifying opportunities in the customer’s supply chains to up-sell or on-sell WaiveStar’s services.”

Future plans
With Enabling’s support WaiveStar is commencing phase two of the project to further enhance integration between Sage Accpac ERP and CRM with its propriety customer portal, WaiveNet.

WaiveNet is the backbone of the current customer ordering system and is currently limited in the flexibility it offers to customers due to lack of integration with backoffice services – such as Warehousing and Distribution.

Enabling aims to enhance the service offering WaiveStar is able to provide via this portal by building additional flexibility into the solution and integrating key processes directly with the ERP and CRM applications, thus protecting the investment in WaiveNet and further strengthening the Sage enterprise solution.

For more information
Enabling Solutions
www.enabling.net
Ph: 1800 ENABLING
Ph: 1800 362 254

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