Case Studies
Services Case Study – “We have data we just don’t have access to it”
The Client
A franchisor with 33 locations had been having ongoing issues in the provision of reporting across all franchises. Reporting was an extremely important function for the franchisor to provide, giving its franchisees visibility into how they were performing and enabling them to compare their performance against all other franchisees.
The Challenge
When the franchisor’s CEO approached FeatureIT he explained he was frustrated.
“We have to provide our franchisees with a point of difference and tools to aid in performance improvement… however, even after ensuring that all franchisees implemented an online accounting package, there is still no way the board could view group accounting results, without going through a monthly manual accounts consolidation process. This process ties up numerous members of our accounts team to consolidate and make sense of each franchisee’s accounts.”
Meanwhile, their competition could offer online accounts viewing and performance reporting to individual franchisees at the touch of a button.
With a 5-year licensing agreement of an already tired specialist ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) up for renewal, the franchisor came to FeatureIT for help. Even with the new ERP licenses in place, there would still be no improvement in the manual accounts consolidation process.
The Approach
The client asked for a quote to migrate the existing solution to a cloud application, however they were taken back by the notion of re-purposing data that FeatureIT presented as an alternate solution.
Stop the data migration headache!
FeatureIT’s proprietary data solution was a fraction of the cost of relicensing the now defunct ERP reporting system and within a month, the business was back in control of their accounting data for all franchisees.
FeatureIT then worked with a business analyst to setup the required data re-purposing rules for each franchisee so that the intelligent data solution was delivering the group profit and loss reports data to a cloud based reporting tool.
The success of the project renewed the board enthusiasm for smarter application solutions as they took back ownership of their data generated via the incumbent ERP.
Products Case Study – Making the smart choice with Planit
The Client
A flooring manufacturer had been “tied in knots” trying to effectively use multiple business solutions, and they were struggling to understand if their jobs were profitable.
The Challenge
After engaging with the flooring manufacturer, FeatureIT quickly identified that several pain points were causing unnecessary frustrations between operation staff and management stakeholders.
The operational team described problems including
- manual processing: using spreadsheets, manual workarounds to complete processes, duplicate data entry
- errors: poor data quality, ineffective synchronisation of data between systems
- latency (speed) issues
The management stakeholders outlined difficulties including
- financial costs: paying for duplicate data entry and manual processing, poor buying decisions, missing out on supplier special pricing, holding too much stock
- resources: inefficient use of existing staff, needing to hire more contractors
- visibility: inability to see profitability at the job level, uncertainty of resource capacity, difficulty sharing information between roles/divisions
The Approach
FeatureIT presented a solution to use their own tool Planit; a production planning application that enables data ingestion from various source systems, rules and workflows to be applied, before passing the repurposed data on to the target system.
In conjunction with 3 best-of-breed cloud applications – WorkflowMax, Unleashed and Xero – utilising FeatureIT’s Planit has successfully eliminated the client’s pain points. It has also meant that operational and management staff are now more engaged and happier in their work, and they are also able to identify and ultimately turn down unprofitable jobs.
Products Case Study – Moving forward with Planit
The Client
A ceiling tile manufacturing business was using an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation consultant, but the business was not out of the box and there wasn’t a solution that easily fitted the business requirements.
The Challenge
The ERP consultant approached FeatureIT to help them move the client forward with a better system.
The client was using several applications and processes
- an archaic CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system: tracking leads, customer communications (emails notes from conversations etc)
- an accounting package: quotes, inventory, sales, purchases, suppliers
- spreadsheets: production orders, stock on hand, assemblies, pricing
All software packages were loaded on individual computers, with back-ups made monthly to an old server.
This created numerous on-going issues for the client
- none of the systems talked to each other, enforcing the constant need for manual data re-entry
- double entering data caused many issues and errors
- there was no visibility into the profitability jobs, although the business was generating great revenue which was growing year after year they had no idea what each job truly cost and therefore didn’t know for sure if the jobs were profitable or not
The Approach
With FeatureIT’s expertise, the client was guided through a 2-step solution.
Step 1 involved implementing cloud based CRM and Inventory Management systems, and enabling integration so that so data could flow between the systems. Stock on hand and assemblies were still done manually but as the inventory system worked out the average landed costs of goods and materials, the client’s pricing was much more accurate.
Step 2 introduced a cloud based job management system into the mix and included adding FeatureIT’s own tool Planit; a production planning application that enables data ingestion from various source systems, rules and workflows to be applied, before passing the repurposed data on to the target system.
The results FeatureIT achieved for the client were significant and had an immediate effect across the business.
Operational impact
- reduced costs by eliminating manual tasks: regained resource and staff capacity
- better business visibility across all roles and departments
- improved efficiencies
- enhanced data integrity
- improved staff morale
Business strategic impact
- improvement in business decisions: better control of purchasing, manufacture of most profitable products
- operational costs slashed: better management of resources including staff and work centres
- increased profitability: implement new capabilities and processes, better-quality sales/clients/jobs, increased productivity
Most importantly, the FeatureIT solution to adopt cloud technologies and utilise Planit has introduced meaningful automation of data and information flow between systems in a way that makes sense to the client’s business.