Improving Productivity and Loss Prevention with Cin7
Telephone Wreckers specialise in buying and selling new and second-hand telephone systems and have been in operation since 1999. Telephone Wreckers wholesale telephone parts to resell through trade customers to end users, corporate and government.
Being a wholesaler, it stocks an extensive range of products and part numbers. For Telephone Wreckers, being able to have clear visibility over its stock and to understand where products are at any given time, is crucial to its business. Faced with expanding operations, relying on staff inventory knowledge was impractical to grow its business. Managing its inventory using Cin7 meant Telephone Wreckers “saved staff time, increased productivity, has led to better loss prevention and it provided a solid platform to help grow the business by 18%,” says Mark Prieditis, Director of Telephone Wreckers.
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The road to stock visibility
A lot of Telephone Wrecker’s inventory management was reliant on staff knowledge. “If we wanted to know how much stock we had of a particular product, it required our staff to physically go looking on shelves – we were relying on what information was in people’s heads, which wasn’t ideal,” says Mark. Using this approach was fine while the business was small, but as it kept growing, it became difficult to manage its inventory. “It was a bit of a logistical nightmare, since we were operating online as well. We had instances where customers would buy something online but we wouldn’t have it in stock – managing this channel and our multiple branches was a key hurdle we faced,” says Mark.
Mark had experience trialling a number of inventory management solutions through a smaller business he had been operating. This gave him the opportunity to trial four different systems functionality. Mark’s accountant recommended he focus on a solution that would fix his logistics and inventory problems, but also allow for integration into Xero.
Creating a robust and mobile business
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Despite spending time evaluating competitors’ solutions, Mark found that although some vendors advertised functionality, such as managing negative stock quantities, it was a different story when trying to perform this in the real world. “It seemed the other guys out there couldn’t really answer the questions I had. I was sure I wasn’t the only one with similar requirements, so I wanted to find the solution that was right for the business,” says Mark. Simplicity was a key aspect Mark based his decision on. “It had to be simple enough that anyone could use it, but to also, have a powerful backend to manage our future requirements,” says Mark.
Mark and the team were up to speed with Cin7 relatively quickly. The Cin7 support team helped them customise aspects based on their requirements. But in retrospect, Mark felt that a lot of the customisations probably wasn’t needed – Telephone Wreckers just needed to use Cin7 a bit more to understand its true capabilities. “The problem for us, was that we were expanding so quickly we didn’t really have processes in place. Using Cin7 actually allowed us to understand that some of our previous processes weren’t ideal, so it gave us an opportunity to improve these,” says Mark.
The fact that Cin7 is cloud based also meant that Mark could take orders on the go. It gave him the ability to know exactly how much inventory was in stock. “I was even able to sit there at a soccer match, place an order and have it sent to one of our corporate customers – that’s just something I have never been able to do,” says Mark.
An inventory solution that paid for itself
The biggest benefit Telephone Wreckers witnessed was an increase in staff productivity. Staff are now able to access orders remotely and see exactly what’s in stock. It has led to better loss prevention throughout the company, as they’re able to track all inventory movements. “Because [Cin7] has set processes, it has become a very handy tracking tool for our entire operations. I would go so far as to say, it’s paid for itself in under 12 months,” says Mark. Now, if there is stock registered in the system, Telephone Wreckers has the ability to track exactly where the stock is. It simply couldn’t do that using its previous accounting system QuickBooks.
The company is now able to generate quotes using the online quoting system. The system enables customers to accept quotes which generates a sales order automatically. Cin7 has also enabled better business processes and ensured all pricing and quoting matches to what’s in the system. Mark believes that using Cin7 “[helped] grow the business by 18%,” says Mark.
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