"NetSuite will take us to another level … giving us access to better sales reporting and greater focus on our customers."
Harris Gas Equipment Case Study - NetSuite CRM - NetReturn
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| At a glance | |
| Company: | Harris Gas Equipment |
| Location: | Brisbane, Queensland |
| Industry: | Importing and distribution; gas equipment |
| Challenges: |
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| Software switched from: | MYOB, ACT! |
| Results with NetSuite: |
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The Challenge:
Harris Gas Equipment Australia (HGEA) is a wholesale company providing gas equipment and accessories through a network of distributors across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Their customers range from hospitals and research laboratories, to large industrial companies and the hospitality industry.
Founded in the US in 1905 as a welding repair shop, Harris manufactures were specialists in gas welding and cutting equipment, and worked in factories across Italy, Ireland and the US. HGEA is the sole distributor of Harris products in Australia, and sell all of their products through sales representatives.
“We used MYOB and this was excellent to start the business,” said Company Director Cherry Rankin, but as the company grew she found MYOB had limitations with its inventory management. “Our biggest problem was not being able to put landed costs against our purchases to give us a true indication of our cost of sales,” said Rankin.
What’s more, the company had no CRM capability and were looking to open more warehouses. “MYOB couldn’t share information with our existing system which was a basic peer-to-peer network, and we would have needed to install a server, which was very expensive,” said Rankin. “Then we would have to find someone to support the technology. We tried using ACT! as our CRM, but once again we couldn’t share the data between our sales people and MYOB.”
The Solutions:
Rankin had previously worked for Oracle in Sydney and had a background in information systems. “I had done some work on ASP’s and was aware of the advantages they offered.” NetSuite’s big advantage which appealed to HGEA was its low rollout costs. The company didn’t need to install a server and the staff could access the system from any location, allowing them to add warehouses easily to the network. “It’s also great not having to worry about backups – and any upgrades are automatically applied by NetSuite.”
The Results:
While using NetSuite, the staff at HGEA could instantly see the benefits to their internal processes, and were able to subsequently provide better customer service. “The Customer Centre is great and will save customers having to call chasing copies of invoices and statements, and save time for our administration staff,” said Cherry Rankin.
“We’ll be opening a new warehouse in Melbourne soon and with NetSuite’s multi-warehouse option we’ll have the visibility to see where all our stock is and transfer inventory if necessary.” Rankin said the business processes HGEA used with MYOB have been transferred easily to NetSuite and are very similar. Considerable costs were also saved by implementing NetSuite. “We didn’t need to put in a server so this has saved us a considerable amount.”
The company’s sales reps were able to see stock holdings and share calendars in real time, which they found was a major advantage, and HGEA managed its sales team more effectively. The company had goals of expanding their product line-up, increase their sales and, thanks to NetSuite, had already begun introducing a new product line. As mentioned by Rankin, “NetSuite will take us to another level in this area, giving us access to better sales reporting and a greater focus on our customers.”
Find out more: contact NetReturn at 1300 886 025 or 0800 543 371
