White Cloud Case Study - NetSuite CRM - NetReturn
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| At a glance | |
| Company: | White Cloud |
| Location: | Head office near Sydney, retail stores throughout Australia |
| Industry: | Retail |
| Challenges: |
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| Software switched from: | Salesforce.com |
| Results with NetSuite: |
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The Challenge:
White Cloud are owners of Tree of Life, a family owned and run company that has been trading since 1979. Providing products from Asia and ethnic origins on a wholesale and retail level, the company has provided the Australian market with not only a unique range of gifts, clothing, homeware and jewellery, but also a special connection with the countries from which these goods are sourced. Tree of Life stores began in Sydney and today cover not only many areas of NSW but also ACT, QLD and VIC.
With such a large retail base established, the staff at the head office needed a powerful application that freed them from slow processes and enabled them to achieve more for the business.
White Cloud IT Director, Krishnan Borthwick, had the goal of creating an eCommerce website for the business that allowed customers to easily view a catalogue and make purchases online. With a keen interest in website design and a desire to learn more, Krishnan wanted to begin this project quickly. Ultimately he needed the website to become a central marketing platform, a commercial trading entity, as well as a base for providing the public with more information as to who the company is and what its values are.
The company’s existing Salesforce.com CRM system was not comprehensive enough to meet the needs of all the staff, and the separate accounting software was proving to be unreliable. Communication between management and the staff was an integral part of the business, and needed to be effective. There was a very general Intranet system available for internal communication, and a weekly newsletter was printed and couriered to the various stores which created a process that was slow and generated higher costs.
The Solutions:
White Cloud needed an integrated application to meet their CRM, accounting and eCommerce requirements. Krishnan was aware of NetSuite and after conducting some Internet research, was impressed with the large amount of areas it covered.
The one system was able to service the management team, the staff at the various stores and the customers who wished to purchase online. Krishnan could see that the cost of couriering newsletters would be eliminated as communication with the stores would be in an electronic format. Another benefit was NetSuite’s ability to provide confirmations of who had received the email correspondence and what they had done with it in terms of viewed, clicked on certain links or responded.
The Results:
Krishnan and his team were able to quickly commence the project of creating the layout for their new website using NetSuite. Exciting features were added such as the product catalogue that made online purchasing very simple for visitors.
NetSuite provided Whitecloud with many benefits and had a greater ability to service more areas of the business. “We were able to consolidate all the business functions into the one system, such as activity management, the website and the rostering system,” said Krishnan.
Job listings are now placed directly on the website, reducing the costs in finding new staff and eliminating the need to use external recruitment agencies. Also, their “Customer Centre/Employee Centre” which acts as an internal messaging system, allows stores to log a support issue such as a light bulb that needs to be fixed, and head office can respond to this quickly. “This system is much better than phone calls with messages being left that can be missed, and has heavily reduced the phone bills for the company” said Krishnan, who was able to then look into reducing the switchboard size as well.
Krishnan and his team have further goals for their website such as creating a blog site where buyers around the world can comment about products they like and don’t like. Since implementing NetSuite, Krishnan and his staff have been provided with much greater visibility into the Whitecloud operations, and with faster communication with each other they are able to save valuable time and money.
Find out more: contact NetReturn at 1300 886 025 or 0800 543 371
