2:50 a.m., Thursday, 8 January 2009
Great Results for Furniture Manufacturer/Importer!
EstarOnline's iSAMS system has been used by manufacturing and import company Debonaire Furniture to significantly reduce its freight costs, simplify its administration and provide improved information flows to management.
Debonaire is using the iSAMS system to run an automated distributed dispatch system whereby orders are allocated to one of three contract warehouses depending on the location of the customers to which the product is being shipped.
Contractors, located in three different geographical locations, access the web-based iSAMS dispatch module every day, to check for orders and then process any new business using the software's simple step-by-step functions which generates pick lists, packing slips, shipping documentation and up to the moment status reports for both staff and clients.
All product movements from the different contractors are instantly updated to Debonaire's centralised management reporting system. This in turn is integrated with the Company's MYOB financial system that eliminates multiple entries at the orders/dispatch and billing stages. Every order is only entered once.
According to Debonaire managing director Stuart Davenport the system is of benefit to both the company's manufacturing division and its increasingly important import business out of China.
“As unit values and shipping rates rise, freight costs are becoming an increasingly important determinant of profitability," he said.
"The iSAMS system has allowed us to significantly reduce our freight costs to below industry normal standards."
"The distributed model would be a nightmare if it was paper-based, but with the iSAMS system orders cannot get lost and any product shipped will automatically be billed.”
Another benefit of the iSAMS system is the quality of the management reports that can be generated.
"I know our management information is better than that of our competitors and we are often able to assist customers through clearly presenting their sales performance in a more concise and accurate way than their own systems," he said.
According to Stuart Davenport the furniture retailing industry is not renowned for its adaptation of technology. However, some customers are now beginning to use the browser-based iSAMS system to check up on order status rather than phoning the Debonaire representative. Mr Davenport is hopeful that in future customers will begin to use the iSAMS website to input their own orders directly to further reduce Debonaire's administrative load.
