Type
Manufacturing
Client Overview
Equine Exceed are providers of competition-safe horse supplements.
Project Brief
Equine Exceed were struggling with their stock control, which was a complex mix of spreadsheets. These spreadsheets introduced risk into the business as really only one person understood it. There were a number of times where production had paused for a particular product because they had run out of ingredients – although the spreadsheets said it should be in stock.
Equine Exceed needed a solution that not only kept an accurate stock record of ingredients, but also something that allowed for the required traceability of the ingredients and sign off processes. The solution needed to be something that anyone could use at any time, meeting the diverse range of computer skills.
Equine Exceed were previously using Sage 50 and had not long migrated to Quickbooks Online, which removed some of the ‘features’ they had used within Sage 50.
They were also using Shopify as their eCommerce platform – relying on the traditional method of receiving a new order confirmation and manually processing this.
How we achieved it/Solution
We identified three potential solutions for Equine Exceed; a cloud based stock management system, a cloud based manufacturing system, and a cloud based stock system ‘made for’ online sellers.
We implemented the new cloud-based stock management system – chosen out of the three as it was more compatibility with users technical capabilities (we wanting something that was easy), that both integrated with Quickbooks online (to remove the need to duplicate invoices) and Shopify (to remove the need to manually re-key orders).
The cloud based stock management system was adapted to ensure that the required traceability paperwork could be printed. This paperwork was a legal requirement.
New processes were also implemented to ensure stock levels were accurate in the system.
We also made some enhancements to their Shopify store to improve the customer experience.
Outcome/Benefit
Immediately implementing the system removed the pain they were experiencing with stock levels, as well as simplifying bookkeeping processes (such as invoice processing).
Equine Exceed can now also correctly forecast the ingredients they will need.
Choosing the right software, and implementing it correctly provided the de-skilling of the stock management role, and enabled Equine Exceed to re-structure in a way that more personnel were available to manage the increase in manufacturing and at the same time reduce overhead costs.