Acumatica Case Study: Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales

Situation

Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales had been using their legacy ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV since 1998. While it served their needs early on, their continued success and growth uncovered some functionality gaps in the aging system.

First, the lack of functionality and customization in NAV meant the team was using multiple siloed systems to accomplish routine tasks. In addition to using Microsoft NAV, they were using Pipedrive for CRM, QuoteWerks to handle quoting, Excel for inventory, and more. None of the systems were integrated which meant a lot of manual processes for staff that were time consuming and potentially error prone. The sales team had no visibility with the lack of real-time inventory.

Next, their extensive service technician network struggled with lack of accessibility in the field. A service request had to be manually created. It would be printed, given to the technician who would go complete the work at the customer’s location, and then come back to inform the service manager the work was complete. With over 20 technicians across multiple states, this process was no longer sustainable for the Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales team.

After identifying a customer need for a bundled equipment and chemical provider, the Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales team extended their service offering to include chemical supplies. While it was a success and well received by customers, their legacy system failed to keep up with its lack of scalability.

Finally, critical financial reporting was a major challenge for the Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales team. They were routinely running 6 months behind in their financial reconciliation, not GAAP-compliant, and lacked the reporting and dashboards necessary for executives to make actionable decisions. Business units within the company also lacked any standardization of processes between them.

As a result of all these challenges, Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales was looking for a completely integrated, SaaS, ERP system that could improve accessibility in the field, provide better reporting/dashboards, streamline operations, standardize their processes, and more.

Solution

The company worked with Cloud 9 ERP Solutions, an Acumatica Gold Certified Partner, to implement and manage Acumatica to eliminate their siloed systems, streamline processes, and drive further growth with modern, cloud-based technology.

They are currently using Acumatica’s Distribution Edition and Acumatica’s Field Service Edition. This includes the robust financial management module, Repay, and Avalara. Some of the key new functionality they are using in these modules includes:

• Appointments: Instead of using the printed service request, technicians can now start and end appointments in the field providing instant status updates to users in the application.
• Mobile app: Technicians can now access customer history, capture payments, enter expense receipts, and capture signatures directly from their mobile device.
• Sales orders: The Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales team now has one central location to manage all sales activities – they can track prices, check available inventory, apply discounts, enter quotes, create shipments, and fulfill sales orders.
• Automated notifications: Order status, status changes, actions, notifications, and alerts automatically trigger during order processing, even allowing users to process an order in one click.
• Approvals: Manual approvals have been eliminated and replaced with standardized, tailored workflows and automated approval processes.

Results

Since migrating from Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Acumatica, the company has seen many benefits:

• Acquired a single, integrated, cloud-based solution, eliminating multiple siloed systems, manual processes, spreadsheets, and errors
• Gained operational efficiencies through the user adoption of standardized and streamlined processes
• Acquired accurate and real-time data with dashboard reporting for improved insights into financials, operations, and full visibility for the management team
• Obtained mobile access to data, critical for their growing number of technicians
• Improved customer service with new field-service technology
• Obtained a connected platform for growth that can scale as the business continues to evolve and add new employees, services, locations, and more.
• Eliminated 6-month backlog and gained real-time visibility into financial operations fortifying strategic business decisions

Southeastern Laundry Equipment Sales continues to see benefits from Acumatica in their everyday operations. With the valued partnership established with Cloud 9 ERP solutions, they can support the continued growth of their business through Acumatica.