Glomail

Glomail began life in 1986, as a mail order business specialising in books. With a current network of 40 fully owned shops, 35 franchises and over 300 ‘Shop within a Shop’ chain store outlets, it is now one of South Africa’s largest suppliers of domestic consumables and innovative lifestyle products. These can range from anti-bacterial swimming pool treatments to personal exercise machines. Glomail sources and develops many of these items itself and, within the last few years, has moved into the production of television commercials. “As seen on TV” is a phrase increasingly associated with the Glomail brand.

Complex requirement, separate solutions… and bigger problems

The organisation comprises a total of 14 companies, which places considerable demands upon any accounting system. Operations Manager, Nick Eleftheriades, explains why the decision to change was made: “We needed greater accuracy and a more manageable, efficient and stable system. Integration was a particular problem – following the introduction of a bespoke POS system, we found ourselves re-keying a huge amount of data. This impacted on the time we could devote to stock control and management reporting, two areas which were already causing us concern.

The search for a single, integrated alternative

Initially, the search for an alternative did not progress as smoothly as Nick had hoped. When the customised solution promised by one vendor failed to materialise, he turned his attention to packaged software. Glomail was on the brink of making a final decision when it agreed to a last minute presentation from the local Access Specialist Centre. “The flexibility and capabilities of the Access solution came across extremely well during that first presentation,” says Nick. Purchase of a 50-user Dimensions system was confirmed shortly afterwards.

The expertise and commitment demonstrated by the Specialist Centre was equally significant. Its consultants listened carefully to Glomail’s requirements, before completing installation on time and within budget.

Realising the benefits of integration with Dimensions

Dimensions quickly delivered the expected benefits. “We tightened stock control and started using the system’s high quality reports to shape our decision-making. The ability to go back in time and carry out detailed analysis of our historical data was particularly useful.”

But if one factor dominated all others in the selection of software and supplier, it was the need for integration. And when it comes to the benefits of the new system, integration has proven to be in a league of its own. “True integration has led to a massive decrease in duplication, freeing up time for a large number of staff and leading to far greater efficiency,” says Nick.

Dimensions’ SQL database contains all the triggers needed to synchronise records across the company – making sure changes to customer and supplier details held in the accounts automatically update every other application, even down to the telephone directory. Nowhere is the true value of ‘open database connectivity’ (or ODBC) more evident than in the full integration of Dimensions with Glomail’s Warehouse Movement System and custom POS solution.

For instance, while Sales Orders are received and fulfilled by the group’s main stock company, entering these orders into the accounts (and generating the associated paperwork) is the sole responsibility of a secondary company. In the past, these separate activities relied on a complex paper trail and a huge amount of duplicated effort. Today, capturing a new order automatically generates the corresponding Invoices and Purchase Orders in Dimensions, significantly reducing time spent on data re-keying.

Similarly, consolidated figures from the numerous shops used to be captured manually. But with SQL Server at its core, Dimensions can automatically update every line of every invoice into a single database. In the first nine months of operation, over 250,000 invoices were generated in the main accounting database with no reduction in speed of processing. This has provided greater business efficiency and given the management team instant access to detailed information for statistical reporting.

The system’s ability to not only integrate with, but also leverage the value of Glomail’s other applications has turned out to be one of the more unexpected benefits of Dimensions. In particular, the warehouse solution has rapidly grown in importance and is now proving extremely effective across the entire company. This application produces consolidation picking slips from multiple Sales Orders, and from there allows individual packing slips to be created against each order. It also handles returned goods and stock takes, while updating Dimensions with all stock movements on a real-time basis.

Integrating process-specific solutions with the back-office accounts has also enabled a greater degree of automation… and further timesavings. If a new General Ledger or Stock code is added to the main company, this is then automatically copied to all relevant companies in the group. This ‘trigger’ reduces time previously wasted on tracking inconsistencies across databases, and facilitates the straightforward generation of consolidation reports for the entire group.

A strong and flexible future

Dimensions has greatly improved the specific business processes it was designed for and is helping Glomail pull together its separate applications into a coherent whole. Given the challenges presented by South Africa’s turbulent economy, operating at this level of efficiency is essential. Despite these conditions, Glomail is anticipating sales growth of up to 20% for the current financial year. This confidence is boosted by the knowledge that it now has an accounts solution with the functionality, flexibility and capacity to drive and support further expansion.