Duckworth & Kent
Wholesale distribution
Duckworth & Kent (D&K) is a leading global manufacturer of high-quality titanium reusable ophthalmic instruments, and distributes its range of more than 500 products worldwide.
The family business chose NoBlue2 to design and implement a NetSuite OneWorld solution to free it from the shackles of executing time-consuming business tasks, integrate warehouse operations and access the real-time data needed to facilitate a 360-degree company view.
As a Sage system user for many years, D&K felt it needed to embrace a cloud-based system and move away from a Sage solution that has reached the end of its development lifecycle – why invest in optimisation of a legacy product?
D&K wanted to improve flexibility within the organisation, achieve the agility required in a changing landscape and gain full automation with an intuitive warehouse management and financials solution. Ultimately, D&K craved a state-of-the-art futureproof, scalable software architecture and Sage did not meet these requirements.
D&K was executing business tasks such as accounting, sales order processing and warehouse operations manually. There was no easy way of accessing the real-time data needed to facilitate informed business decisions – the company was heavily reliant on paper reports for key business information such as sales figures. There was also a requirement to close down their Sage system for the end of month process, as well as the end of year financials. This was restrictive to operations, including to the team members involved in this process when it came to taking annual leave.
The automation capacity set up within NetSuite by NoBlue2 negates this month and year end downtime. With automation of tasks such as customer statements and remittance generation and sending, the valuable time of accounts operatives is considerably freed up. The firm can also be largely paperless, with headed paper now replaced with electronic templates, created by NoBlue2 within NetSuite.
With D&K utilising a system of three distribution operations, whose systems were not linked, the processes were open to errors and the manual execution of tasks laborious and time consuming. With disparate information sources, it was impossible to get a real-time view of operations across the business.
When it came to stock checking and ordering, the company relied on manual processes that involved generating job numbers, printing of job cards for items that were nearing end of stock and creating individual cards for out-of-stock items. The ordering of these items would then be manually processed. The procedure would incur hours of work, with repetitive input of supplier and customer details across multiple documents, presenting not just a mammoth resource investment but also carrying a huge error risk.
With NoBlue2’s integrated NetSuite architecture in place, the process is now automated, meaning a stock check, management and ordering is a one-touch process executed in minutes. There is also the capability to set preferred stock levels, so operatives can take a step back from order and stock management. Elements such as production planning, parts ordering, stock and sales orders and customer service are connected, and the three warehouse site operations are now fully integrated.
As a NetSuite partner with high-level solution expertise, NoBlue2 can customise the solution to meet the specific needs of the business it is working with. Working closely with the team at D&K, NoBlue2 was able to ensure that the warehouse management elements of the solution were created around their unique requirements and its three sites.
With a real requirement to ensure the transition to the new system would not affect customer experience, NoBlue2 prioritised making the process seamless: D&K received stock, took orders and shipped on day one of ‘go live’.
Industry: Ophthalmic instruments manufacturer
Location: Hertfordshire, UK
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