Image Supply Labels Sage BusinessWorks "Great" for E-Commerce
Mike Grandstaff, owner of Image Supply, surveyed his thriving label maker and supply business and saw a way to make it better. "We noticed that an increasing amount of our sales were coming from the Internet," he says. "We were spending way too much time processing these orders manually. Our Sage BusinessWorks Accounting solution was meeting all our other requirements, but we needed a way to automate entry of orders from our Web site."
When Grandstaff did some research, he couldn't find a shopping cart that would exactly fit Image Supply's needs. He decided to work with his Sage business partner to create a new solution.
Sticking With a Winner
Grandstaff had been using Sage BusinessWorks products since 1991, when Image Supply was launched. The company distributes label makers from industry leaders like Brother, Dymo, Kroy, and Casio, plus related tapes and supplies. Its products are used by hospitals to mark medical supply drawers, buildings to identify electrical switches, and families to label everything from tool bins to lunchboxes. By advertising lower prices and larger inventories than national chain stores, the company has grown beyond Grandstaff's wildest dreams.
"When we opened our doors, our controller was given a sample copy of Sage BusinessWorks," says Grandstaff. "He installed it, and we've stuck with it ever since, upgrading to new versions of Sage BusinessWorks as they became available. We like it so much, in fact, that we didn’t even consider switching software products to get an off-the-shelf shopping cart feature."
With the help of his reseller, Grandstaff designed an e-commerce solution to manage Image Supply's business. It had to accommodate a wide variety of products and rapidly turning inventory. Therefore, the e-commerce solution had to be very robust.
"Incredibly Slick" Solution
Today, Image Supply handles about $2 million in orders using Sage BusinessWorks, an award-winning solution that streamlines key business functions and provides flexible reporting tools. Orders come in on the phone, by fax, in the mail, or through Image Supply's Web site. Sage BusinessWorks manages inventory with multiple warehouse control functions, and many costing and pricing options. The software provides real-time account balances, accurate cash management reports, and a built-in custom report writer-all integrated to offer an end-to-end system for complete business visibility.
"Adding a shopping cart to Sage BusinessWorks has reduced the time spent on data entry by half, eliminating the work of one full-time employee. It allowed us to grow our business by 50 percent without adding staff. I estimate that the solution is saving us a minimum of $40,000 a year."
"Because of the import capabilities in Sage BusinessWorks, we can now quickly and easily import orders directly from the shopping cart into our accounting software," explains Grandstaff. "Information on the product, bill-to address, shipping address, customer phone, and e-mail-everything, really-is entered by the customer, eliminating any errors on our end. Having e-commerce has reduced the need to invoice about 85 percent of our orders. It's incredibly slick."
Boosting the Bottom Line
Image Supply has achieved tremendous bottom-line benefits from its end-to-end system. "Adding a shopping cart to Sage BusinessWorks has reduced the time spent on order entry by half, eliminating the work of one full-time employee," Grandstaff notes. "To put it another way, it allowed us to grow our business by 50 percent without adding staff. I estimate that the solution is saving us a minimum of $40,000 a year."
Grandstaff is completely satisfied with his innovation. "Sage BusinessWorks really works great as an e-commerce solution,” he says. “I can’t even imagine not having it now."
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