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Crafting Success: How Acumatica Manufacturing Transformed the Style in Form Furniture Empire

Style in Form
Industry:
Distribution
Topic:
Distribution

Style in Form is a wholesale furniture broker located in Canada. For over two decades, the company has served as one of the country’s premier furniture providers to hospitality companies, hotels, restaurants, and retailers.

Key Results
50%
Reduced inventory tracking time by over 50% while reducing variance
$800,000
Reduced inventory by $800,000 in 9 months
Benefits
Streamlined inventory management and reduced inventory tracking time
Enhanced team communication and visibility into key data
Improved customer service and marketing
Informed, data-driven decisions across all areas of business

The Challenge

Style in Form is a wholesale furniture broker located in BC, Canada. For over two decades, the company has served as one of the country’s premier furniture providers to hospitality companies, hotels, restaurants, and retailers.

Before partnering with The Answer Company, Style in Form faced operational challenges stemming from their existing system, Sage 50, which handled accounting but had limited functionality in other areas.

The most pressing issue for the furniture company was the disjointed and manual handling of product information, inventory, customer information, KPIs, among other things. Using a range of platforms like Dropbox and Google Sheets to track data resulted in siloed and disparate sources of information, where only one or two employees knew their way around the inventory. This not only hindered productivity but hampered the ability to make strategic decisions.

According to Alison Buchanan, CEO & Owner of Style in Form, “We needed a brain for our business, a place where everything was located and stored.”

Style in Form’s challenge was exacerbated by a sprawling business, multiple warehouses, and pandemic-related inventory challenges. Managing inventory across multiple locations was a logistical nightmare, with limited visibility into stock levels, cost tracking, and timely order fulfillment. Moreover, COVID-related supply chain issues resulted in a huge inventory surplus, leaving the team with too much inventory and an overwhelming lack of visibility into their supply levels.

As a prominent furniture manufacturer with several potential streams of business, Style in Form decided they wanted to take their business to the next level and undergo a comprehensive digital transformation, upholding their commitment to serving their customers, empowering their employees, and growing strategically.

The Solution

Selecting the Right Tools for the Right Job

At the beginning, CEO Alison Buchanan spearheaded the quest to find the right ERP for the business, interviewing employees and doing meticulous research to find an ideal solution to fit their manufacturing and inventory needs.

It was crucial to Style in Form to implement a system that could provide inventory visibility, track costs, and have key information and reporting on hand to ultimately save costs. Essentially, the team needed all of their information in one place (from customer data to inventory) to be able to fully optimize their operations.

Ultimately, the team chose to proceed with Acumatica Manufacturing Edition and began working with The Answer Company as their chosen integration partners and ERP consultant team.

A Trusted Partner

Choosing The Answer Company was inspired by positive feedback from other leaders in the industry who had previously worked with the team. The Answer Company is one of Canada’s largest business management and software consultants specializing in Sage and Acumatica systems. With a mission of propelling business forward by empowering them with the right technology at the right growth stage, The Answer Company partnered with Style in Form to make the implementation as smooth, intuitive, and user friendly as possible.

“We have complete visibility into where inventory is at all times. Now we know where everything is. We’ve had the best inventory that we’ve ever experienced. Not only was it done in half the time, but we’ve had the lowest variance. My staff has been thanking me saying their lives are so much easier with the new system.”

— Allison Buchanan, CEO, Style In Form
Acumatica Manufacturing Edition

Acumatica Manufacturing Edition provides end-to-end business support for planning and controlling manufacturing operations. The technology offers an integrated environment to manage complex products, track materials, connect Bill of Material (BOM) with inventory, costs, and workflow. It is a highly-versatile tools for manufacturers seeking to optimize their operations. With experience in both this technology and the manufacturing space, The Answer Company corroborated Style in Form’s decision, supporting that Acumatica was the best possible ERP for their particular business needs.

Democratizing Inventory Tracking

In order to support the company’s goals of frictionless inventory tracking and data-driven decision-making, The Answer Company proposed the use of scanners and barcodes to create a universal repository for inventory tracking. This innovation was intended to democratize access to real-time inventory information, enabling all team members – rather than a select few – to make short- and long-term decisions.

According to Alison Buchanan, “Steve from The Answer Company helped us understand the best practices and steered the ship. Their support team was crucial during such a huge transition.”

Streamlined Implementation Process

Throughout the implementation process, The Answer Company worked in tandem with Style in Form to do the upfront work that would go on to make inventory tracking in the future seamless and intuitive.

The Results

Enhanced Inventory Visibility and Management or Reducing Inventory Management by 50%

Following the implementation of Acumatica in collaboration with The Answer Company, Style in Form radically transformed their visibility and insight into their inventory. The transition empowered the entire team to track inventory movements, which led to a remarkable 50% decrease in inventory management time. The new system meant that even non-technical staff can get access to crucial information at any time. Additionally, the new inventory system enabled Style in Form to reduce their inventory surplus by an incredible $800,000 in just nine months, a crucial development in their post-pandemic effort to eliminate overstocking.

Informed Decision-Making and Data-Driven Operations

With the successful transition, the Style in Form team can now access inventory, finance, reporting, customer information, KPIs, and more in one single place.  Armed with this information, Style in Form can now make identify and maximize their best-selling products, among other informed decisions. This data-driven approach has not only improved their efficiency but allowed them to cater to customers more effectively.

According to Alison Buchanan, “Now we operate as a cohesive unit, we move forward with everybody on the same page.” 

End-to-End B2B Functionality and Business Expansion

The integration of Acumatica had a profound impact on existing areas of the business, as well as opened up new opportunities. For one, the transition helped Style in Form to achieve fully end-to-end B2B capabilities. What’s more, the robust ERP system included the ability to enter the B2C market through e-commerce, further diversifying their offerings. Finally, the new system facilitated the expansion of their business model into room staging services. With a solid ERP foundation in place, Style in Form can continue to expand into new growth models.

Improved Customer Service and Organizational Cohesion

By eliminating siloed information sources and manual inventory tracking, Style in Form’s staff now have easy access to the information they need. Such access has impacted all areas of the organization, including enhancing customer service.

“We have complete visibility into where inventory is at all times. Now we know where everything is. We’ve had the best inventory that we’ve ever experienced. Not only was it done in half the time, but we’ve had the lowest variance. My staff has been thanking me saying their lives are so much easier with the new system.”

— Allison Buchanan, CEO, Style In Form

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