Aptean Apparel ERP, Prima Edition Case Study: Price & Buckland

Aptean Apparel ERP Prima Edition Software Solutions

Price & Buckland Delivering phenomenal e-commerce efficiencies.

Industry Uniforms

Challenges

» Updating their manual online ordering processes

» Managing a wide product portfolio in a variety of colours, sizes, fit and embellishments

» Real-time stock and sales data for improved forecasting and demand planning

» Improved access to business

information and reporting to inform strategic decision-making

» Ensuring a first-class customer service, no matter the chosen route to market

» A scalable system that would grow with the business

An expert in school wear since 1959, Nottinghambased Price & Buckland manufacture and supply high quality uniforms. Renowned for having their own product development team together with a unique manufacturing capability, allowing customers to create bespoke uniforms using the latest fabrics and yarns available. Their overriding principle is to supply high quality uniforms in a socially responsible way, at affordable prices with exceptional customer service. From an initial consultation to designing modern and influential designs whilst keeping practicality in mind, they then provide a sampling service to bring uniform and sportswear ideas to life.

Following uniform production, they then use their vast experience and knowledge to arrange an efficient and easy distribution plan. From their new manufacturing base in India, they are now distributing uniforms to children in Europe, India, and Africa as well as Canada and the USA.

“The benefits we’ve seen aren’t just helping us to grow, but they also really help us to achieve our business aims. Cost savings and the ability to better service our customers have been extremely effective too and are instrumental in pushing the business forwards with our ongoing developments.”

The Situation The business offers several services to its customers; direct to parents for schools that don’t want direct involvement in the sale of their school uniform but want to ensure the style and quality of uniform remains consistent. Utilising their E-commerce service, they provide a simple, bespoke online ordering site where parents can view and order their child’s uniform 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Parents can order at their own convenience, with garments usually dispatched to a personal address within 5 working days.

A direct to school service; once a uniform has been agreed, including compulsory and optional items, and embroidery has been approved they can supply the garments directly into the school. However, bespoke the uniform might be, their direct into school delivery service is super-efficient and convenient, providing the option to keep stock in school or order it as and when required using their Stock Holding Service, freeing up space and resources. They also provide a direct to retail service via their wholesale operations to ensure an efficient and trusted service no matter the chosen route to market

The Solution With a rapid growth in sales from their web ordering service, it was essential for the business to find an integrated solution that could automate manual processes and deliver efficiencies to ensure the business could achieve their growth strategies. Price & Buckland has experienced so much growth since the implementation of the Aptean system that it had to purchase a new factory, which is being used to manage held stock for the increased number of orders now being taken.

“The business couldn’t have grown to the size it is now without the system – it’s worlds apart from what we had before.”

Why Aptean Apparel ERP? Aptean has been fundamental as a foundation for the significant growth of the business. Since the implementation of our applications, Price & Buckland has found that the new processes not only save the business a great deal of time and leave far less room for error, but also create a lesser requirement for people and paperwork, which saves the business money.

“We wouldn’t want to work with anyone else. The product and people are great – we fully expect Aptean to continue to be at our side as we continue to develop further, long into the future.”

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Key Benefits

» Business Information Manager provides forecasting and demand planning, as well as tracking orders through the system

» Barcoded purchase order and receipt process makes orders centralised for a single view of all stock and orders

» The introduction of back-to-back processing to automatically back sales orders to purchase orders

» Online ordering system for schools and parents with real-time view of stock and customer orders » Effective reporting on key performance indicators such as sales and margins

Supporting the Growth of Web Ordering One area of growth is the application and use of web ordering. Utilising the Aptean Web Services module, schools and parents alike are now able to place orders online, through a link on their individual school’s website.

This then integrates directly to Aptean Order Management which ensures everything is updated in real time to show an accurate, single view of stock and customers’ orders at all times. Easy to use web ordering allows for products to be shown in many different sizes and colour ways, with prices clearly displayed, so that parents can go online and order any item that the school has authorised. Products such as polo shirts can be ordered in several different styles, including girl-fit and unisex options, and are available with bespoke embroidery for products across multiple colourways (e.g., sweatshirts in the schools’ ‘House’ colours). If stock of a certain product is below 10, the website will automatically show stock of that product as being low and if a product is sold out, the next delivery date is displayed with an option to pre-order the item up to 2 weeks before it is due to be in stock.

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Moreover, pupil numbers within schools are increasing, with Primary schools catering for up to 800 pupils and a growth in popularity of academies, which can cater for around 1,200 to 2,000 pupils each. It’s therefore understandable that many schools simply do not have the time or manpower available to process their own orders, which has made Price & Buckland’s web ordering system critically important. Given the depth of choice and variety in colours, size, and products, it would be extremely difficult to maintain accurate orders and processing without our Web Services linking the web ordering sites to the central Aptean Order and Stock Management systems. Having this capability means that keeping track of web orders couldn’t be simpler for Price & Buckland, as Aptean creates a real-time view of stock and customer orders, on one single screen.

Real Evidence of Results Before Aptean Web Services was implemented, online ordering was a very manual process. The orders had to be printed off, input into a separate system and then the product was located, picked, and eventually despatched. This process was time-consuming, with some tasks being duplicated which gave room for error.

The time taken to process web orders is now easily 25% of that which was necessary before.

Improved Reporting and Visibility This continued sales growth has had a knock-on effect in all other areas of the business including financial management and information delivery. In a time where effective cash management is essential, our Credit Control module has proved invaluable for the business’ finance team, especially for creating call lists of customers to chase for payment. Business reporting has been dramatically enhanced with the introduction of the Aptean Business Information Manager module. It has facilitated more effective reporting on key performance indicators such as sales and margins. Also, as much of Price & Buckland’s orders are seasonal, Aptean Business Information Manager has been invaluable for forecasting and demand planning, as well as tracking orders through the system.

Before Aptean Business Information Manager was implemented, it was very difficult to know what had been embroidered or not and often things would get lost. Now, there is no need for manual processes, as purchase orders and receipts are bar-coded and so can simply be scanned into Order Management module. This makes orders centralised and easy to see, with a single view of all stock that comes and goes on one screen. Additionally, the introduction of back-to-back processing, which provides the ability to automatically back sales orders to purchase orders, has proved to be extremely useful - as it allows users to see where products and orders are at all times of the sales process.

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Ready to Modernise Your Apparel Business?

Learn more at www.aptean.com/apparel or visit www.aptean.com/request-demo.

The PrimaNet solution has been rebranded as Aptean Apparel ERP Prima Edition. With the additional resources and scale of Aptean, we can accelerate innovation as we continue to deliver state-of-the-art enterprise solutions to support the fashion and apparel industry. We are ideally placed to help our customers grow their businesses, while increasing efficiency, productivity and profitability.

About Aptean

Aptean is one of the world’s leading providers of purpose-built, industry-specific software that helps manufacturers and distributors effectively run and grow their businesses. With both cloud and on-premise deployment options, Aptean’s products, services and unmatched expertise help businesses of all sizes to be Ready for What’s Next, Now®. Aptean is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To learn more about Aptean and the markets we serve, visit www.aptean.com.

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