Storage Planning and Sales Ltd

Company Background

Established in 1978, Storage Planning and Sales Ltd (SPS) has matured into the leading storage and interior solutions provider in Northern Ireland, supplying small to large sized companies. Based in Belfast, SPS currently employs 20 staff with a turnover of stg£3 million.

Comprising three specialist divisions, SPS Storage, SPS Interiors and SPS Catalogue, SPS offers a turnkey integrated service of storage, interior design and facilities management together with complete installation and project management. SPS design and install storage solutions to maximise space potential within warehousing, retail, leisure, healthcare, heritage, automotive, emergency services and commercial environments. SPS Interiors design, fit-out and furnish offices, showrooms, leisure, café, restaurant and bar environments.

SPS prides itself on not only its products and services but also on its excellent customer service.

The Challenge

Before the installation of Access Accounts, SPS were using 5 stand alone systems that had to be managed independently of each other. This was tremendously time consuming and highly labour intensive. Having looked at their processes and needs, SPS had some clear objectives of what they needed from a solution – scalability, speed, cost savings, integration, advanced reporting, reliability and efficient support. According to Howard Boles, Accounts Manager at SPS, “We needed a system that would manage our entire business process to incorporate sales, purchase, stock control, invoicing and credit control activities. Access Accounts has provided us with this and much more.”

Access Accounting was recommended to Boles by a company in the same industry and he decided to see what they had to offer. “We researched a wide range of different systems on the market. Ideally we wanted to go with a local vendor, however, as Access Accounts came highly recommended, with a very strong track record we took the chance – and we definitely made the right decision. Their expertise in understanding our business processes was the key”.

The Access Solution

What began as an accounts solution for SPS has grown to become an end-to-end business management system for the company. Now with three specialist divisions – Interiors, Storage, Catalogue, and an outsourced Installation division all needing to be managed and monitored effectively, SPS required a powerful and secure system, which Access Accounts has provided.

Once SPS decided to go with Access Accounting they wanted to make the migration as quick and seamless as possible. This was achieved with the implementation program managed by Access Accounting, and was, according to Boles “a smooth excellent transition”. Access Accounting carried out a detailed training program which Boles felt was “excellent, it provided answers to individual requirements from the system to maximise the benefits we got.”

Access Accounting comprises 35 interchangeable modules which can be added to at any time as the company grows and develops. In addition to the core ledgers, SPS also use Stock, Credit Control, CRM, Sales Order Processing and Purchase Order Processing. Once the initial deployment was completed, all previous applications were transferred into the Access System.

In Detail

CRM. This is where the whole business process begins for SPS. This is where sales enquiries are logged. Whether an enquiry or a proactively generated lead, all information is logged with the Access Accounts CRM module. Detailed reports are printed on a regular basis to track the status of these leads, in order to make sure they have been actioned and what next steps are required. Details are available of leads at any given time, by product, rep and location and are just a sample of some of the sales management information that is pulled from the Access Accounts.

Sales Order Processing (SOP). Once a lead has progressed to a quotation stage, this quotation or estimate is generated within Access Accounts and assigned a unique reference number for tracking purposes. Once again all quotations and their status are reported on regularly within SPS; this allows their sales and marketing department to ensure that all customer enquiries and potential sales are dealt with efficiently and thoroughly. Should this quotation be accepted as an order by the customer, it is then immediately converted in to a sales order, again within Access Accounts, this time it is created within the SOP module.

Purchase Order Processing (POP). Using the Unique reference code assigned at quotation stage, all historic information is available at the touch of a button giving full traceability at all times. At this point Access Accounts triggers an automatic back-to-back purchase order that will be sent to a supplier in order to fulfil the customer order, thereby merging the sales and purchase processes into a single integrated process.

Stock. Once the new stock arrives, it is entered in to the Access Accounts Stock management module, where the stock is automatically allocated to the sales order and despatched for delivery immediately.

Invoicing. The process however doesn’t end there. Once despatched, the order is invoiced within Access Accounts using the original unique reference code assigned at the quotation stage, once again maximising the traceability of all stages of the sales process.

Once an invoice is due for payment the Credit Control Module will allow full management of the cash collection process, and provides the detailed reporting required by SPS.

What the users at SPS like best about the system is, amongst other things, the ability to drill in to the complete history of a sales transaction from the initial contact to the end of the cycle, using the unique 360° views and Smart Tag reporting.

The Future

The future looks rosy for SPS with turnover already up from last year and orders rolling in.

Their ability to better manage this growth can be directly attributed to their deployment of Access Accounts. “We now have a vast range of available information throughout the company supporting not only the accounts, credit control and management departments, but also for the sales and marketing departments”, concluded Boles.