EUROPART

THE CHALLENGES

Europart has supplied domestic appliance white goods and spare parts since the 1970s. For a number of years it used Great Plains (now Microsoft Dynamics) for its enterprise system, and Actinic as its webstore database, with no interface between the two products. “We had to rekey information between the two,” admits Hutchinson. “Plus, our CRM system was virtually non-existent.”

Europart was facing the need to upgrade Great Plains, but the upgrade was going to be expensive and required a lot of downtime. “We recognised the opportunity for a new, integrated product, but the cost and downtime could scarcely be more disruptive than the prospective upgrade,” says Hutchinson.

Now that they were in the market for an electronic trading system and a CRM product, Europart briefly considered Sage, but didn’t like the fact that it used third parties to handle electronic trading.


THE RESULTS

Since installing NetSuite, H. T. Maddocks Ltd-trading as Europart — has seen Internet sales rise to 10 percent of sales. Real-time visibility of finances means that month-end figures are out precisely at each month’s end. And there is now total integration between the front and back-end operations — including inventory, warehousing, financing, and the website. There are no separate modules. It’s all one system, with no need for middleware or complicated interfaces.

“We have a better system than we had before, without spending more money than we were spending before, plus this system touches every part of the business,” says financial director Eddie Hutchinson.


“We began work late in February and went live on 1 June. It’s what we were told, and it’s exactly what happened. We put it down to good planning by BlueBridge One, and a great product”

Eddie Hutchinson - Finance Director