Leading UK online office supplies company delivers seamless customer and supplier transactions

"Microsoft® Business Solutions-Navision® handles our entire sales and purchase transaction process. That may sound simple, but the fact that it does it robustly, seamlessly and incredibly efficiently makes it the most positive endorsement I can possibly give.” Richard Ingram, Finance Director, Netstationers.

Established in 2000, Netstationers became the UK’s first fully online office products company, with the mission to drive time and cost out of the office supplies procurement process. Netstationers operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, allowing its customers to place an order for any one of more than 20,000 products that will be delivered to them the next working day, with no need for any manual intervention. While the proprietary e-commerce platform upon which the business was built was provided by Netstationers’ parent company the Office Canopy Group, the company knew that it would need a robust financial solution to handle the sales and purchase transaction process; that solution proved to be Microsoft Business Solutions – Navision.

Situation
In the late 1990’s, as the Office Canopy Group developed its own proprietary e-commerce platform CanopyNET, the opportunity to establish its own ground-breaking online business became clear. At that time there was no totally online office products company, and the commodity nature of the market lent itself to the cost and time reductions enabled by effective e-commerce. Hence, in 2000, Netstationers was launched.

From day one, Netstationers was able to offer customers a product list including more than 20,000 items through its closely integrated relationship with Spicers Limited, the vast majority of which would be delivered the following day, and all at highly competitive prices. E-commerce technology drove further efficiencies. These included a reduction of the costs of administering the procurement process for the customer; cutting the costs within the supply chain through automation of processes; and increasing visibility of spend for the customer which would facilitate the introduction of buying policies enabling businesses to further reduce spend.

While Netstationers’ bespoke e-commerce platform was robust, the company looked for a ready developed financial solution to handle the sales and purchase transaction process. Richard Ingram, Netstationers’ finance director explains: “I felt very confident in the Office Canopy Group’s ability to develop an effective e-commerce platform; and equally confident that we’d be able to find an off-the-shelf financial solution to meet our immediate and future needs.”

Solution
Ingram began his search for a suitable financial solution with clear criteria: “We were a new business with no customers, but clearly didn’t see things staying that way for long! Our customer and transaction numbers were expected to grow rapidly and we therefore needed a solution that could easily scale to meet our growing business requirements, but which wasn’t too costly to implement initially.”

“In addition, the Netstationers business is 100% online, built upon a proprietary e-commerce platform. Any financial solution would need to be fully integrated and we would therefore need complete access to the underlying database. Finally, we wanted to be sure that we were implementing a solution that would continue to be developed and supported for many years.”

Ingram looked at a number of potential solutions in his search, finding that it was relatively easy to dismiss many immediately through their inability to meet his criteria. “Those that could scale significantly were far too expensive to implement as a start-up and, conversely, many at the right price point would clearly need replacement in a few years”, he explains.

It didn’t take too long, therefore, before Ingram settled upon Microsoft Navision as his solution of choice, ticking, as it did, all his key criteria. “What swung it for Microsoft Navision,” Ingram says, “were three things: it runs on a native SQL Server™ database, so accessibility was not a problem; it is highly flexible, which allowed us to integrate it seamlessly with our e-commerce platform; and being a Microsoft product, we were confident that it would be around and continually developed for many years.”

The solution was implemented and continues to be developed by Microsoft Business Solutions partner Tres Tria. Ingram had an existing relationship with the partner and trusted the Tres Tria team implicitly due to, in his words: “Their understanding of the business issues facing a commercial finance team allied to their depth of understanding of the solution.”

Benefits
Microsoft Navision handles a critical part of the Netstationers’ business; the entire sales and purchase transaction. That process being the acceptance of a customer’s online order, the generation of a purchase order from Netstationers to the appropriate fulfilment partner, receipt of despatch and delivery confirmation from the partner, the raising of the customer invoice and the handling of the inbound invoice from the fulfilment partner. Microsoft Navision ensures that the vast majority of this process is automated and paperless, generating significant time and cost efficiencies for Netstationers, its partners and its customers.

The ability of its financial solution to handle a rapidly growing number of simultaneous customer transactions was critical, particularly as, since its formation, Netstationers has seen transaction numbers double year on year, a trend that looks set to continue. The company will turnover around £10 million this year and predicts a figure close to £25 million next year. The solution in place appears to be up to the task of coping with such rapid growth; in Ingram’s own words: “I can foresee no limit on Navision’s ability to handle the explosion in customer transaction we have seen, and are still experiencing.”

In terms of quantifiable benefits, Ingram cites the significant time savings and efficiencies Navision has delivered to Netstationers, particularly in the administration of regular housekeeping procedures, such as the raising of customer invoices and financial reporting. An example is the time it takes the team to produce the daily sales figures, an obviously critical function of the finance department. “This is a task that would previously take someone about two and a half hours. Now, fully automated through Navision, it takes less than a minute. This effectively means that we’re reporting in real time”.

The user friendliness and intuitive nature of Microsoft Navision has also delivered benefits; reducing the time it takes for new users and members of the finance team to come onto the new system and start delivering value as part of the Netstationers’ finance team.

The ability to more closely see and analyse customer sales data through Microsoft Navision has benefits to both Netstationers and customers themselves. For Netstationers, a clear view of customer buying patterns means the ability to more effectively target marketing and sales efforts. In addition, by offering customers the ability to view their own purchasing data – in the near future over the web in virtual real time – customers can tailor their spend or purchasing policies to generate further savings and efficiencies, in turn improving the customer relationship.

Ingram concludes: “Microsoft Navision has delivered everything that we ever expected it to, and more. Working alongside Tres Tria, I am confident that we have a development plan in place that will meet Netstationers’ needs well into the future.”

If you would like to learn more about the above solution, please contact Lee Durrant of Tres Tria on:

 T: +44 (0)845 838 7800
 M: 07973 853 359
 E: lee.durrant@trestria.co.uk