DJ Papers were facing a growing problem: their bespoke backend system was hampering business growth and their inventory management was spiralling out of control. We had a chat with Karyn Greenwood, finance manager of DJ Papers on how their team overcame those problems.
DJ Papers have been a family-owned and run business since 1972. We supply a diverse range of paper to the business, education, public and private sectors, as well as to the general public. Our products are made from our site in Langley, Berkshire. We have a wide range of bespoke stationery items — Wiro bound books, scrapbooks, envelopes, assorted packs of paper and more.
Growing pains with legacy software
Before Unleashed, we were using Global 3000 to manage our bespoke manufacturing process but it was a server-based program that caused us many headaches with our inventory management and accounting. We had moved our accounting to Xero but we still had stock control problems with our previous inventory management system. My friend, who is an accountant in New Zealand, recommended Unleashed Software as a Xero add-on. The biggest struggle we had with our previous system was not being in control of our stock. For example, we could see how much stock we’ve got but it didn’t account for packaging — without visibility of packaging, we were always running out of boxes. We tried using a Bill of Materials to take into account packaging, but that was not used consistently throughout the business. Our warehouse manager also lacked visibility over our stock levels.
Embracing the benefits of cloud-based apps
We looked into Unleashed a year before we eventually signed up and it is what we were looking for in a software: it’s a cloud-based system that was constantly being improved — without added costs. We used to physically drive our delivery notes to our other site 10 minutes away. We receive orders throughout the day, so that meant that we’d have to wait until the end of the day and pick products late into the night. With Unleashed, our warehouse is much more streamlined so we are able to plan what deliveries we have tomorrow — without doubling up. We’re now running our business much more efficiently with Unleashed — we’re no longer running out of boxes and our warehouse manager can easily see at a glance that our stock levels are as they should be!“Productivity has certainly benefited. We are able to see low stock alerts and streamline our warehouse — it’s so much better.”In particular, we’ve made great use of the sales and purchasing module, as well as the doc designer. We love the flexibility of the doc designer to fit our business needs. We don’t even need to do a stock take every month because our stock is constantly updated in our system in real-time — we’re doing much better.
The future of DJ Paper’s inventory management
Using Unleashed has been a great experience so far. Even if I run into any problems, I can just email the UK team and get answers really quickly. Their responses are thorough and have step-by-step instructions so I can keep going back to reference them. Recently, our year-end accounts have been done. With Unleashed and Xero working in sync, our accountant is going to love us next financial year! We’ve even recommended Unleashed to another company. They want to leave Sage and came in to see how we use Unleashed and Xero in our workflow.
