NZ Brush is New Zealand’s leading manufacturer and supplier of industrial and commercial brushware.
They supply cleaning solutions for a broad range of customers, which has resulted in a complex business structure. They previously managed all their stock on a limited accounting software system, which resulted in a lot of stock management problems.
Hadleigh McPherson, National Marketing Manager at NZ Brush, spoke with Alicia Lineham about how Unleashed has served them since implementing the new software.
“It’s revolutionised how we’ve approached our strategic and operational management. It [previously] took 180 seconds to process a sales order. When we did our first sales order in Unleashed, it took 17 seconds.”
Trading spreadsheets for visibility
Previously, NZ Brush recorded all their product and manufacturing inventory data across multiple spreadsheets.
The result was poor visibility into the needs of the business.
“We want to always be in stock at all times. Our customers demand it. To not be able to measure that makes it really hard to achieve it.
“We can’t afford to run out of it – if we run out of it, we can’t sell it; they’re going to get it from somewhere else.”
The complications that arose decided for them: it was time to invest in a more efficient system.
“We had a lot of stock management problems,” Hadleigh explains. “We did a scoping document and decided all the things we needed, then we started looking.”
It wasn’t long before NZ Brush found what they were searching for.
“Our technical skills on computers weren’t particularly high, so we needed a nice, simple product.
“Pretty quickly we came across Unleashed. We solved a lot of those problems. It’s simple. It does everything we need it to do.”
Within weeks of going live, the benefits became clear.
“To be able to see our stock position live, right now, that’s gold. It means we can get out and sell with confidence.
“From that scoping document to where we are now, we’ve been able to evolve our workflows, our processes.”
Using Unleashed BI Vision to optimise strategic planning
Hadleigh says Unleashed’s business intelligence tool, BI Vision, has been instrumental in optimising strategic processes.
“[Before BI Vision] It took 3–5 days to pull together our reporting,” he explains, “and it was also 3–4 weeks too late. Our monthly reports would come in at the end of next month. Now it’s live.
“In our business planning, we used BI Vision to see what’s up, what’s down, and what we needed to correct.”
Faster reporting means quicker growth. And that can be everything for product businesses.
“We’re making faster decisions. We get the report now, we can make the decision tomorrow. It’s revolutionised how we’ve approached our strategic and operational management.”
We asked Hadleigh who he thinks can benefit from using BI Vision. His answer?
Everyone.
“[I’d recommend BI Vision] to anyone who sells a thing. I love it. How simple it makes running your business … it really is a dream.”
The result
Hadleigh believes Unleashed has helped them be more efficient in almost every achievable way:
“Right through the business, from order taking, processing information, pricing information… pretty much everything got streamlined. Unleashed weaves together all that information in a really consumable product.”
After going live, the time savings became apparent on day one.
“It [previously] took 180 seconds to process a sales order. When we did our first sales order in Unleashed, it took 17 seconds.
“It makes us a more streamlined business. [We’re] easier to deal with, [and it’s] easier to run the business so we can focus on the important stuff.”
We asked him what he liked most about Unleashed.
“The live view of our business, the ease, the speed, training our team in it – in fact, you barely even need to train in it. I like how it all interacts. It just all ties together so nicely. The user interface is clean, it looks good.
“Part of the benefit is that it’s not only easy to use; it’s easy to change to.”
Go on…
“That single data point that everything leads back to is its greatest strength.”
