Background
With a history spanning more than 68 years, the team here at Diamond Apparelmaster Dry Cleaners has been looking after the workwear rental, linen hire, industrial laundry and dry cleaning needs of its almost 2,500 clients across the Central and Lower North Island. Diamonds have managed the trials of business growth which now boasts a team of over 100 at four main branches.
As the business grew and we expanded the products and services we were providing, we realised that finding the right business management system that could deal with the complexities of accurately invoicing a multitude of products across a varied range of rental and actual use periods was an absolute must for us to be able to run the business properly.
We had several key areas that we knew were causing us frustration:
- The previous Accounts Receivable (AR) system had no direct connection with our cashbook, which made for manual and time consuming reconciliations.
- Our data entry was very reliant on human accuracy instead of system based ‘checks and balances’.
- Historical data was also limited in terms of what you had access to and what you could re-print. Often you only had a limited ‘window of time’ within which to run month-end reports, and being able to access prior period reports on a ‘as at date’ was near impossible.
In general, the old system was not user friendly and not easy to self-learn.
We got Strategic Software on-board and after consultation with us, they knew what we needed and how to do it. They had software developed and customised for all Apparelmaster businesses as part of our Franchise, which is fully integrated with Advanced Business Manager, plus provided training and further customised reporting.
There have been so many benefits to using this system however, I’ll pick the top 5 that come to mind.
- Ability to generate detailed and tailored AR aged analysis reporting which are easily exported to MS Excel for further analysis.
- Ease of applying price increase ($ / %) across customers / customer groups.
- Ability to run Direct Debits with funds direct to our own bank account instead of a third party service provider.
- Automated emailing of customer invoices / statements.
- Ability to lock-down accounting periods, but then still have access to them for any month-end adjustments required
Our management team now have access to accurate reporting that allows for informed decision making – both in terms of analysing past results as well as forecasting for the future. One of the most powerful reports we had created by the Strategic Software team was the ability to run a report which would highlight the rental revenue earned from identical products, whilst at the same time calculating back to a common rental period if the rental frequency was different. This one report has the potential to add over $25k in annual revenue just by ensuring correct pricing is applicable across all customers.
Other reporting allows us to learn from what has happened historically to be able to better manage upcoming trends / business challenges. In general, we feel much more in control of what’s happening in our business and where we can improve or maximise our offering. The assistance that the team at Strategic Software have and continue to provide is invaluable.
This is one software application which can drive everything in the business, thereby ensuring a single operating platform with a single database.
Thomas Botha, Financial Manager, Diamond Group