This recently released case study shows how Leathams derived a wide range of benefits by installing a Dynamics GP solution from Trinity.

“Dynamics GP has helped improve sales performance and made a substantial contribution in supporting the growth of the company.”
Douglas Dunbar, Financial Director, Leathams Plc

Leathams Plc a specialist in the provision of fine foods to Foodservice, Manufacturing and Retail turned to Trinity and Microsoft to improve business efficiency, sales performance and the control of profit margins.

Business objectives:

• To improve the way data was accessed and maintained
• To provide the all important telesales department with a system that helped them to sell and improve the speed of order taking
• To use targeted Promotions to more effectively sell short dated stock
• To improve margins through more targeted pricing
• To significantly improve journey planning and the use of the delivery fleet

Business benefits:

• 78% increase in turnover; staff levels unchanged
• Organic growth through improved telesales
• More efficient use of the transport fleet
• Greater flexibility in pricing
• Reduced debtor days
• Improved efficiency in all departments
• Informed decision making

Rationale for the Project

Leathams Plc is an independent company with over 170 employees, specialising in the provision of fine foods to Foodservice, Manufacturing and Retail markets across the UK and Eire, with nearly 80% of sales under its own national brands.
A rapidly growing business and an increasing demand for up to date information across all company departments prompted a comprehensive review of IT systems. Douglas Dunbar, Financial Director, and Roland Moorcraft, IT Manager, had a clear set of objectives from the beginning:

• To improve the way data was accessed and maintained
• To provide the all important telesales department with a system that helped them to sell and improve the speed of order taking
• To use targeted Promotions to more effectively sell short dated stock
• To improve margins through more targeted pricing
• To significantly improve journey planning and the use of the delivery fleet
• To give the credit control department a system that allowed them to master debt collection

Catering for Key Business Requirements

Leathams wanted to be certain that they were choosing a system that had a long term future and a sizeable R&D budget. Microsoft stood out as a major player with a very clear commitment to heavily investing in Business Solutions through their Microsoft Dynamics brand. Furthermore the software benefited from being closely integrated to familiar Microsoft products such as Office which were already being used throughout the business. They soon learned that Dynamics was sold through authorised resellers and were directed by Microsoft to Trinity, a well established Dynamics partner with 20 years experience in the food sector and a wealth of industry knowledge.

Driving Growth Through Improved Telesales

Dynamics GP has the tools for integrated EDI systems to manage the trading relationships with the supermarkets, which accounts for a sizeable proportion of turnover. However Leathams also have a thriving foodservice business where the telesales department has a vital role to play. It was in this area particularly that the new system was expected to generate increased sales and improved customer service. Douglas Dunbar, Financial Director, takes up the story:
‘We knew if we could speed up the order entry process in the telesales department our customers would be happier and it would give the telesales team a greater opportunity to do some selling. Using Trinity’s quick telesales module for Dynamics order entry, the software prompts the operator with information that helps them to ‘up sell’ and ‘cross sell’ where appropriate. Also by seeing history we can make sure the customer hasn’t forgotten to order the products they buy regularly. Without doubt the telesales system has made a substantial contribution to supporting our growth since we went live and this was always a key driver for the project.’

A fully featured diary system to manage pro-active call outs to customers and prospects allows for targeted promotional activity including campaigns to sell short dated stock. Roland Moorcraft, IT Manager explains: ‘The in-built business intelligence of Dynamics tells us who buys what and how often and just as importantly we can identify what they’ve stopped buying.  We can now generate call schedules and target promotional deals to the customers most likely to buy. This is particularly useful for selling off end of line stock. With the result that we have lower wastage than we might otherwise have.’

Another key feature of the Order Entry module is the option to see the total margin for an order. Roland continues: ‘We look to our telesales people to use the margin information to reach economical order targets. What’s more the telesales software estimates a delivered margin on each order at time of order entry. We are now on top of things in a way that was impossible with our last system.’

Improved Vehicle Loading & Journey Planning

Tony Sherlock, Leathams Warehousing & Transport Manager has been impressed by the Journey Planning & Vehicle Loading module: ‘Since ‘going live’ on Dynamics we have been able to see journeys building up as orders come in to the system. We get early notification if a vehicle is going to be overloaded or going out half empty. The bottom line is we are using the delivery fleet more efficiently and most importantly we are getting our vehicles on the road that much sooner and our customers are getting a better service.’

Flexible Pricing & Improved Margins

Food distribution companies require pricing software that can cope with complex customer deals that need to be managed and maintained with ease. The restrictions of the old system were a headache for the IT department as Roland recalls: ‘The pricing options on the old system were much more limited and it did not have the tools and flexibility to keep pricing up to date. There is now so much more we can do. It means our customers are getting the deals they want on the products that are important to them.’

The flexibility of the pricing has produced some unexpected benefits too: ‘When we bought GP we hadn’t appreciated that Trinity’s pricing module allowed for restricted price lists which effectively controls what you can sell to a customer. It helped us to win contracts by ensuring we only sell the products that are listed in our contract with them.’

Reducing Debtor Days

The original objectives for the Credit Control Department have also been met. The comprehensive nature of the Credit Management module has allowed credit managers to focus their attention on the customers that are deviating from their normal terms of business. As Douglas reports: ‘Previously the debt collection process was more long winded, from time to time this would result in us failing to spot a broken ‘promise to pay’ or quickly highlight a customer whose payment pattern was changing for the worse. Now the software takes the strain and helps to identify the problems early on.  Our debtor days have improved overall.’

More Informed, More Efficient, More Agile

The improvements to the way in which day to day processes are managed by the software have certainly contributed to Leathams continued success but it has been some of the more generic features of the system that have had the biggest impact. Roland explains:  ‘If there was one thing that used to frustrate us most about our old system it was the inability to get to management information easily. Simple reports could take hours to produce and the average user could never dream of generating ‘ad hoc’ queries or reports themselves. It was always an IT function. All that changed when we went live on Dynamics. All users, subject to security permissions, are now empowered to access the data they need to do their jobs effectively. We no longer have a queue of requests for reports because with the tools available in Dynamics, in half an hour, I can teach the average user to do it themselves.’

This system flexibility goes beyond reporting and queries to encompass the ability to add additional fields to the database without the need for programming, Roland continues: ‘Previously if there was some additional information we wanted to hold in the system, say an additional field in the customer master file for instance, it was a programming job that we would have to pay our supplier for and of course we’d have to wait. Now we can do it ourselves and it couldn’t be simpler. Now information that was previously on spreadsheets and scattered across numerous PCs is all in the Dynamics SQL database and it’s available to everyone that needs it. We are better informed as a result and of course that means we all have the potential to do our jobs more effectively.’

Plans for the Future

Douglas Dunbar has the final word: ‘Since we made the decision to buy Microsoft Dynamics our turnover has increased by 78% whilst our staff levels have remained pretty much the same. There is a widespread acceptance in the business that we are significantly more efficient and certainly more informed. Trinity has proven to be a reliable and knowledgeable partner who has helped us make the most of the system and there is still a lot more we can do. I think the Microsoft connection is the icing on the cake for us. If you are spending money on IT you want to be as certain as possible that your system has a long term future and we believe we have that.’

Click here to view the PDF case study