CUSTOMERS
Guhring Ltd
Guhring ‘cut’ out data
duplication with navision
With time and cost savings across the business and a complete eradication of data duplication, Guhring are reaping the benefits of implementing a new business solution from Microsoft.
Guhring Ltd is a subsidiary of their €500m turnover parent. Employing over 58 people in the UK, Guhring Ltd manufacture, stock and distribute engineers’ cutting tools to the UK and Irish markets.
Two years ago the Guhring group made a decision to change its subsidiary solutions and replace them with one of two solutions, Microsoft Business Solutions Navision or SAP. Guhring Ltd made the decision, after extensive evaluation that SAP was too complex for their operation and hence opted to implement Navision, something they felt more closely matched their requirements, but also gave them the option to tailor the system to fit their business needs.
Guhring had three disparate systems in place and data re-entry was taking a lot of time and effort. The three systems DataEase, Sun Systems and Filemaker were not integrated and hence visibility of customer information was extremely limited.
“We had massive data duplication issues across the whole business and no holistic view of our customer information” stated Mike Dinsdale – Managing Director Guhring Ltd. “We could take an order on one system only to find that the account was on stop on another”
Guhring then needed to evaluate the right partner to trust with the implementation. Guhring wanted a proven company that would listen, understand and provide the optimum system and support for Navision. “Metaphorix was duly chosen for this purpose and they have exceeded our expectations” commented Dinsdale
Guhring were up against significant time constraints and needed the solution in place for the new calendar year. This meant a rapid implementation that was to take 3 months from start to finish. “We never thought that all three systems would be replaced and fully implemented in the timescales, but the consultant that Metaphorix assigned to our project was excellent, he understood our requirements immediately and was able to help and advise throughout the project. This enabled us to deliver the project for the 1st January on time and to budget – Impressive!” stated Dinsdale.
Data was taken from all 3 systems and integrated into Navision, Filemaker in particular proved a real challenge due to the complexity of the production information held within it. “I really didn’t believe we would transfer the Filemaker data and have it setup for go live, but remarkably we were all set to go from day one.”
Navision embraced all elements of the business, from sales & purchase order processing thru to production control. Guhring needed greater efficiency, increased levels of control and improved traceability and accuracy, which they now feel they have achieved. Ultimately this is helping them to support their customers more effectively than ever before.
This created a whole raft of issues, particularly in the management of stock. “We realised that we had been undervaluing our stock by over £40,000” commented Yvonne Clune – Accounts Manager. “Now our stock is 100% accurate, as all the data is in a single database, rather than spread across three different databases and stock evaluation is instant”
Clune continued “We have also reduced our stock holding by over 5000 items since implementing Navision, as we have been able to identify slow & non moving items quickly and efficiently. When you carry over 35,000 items accuracy is key, Guhring now produce regular ‘special offer’ reports from Navision, which they send out to their distributors, which promote slow moving goods and hence reduce inventory costs”
Clune further commented that the drill down
features within Navision, provide her with a level of information not previously
achievable. In fact reporting is much easier than before and that is key for
Guhring to manage their own business, this is also key for reporting back to
their German parent.
“The system is so easy to use that we find ourselves writing our own reports and doing minor system changes in fact Metaphorix have encouraged us to do this, rather than incurring the cost of getting them to undertake the work”. This is particularly beneficial at a user level as users now have all the information at their finger tips. This has freed up Clune to focus on producing real management information, rather than supporting users with day to day transactional issues. Users are no longer just data inputters, they actually take on the responsibility to resolve issues themselves because the system is so easy to navigate.
This created a whole raft of issues, particularly in the management of stock. “We realised that we had been undervaluing our stock by over £40,000” commented Yvonne Clune – Accounts Manager. “Now our stock is 100% accurate, as all the data is in a single database, rather than spread across three different databases and stock evaluation is instant”
Clune continued “We have also reduced our stock holding by over 5000 items since implementing Navision, as we have been able to identify slow & non moving items quickly and efficiently. When you carry over 35,000 items accuracy is key, Guhring now produce regular ‘special offer’ reports from Navision, which they send out to their distributors, which promote slow moving goods and hence reduce inventory costs”
Clune further commented that the drill down features within Navision, provide her with a level of information not previously achievable. In fact reporting is much easier than before and that is key for Guhring to manage their own business, this is also key for reporting back to their German parent.
“The system is so easy to use that we find ourselves writing our own reports and doing minor system changes in fact Metaphorix have encouraged us to do this, rather than incurring the cost of getting them to undertake the work”. This is particularly beneficial at a user level as users now have all the information at their finger tips. This has freed up Clune to focus on producing real management information, rather than supporting users with day to day transactional issues. Users are no longer just data inputters, they actually take on the responsibility to resolve issues themselves because the system is so easy to navigate.
The traceability on the system makes it very easy to identify the root cause of any issues, even identifying this down to a particular user, this helps to address problems very quickly and identify where users may be having issues and may require advice or further training.
The ability to reduce debtor days has also been hugely improved. Previously it would take 2 days to produce a debtor report, this made running the report cumbersome and time consuming, hence they would not be run that frequently, this now takes under three minutes on Navision and Guhring can run it whenever they want, providing them with an instant view of monies owed.
Integration to their IT systems has also been a major benefit of the new solution. Guhring have integrated Navision to their Microsoft Exchange email server, with quotes, orders and invoices all now being sent electronically. Guhring have also automated this process through electronic faxing. Additionally they also use the integration to Microsoft Office extensively, exporting, analysing and manipulating data in Excel spreadsheets, something that was particularly difficult on their previous system.
In the order processing department the affects of the new system have also been felt. Now any member of staff can take an order and input directly on any PC, completely eradicating the need to take paper orders for input later. While taking an order Guhring can now see the status of that customers account on the system, if the account is on stop they can instantly inform the customer that they need to rectify the situation, this was a previously a time consuming manual paper process.
This also helps when ordering stock on their parent, as the information built up within the order processing system automatically produces their requisition worksheets. This could take over an hour per day to produce previously, now it takes less than 10 minutes.
The traceability on the system makes it very easy to identify the root cause of any issues, even identifying this down to a particular user, this helps to address problems very quickly and identify where users may be having issues and may require advice or further training.
The ability to reduce debtor days has also been hugely improved. Previously it would take 2 days to produce a debtor report, this made running the report cumbersome and time consuming, hence they would not be run that frequently, this now takes under three minutes on Navision and Guhring can run it whenever they want, providing them with an instant view of monies owed.
Integration to their IT systems has also been a major benefit of the new solution. Guhring have integrated Navision to their Microsoft Exchange email server, with quotes, orders and invoices all now being sent electronically. Guhring have also automated this process through electronic faxing. Additionally they also use the integration to Microsoft Office extensively, exporting, analysing and manipulating data in Excel spreadsheets, something that was particularly difficult on their previous system.
The shop floor has also benefited from a single integrated solution; all Work In Progress can be easily checked ‘live’. “Previously a WIP report could take hours to produce, by the time it had been completed it was out of date” stated Chris Weston – Production Manager. The same report is now produced in less than five minutes! “This offers us the ability to tell customers exactly where the product is in the manufacturing cycle and the typical time it will take to get it to them. With the previous system we would have had to physically visit the shop floor to check on progress, as there was no electronic visibility”.
“Traceability is key to us remaining competitive; we need to keep customers informed. The system now allows us to track and trace where every quote and order is at on the system. Quotes are instantly converted to orders, so it is now easy for us to see our conversion rates” commented Weston.
Navision has also assisted Guhring with complex orders, now these orders are saved in detail on the system which saves re-keying each time, as they had to do previously, reducing the time taken to re-key orders by over 80%.
Paperwork has also now been reduced significantly; barcoding is used to book stock in and out and multi part copies have now been replaced by single laser outputs, which are the delivery note and the label combined. This has afforded Guhring a 50% time saving booking stock in and out of the warehouse.
Conclusion
Guhring are seeing major cost and efficiency benefits across the whole business, with zero replication of data and improved processes and procedures.
Mike Dinsdale stated “I really feel we wouldn’t have easily achieved ISO9001 without Navision being in place, the integration of all of our processes in a single system, really helped us when it came to documenting these procedures to obtain our accreditation, this alone made the system purchase justifiable”
“The support from Metaphorix has been excellent and with their remote access to our system, support is offered ‘on the fly’ and is rectified there and then” stated Clune.
Clune concluded “The changeover was brilliant, Metaphorix did exactly what they said they would do, and stress levels were a lot lower during the handover than we had experienced in previous system changeovers”
Future plans
Looking to the future, there are several areas that Guhring are considering to improve the system even further.
They are currently investigating the live input of timesheet data directly to Navision. This will help them to ‘close the loop’ particularly on ‘one off’ special orders, where they can evaluate the viability and profitability of such orders automatically, rather than manually as they currently do.
Guhring are also looking at the consolidation of information electronically into SAP at Guhring’s head office in Germany. Today they have to place their orders manually on their parents SAP system, this takes in excess of half an hour per day, so again time and cost savings could be had by automated electronic integration.
In the order processing department the affects of the new system have also been felt. Now any member of staff can take an order and input directly on any PC, completely eradicating the need to take paper orders for input later. While taking an order Guhring can now see the status of that customers account on the system, if the account is on stop they can instantly inform the customer that they need to rectify the situation, this was a previously a time consuming manual paper process.
This also helps when ordering stock on their parent, as the information built up within the order processing system automatically produces their requisition worksheets. This could take over an hour per day to produce previously, now it takes less than 10 minutes.
