"With 17,000 stock lines the time OGL Software has saved our purchasing team is very impressive meaning they can focus on other business objectives."

One system for everything

Data transfer

One of the key issues when moving to any new business management software is the correct transfer of existing company data into the new system. OGL's Data Transfer Team are highly skilled data analysts with the specific knowledge for this type of work.

We needed to retain seven years worth of invoice history so I needed to be sure that this task was in the safest of hands. I informed OGL how I wanted the old data to appear in the new system and we worked together to extract everything required from Charisma and import it accurately into OGL Software.

The data transfer aspect of the project was a big concern for me so I remember asking lots of questions about this process. I had to have full confidence before committing to such an instrumental change for the business but OGL clearly had a lot of experience and expertise in this area.

Purchasing

After bringing OGL Software to Lamberts I would say that purchasing is the area of the business that has felt the biggest impact. Our buyers have found OGL Software so easy to use and I'm sure it's made their job a lot easier because we have set the system up to generate purchase orders automatically based on stock levels, customer orders and buying trends. With 17,000 stock lines the time OGL Software has saved our purchasing team is very impressive meaning they can focus on other business objectives.

Marketing

"The CRM [Customer Relationship Management] module has a built-in email function, allowing me to email over 4,000 named contacts from the CRM database with e-shots about trade days, special offers and useful company information. This has been fundamental for maximising spend-per-customer and has generated thousands of pounds of orders for what is a fairly quick task."

Not only does the CRM manage out-going customer communications as described, it also houses all incoming communication from the customer by recording all emails relating to the customer in one single screen. This means that colleagues across the company can email customers safe in the knowledge that other colleagues can see what has been said thanks to the ability of OGL Software to recognise an email address, link it to a customer account and save a copy of the email in OGL Software accordingly.

Of course other information, including sales enquires, order history and sales ledger is also stored against customers records meaning staff can deal with customers knowledgably giving them a great customer experience.

Increased profitability

In OGL Software, when an invoice is produced, the system will look at the selling prices and compare them to the purchased prices to check profit levels. If pre-set profit margins are not hit, the system will flag the invoice for review. Lamberts commented that this ability to check profitability at invoice level was probably their favourite feature of OGL Software.

"It allows managers to unapprove invoices that don't meet our requirements and gives the chance to investigate and amend where necessary", said Lamberts.

This feature is another way that OGL Software can strip hours of manual admin processes from a business and ensure any unprofitable lines are very quickly highlighted and the necessary action taken.

Lamberts is visited around three times per year by their Customer Success Manager, and Lamberts stated that "it has been an invaluable part of the service to have OGL travel to Norwich every few months to talk about the system and ensure Lamberts is up-to-date with the free-of-charge upgrades to the system that are launched every other month. It's been great to forge a good relationship with OGL and therefore between our companies. My last software provider would visit, on average, once every five years so this is a very welcome additional benefit to OGL's service."