FOCUS ON MRP
Stock control massively improved and in the six months after going live , Vincico saw a 30 % reduction in stock . so getting the system set up and migrating the data was pretty straightforward .”
The implementation was split across two people , with Tom taking charge of the project .
“ 123 Insight ’ s implementation spreadsheet helped us to prioritise what we needed to go live . This allowed us to identify other items that we could then put on the back-burner . As we set the system up , we ran it against the old system which was helpful in identifying what functionality was needed ,” he commented .
As its largest customer has fast turnaround requirements , Vincico could not afford for any issues to delay administration processes , so it decided to run both MRP systems in parallel .
“ Randolph wanted a safety net there , as we need to be able to react quickly . It was imperative that we get invoices out and paid , as at the time we didn ’ t have the visibility we needed of financials . We ran both systems live side-by-side for a week but , as there were no issues , we turned off the old system and we ’ ve never looked back ,” Tom Tew told ISMR .
Going live
The company went live in October 2020 across all departments , less than six weeks after starting the implementation , with COVID-19 restrictions still in place . Immediately , there were significant time savings in administration . Invoices and delivery notes that previously took 30 minutes each to create were done in seconds .
Stock control massively improved and in the six months after going live , Vincico saw a 30 % reduction in stock . The impact was so significant that it was able to reclaim space that previously contained floor-to-ceiling racking as a new office for its designer .
“ We used to work backwards – we would build the part and then raise the works order to allocate stock used . There was no stock-taking mechanism and the system never flagged up if we were low on stock , despite having minimum stock levels . Inaccuracies were
Electronics systems at Vincico .
common as well , whereas now we ’ re booking stock out before-hand and we have much better tracking of wastage ,” noted Tom Tew .
Better visibility of stock movements and future requirements has allowed Vincico to purchase much more strategically , with more products held for call-off by suppliers rather than being paid for and held by Vincico .
Two months after going live , Vincico switched to XERO accounts , linked to 123insight using Accounts Gateway ®. Previously , the accounting process was timeconsuming and there was poor visibility , which impacted on reporting and cashflow .
“ We chose XERO because of 123insight . By linking the two , we halved our accountant ’ s time , without impacting on my own , saving us around one week per month . Time-consuming
Better visibility of stock movements and future requirements has allowed Vincico to purchase much more strategically tasks , such as reconciling of invoices , are now done automatically ,” explained Tom Tew .
A further planned knock-on benefit is that the company will shortly no longer need to rely on an invoice factoring service , which paid 80 % of an invoice ’ s value immediately .
“ The factoring costs us around 2-3 % per invoice but , because we have reduced our stockholding and are taking advantage of purchase contracts , we no longer need to use this service to free up the cash ,” added Tew .
Support and training
Tom Tew regularly refers to the supplied training documentation . As more staff started to use the system , he took advantage of the electronic versions supplied during training to provide key staff with information relevant to them .
“ These documents have been a life-saver . I keep a physical copy of the training manual by my desk , as it ’ s very handy . It also has all my notes . However , I ’ ve now started to create specific guides for people based on the electronic training documents for downstream training ,” he explained .
Vincico ’ s largest customer introduced a very structured and continuous review process of its suppliers around the same time that 123insight was implemented . While Tom didn ’ t have the performance figures before going live , his customer has reported that Vincico ’ s ontime deliveries are currently at 99.89 %.
Support is an important aspect of any mission-critical system , and Vincico fitted squarely within 123insight ’ s Help Desk average of one call per customer per month , with only a dozen calls logged overall since starting the implementation .
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