Print Blocks’ New online efficiencies

Business situation

Print Blocks Pty Ltd is Australia’s largest one-stop-shop supplier of scrapbooking and associated arts and crafts items, eg: buttons, ribbon, designer papers, etc. directly to retailers and entirely online. Andrew Wightman, business owner, explains that the decision to implement Greentree was to achieve the level of efficiency required to support future growth. This would ensure the company maintained its competitive position as the largest supplier of products in its market.

To achieve this, Print Blocks needed the flexibility to grow inventory from its current level of around 25,000 to 50,000 stock items. This entirely online business has no retail outlets, no sales reps, no on-account sales and only one staff member responsible for inventory management, so it required the highest level of visibility, integration, accuracy and reporting possible. Andrew says that compared to SAP Business One, Greentree is more flexible, scalable and easy to maintain, and represented value for money without any compromise on functionality.

‘Live’ WebStore automates web sales

Andrew explains that with such a large volume of stock items with very thin margins, employing and managing hundreds of sales reps was never an option. This effectively placed greater emphasis on the need for automated, highly available and integrated back-office and web sales processing systems.

Greentree’s WebStore presents a live up-to-the-second view of Print Blocks products to its retailer customers, and enables instant visibility of new items. With hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of credit card sales being processed each month and with no on-account sales, there are no bad debts to chase. Print Blocks has achieved cost and cashflow efficiencies that most companies can only dream about.

Scan Barcode process expected to reduce error rate from 7-8% to <1%

Even greater online efficiency will be realised in the next phase, planned to streamline the end-to-end online business procedures. Wrist-mounted barcode scanning devices will connect to Greentree to enable the order pickers to view up-to-the-second inventory stock levels and product bin locations. This will speed up the order picking and packing process, and Andrew expects a drastic reduction in the order error rate, which he estimates will plummet from 7-8% to less than 1%.

Online efficiencies will enable staff numbers to drop from 35 to 20

But wait, there’s more! Currently, Print Blocks has several staff members involved in checking and fixing purchase order errors, and a number of warehouse staff picking and packing orders. Andrew expects that the cumulative effect of efficiencies will culminate in a reduction in staff numbers from 35 down to 20 over the next 4-6 months.

He’s absolutely confident that with the business process integration and scalability provided by Greentree, Print Blocks is evolving into the leanest and most efficient online business possible. This is an enviable position and ensures it is best-placed for future growth. “Working with the local Greentree Business Partner has been incredibly easy, since they bring a collaborative approach to the business partnership,” says Andrew.