BG Marketing
"We could also see there were considerable benefits with Accredo Mercury in the areas of stock control, reporting and customer management."
Marketing Manager for BG Marketing, Brad Dixon, says the company is one of Accredo’s most loyal customers. “We grew up with the DOS version of their earlier product Profax and then progressed through to its Windows equivalent. Earlier this year we made the decision to move to Accredo Mercury.”
The need to remain on an up-to-date platform and the promise of some new powerful functionality convinced the firm to make the change.
“Having grown up with Accredo software we were keen to retain our current day-to-day business processes, but we could also see there were considerable benefits with Accredo Mercury in the areas of stock control, reporting and customer management,” Dixon says.
As the sole distributor to tyre centres across the country for a number of premium range imported alloy wheels, BG Marketing has an extensive inventory. The company has around 3000 different product lines with each line having different part numbers, wheel sizes, fitment specifications and colours.
“The biggest benefit Accredo offers us is the ability to quickly search and identify our stock items. When a customer rings up and wants tyres for his 1985 Mazda 323, we need to be able to answer that query accurately - and while the customer is on the phone - in order to secure the sale.”
Helping speed up the search process is a clever macro created by the team at Brunton (NZ), Ltd - BG Marketing’s Accredo support specialists. Using it, BG Marketing’s customer service team can quickly undertake a search using a number of different criteria, such as size, fitment specification, or by product line. An inventory search then takes place and returns a list of wheels that are available to do the job.
“The majority of our business is received from phone ordering and we field hundreds of calls a day. The new indexing feature in Accredo has sped up our search capability. We can undertake searches using keywords and no longer have to remember entire product names.”
Dixon says his 10-strong customer service team also appreciates Accredo’s ability to bring up appropriate information in relation to particular customers.
“Our operators can insert a customer code into the system and it will automatically identify any relevant customer discount that would be appropriate to that particular purchase. It's a great timesaver and improves the customer experience.”
BG Marketing has also linked Accredo into its telephony system allowing sales staff to click a telephone icon next to the customer details and dial the number straight from the computer.
It is timesaving measures like these and the fact that the Accredo system is intuitive to use and easy to learn that allows BG Marketing to maintain a steady hand on the business.
Dixon says the company received excellent assistance from Brunton NZ during the changeover from Profax to Accredo, allowing it to get up to speed with the new system as quickly as possible.
The firm needed no special training once Accredo was implemented. “We of course were familiar with the system, but being Windows-based even new staff found it intuitive to use. We were able to carry on working from day one and did not have any of our day-to-day business processes disrupted.”
One of the best improvements is the ability to create a simple report that lets Dixon analyse his inventory in detail.
“From one report I can check stock levels across product lines and also discover how fast certain products are moving. I can then drill back if I need to into individual items to find a deeper layer of information – such as whether the item is on back order and when it is due to arrive.”
The feature-rich nature of the Accredo system is an ideal fit for a business like BG Marketing, Dixon says, and he likes the fact that all the features they need are built-in.
“Along with the core financial modules we also use special pricing, order entry, invoicing, purchase orders and inventory control. Rather than having to get third party tools to undertake various ordering, reporting or stock control actions we can contain it all within Accredo and I believe there is significant cost savings in doing so.”
The support model Accredo operates also works to BG Marketing’s advantage, says Dixon. The company has given the team at Brunton’s remote access to its system allowing it to resolve support issues cost efficiently and with minimal interruption.
“It also allows us to work collaboratively on changes to reports layouts. I can suggest changes and see how they manifest on screen. Having a support organisation that acts on changes in real-time is extremely satisfying.”
Moving forward Dixon believes the system has everything the business needs to grow and fine-tune its performance. “Accredo is a truly 21st century product. If we have a problem or we need something written to improve our processes we know it has the capability to handle that.”
