Background
Remote Controlled Lighting Ltd (RCL) and Precision Lighting Ltd (PLL) are privately owned family run businesses with over 10 years of experience in the lighting industry. Predominantly based in the UK, RCL hold offices in Hong Kong and a range of strategic partnerships in countries such as the US, India, Japan, China and several European countries. Their expertise lies in manufacturing top quality lighting solutions to illuminate specialist buildings such as ballrooms, museums and retail applications.
The challenges they faced
The lighting industry is becoming an increasingly competitive market and RCL sought to strengthen their competitive advantage by investing in back-end ERP software. Finance Director of RCL and PLL Allan Pisador explains – “One of the major challenges we’ve faced as business in recent years is the need to keep up to speed in developing products. We’re pretty sensible and know that an ERP won’t make the products for us! But it will give us timely information and insight that’ll help us make business decisions during our R&D process.”
RCL were making do with another ERP system called MYOB accounting “MYOB worked for a short while, but as our business grew, it became apparent that MYOB wasn’t able to keep up.” MYOB didn’t provide enough insight into RCL. Specifically, Allan and RCL found it difficult to use MYOB to gather data on things like stock levels, forecasting and sales figures.
A decision was made and Allan and RCL began the process of looking for a competent partner to assist them in the process of modernising the backend of their business. After reviewing a few alternatives, RCL found themselves speaking to Advantage Business Systems, a Microsoft Gold Partner based in the centre of London.
The solution implemented
“We reviewed several options before we came to Advantage. But in the end, we decided on Microsoft Dynamics NAV.” explained Allan as we discussed what solutions RCL considered.
Dynamics NAV is a comprehensive ERP system produced by Microsoft. Advantage Business Systems is a Microsoft Gold partner, with years of experience in complex implementations like the situation at RCL. Martyn Kemp, the Dynamics Sales & Account Manager, - “Dynamics NAV is the perfect fit for a company like RCL, it’s deeply customisable and will grow with their business over the years and boasts a simple to grasp user interface (UI).”
RCL received NAV 2013 R2 in an implementation spanning a number of weeks. They also received a raft of pre-configured dashboards, integrations with supplier interfaces and a suite of reporting tools geared towards providing deeper insight into how RCL works.
The results have been dramatic.
The benefits
“Game changing” – Are the first words that come out of Allan’s mouth when we asked how Dynamics NAV has benefited RCL. “In particular it’s streamlined our work processes and made every department more efficient than they’ve ever been.”
“Our sales, accounts and operations departments have benefited most. But even senior management enjoy benefits as it’s made it far easier for them to pull up data and make decisions.”
“But personally from my point of view it’s significantly reduced the amount of manual data entry I’ve had to do and enabled me to contribute more on decision making and to focus my energies on growing RCL & PLL.”
When we asked how Advantage got on with the implementation, Allan was particularly complementary about Martyn and the team – “What really stood out for me is the level of experience and expertise the ABS team have. They always have a practical solution to whatever requirement we had. Not only that, but Martyn and his team always give straightforward answers to requirements and whether it’s achievable or not with the resources and budget available.”
Future projects are in the pipeline for RCL as Martyn reveals “Allan actually got in touch about upgrading to NAV 2017, so we’re currently in the process of drafting a project proposal for him. He also mentioned about developing an integration with their CRM systems, so that’s something we’ll work on in parallel.”
