Jaggards making a wise investment in NetSuite

Hercules Tsoutsas bought Jaggards in July 2016. After years of being immersed in technologically sophisticated corporate and financial environments, it didn’t take Hercules long to focus on the best way to improve his new acquisition’s business system.

However, the business had used MYOB, Outlook and Retail Maker to run its processes for a decade, and was still relying on manual data entry. So while the company was incredibly well-established and respected, its underlying business systems urgently needed an overhaul.

“Everything was fractured and independent,” says Hercules. “Nothing was truly integrated, so the systems basically didn’t talk to one another. The Retail Maker system only looked after sales and inventory and MYOB, the accountancy system, was completely separate. The business was using the calendar function of Outlook to schedule in payments and handle timesheets. Information had to be manually copied over from one system to the other, and this created a potentially higher margin for error. Just keeping the data up to date was incredibly time-consuming and expensive.”

“The biggest issue was that the software hadn’t been updated for a long time,” says Hercules. “It was so old that it was extremely difficult to extract data from it – and this impacted on everything. It really was just too far gone to be saved.”

Hercules wasted little time in looking for a new solution. “We interviewed quite a few technology partners over a three to four-month period. who demo’d solutions like SAP, the latest version of MYOB, Xero and NetSuite.”

Hercules chose NetSuite for three reasons. “I could see that NetSuite would support the future growth of the business. It’s more intuitive than any of the other platforms that I’d seen, which meant that even with very limited knowledge and training you can start using it immediately. And, due to its popularity, it’s easier to integrate with other platforms.”

After evaluating three NetSuite partners, Hercules selected Fusion5. “They’re the right size for us,” he says. “They’re experienced, capable and well-priced.” The agreement to implement NetSuite Retail Edition was signed in late 2016 and go-live was in June 2017.

From an accounting perspective, Hercules says NetSuite delivers a whole new level of operational efficiency. “With the old systems we had very limited visibility. Now, we can see exactly where we’re making money, and where we’re underperforming.”

NetSuite will be integrated with their website shortly, and Hercules expects this to give even more clarity around their inventory and SKUs. And he is definitely feeling happier about the level of data accuracy now double-entry is a thing of the past.

The legacy system provided zero accessibility from outside the offices. Because NetSuite is cloud-based, giving staff the ability to access systems remotely is a huge leap forward for Jaggards. It provides Hercules and his team with far more flexibility in how they work.

“Before NetSuite, we had no remote access at all,” says Hercules. “Now when I’m traveling I check in on my mobile to keep an eye on how things are ticking over. From that perspective, it’s great!”

NetSuite allows Jaggards to trade in currencies other than Australian dollars, so purchases made in USD are supported. Xignite, NetSuite’s automated exchange rate integration feature automatically updates comparative AUD-USD values on a daily basis. And the reporting function gives Hercules a detailed view of everything from real-time sales to cash flow to profit margin ratio.

Fusion5 helped Hercules find resources to connect NetSuite to their eBay account, making it possible to automatically load inventory items onto eBay and process sales. This is greatly appreciated and will save the company a significant amount of effort and time.