GAP Drinks is a distribution & sales company specialising in drinks brand development in the Asia Pacific region. The company works closely with independent drinks companies to fill portfolio gaps and bring solutions to distributors and retailers. Long-term partnerships and high levels of customer service are highly valued at the Australian based business, so it was with this in mind – coupled with a changing technology landscape – that they went to market for a solution.
GAP drinks started out using Xero, so their cloud journey was already well underway. However as the company grew over time, staff found that spreadsheets were increasingly being used to track their increasingly complex inventory needs. The levels of data entry and associated business risk led the company to conclude they had outgrown Xero’s inventory module. A specific limitation they were experiencing as an importer of goods was their inability to track serial numbers and batches of goods. Just as important was to track all landed costs such as freight, duties and customs fees. Tracking these associated costs when purchasing goods would give them a much better picture of their inventory costs.
Addressing these problems led GAP drinks to seek a solution, and the company engaged WhichAddOn to conduct not only system selection, but to also migrate data, configure, integrate and train staff. Moreover, this project had to be performed whilst GAP drinks maintained their daily operations.
As they were already familiar with Xero, it was quite a straightforward and logical step to integrate with a cloud-based solution. In this case, WhichAddOn chose DEAR Inventory. DEAR is one of the many solutions we implement and in this instance, it was a perfect fit for GAP drinks.
The use of serial numbers allowed GAP drinks to search and track availability of individual stock items, rather than just an overall quantity. GAP drinks also needed to track batches or groups of items of an individual stock unit. Their new system now assigns a batch number to each batch of product items. This batch number stays with the batch as it goes through their cloud system. Batches can now be tracked and monitored. Staff can see exactly when they were received, shipped and assembled. All landed costs are also now recorded, and dashboards and reports now supply the business owner with a true snapshot of inventory costs, and in turn higher visibility into product margins. No more spreadsheets!
DEAR Inventory has future-proofed GAP drinks by giving them a new platform from which they can gain insight and integrate to more systems to better track stock. They have better peace of mind knowing they will have fewer stockouts, and now have a platform to further grow the business over time, and provide better service and respond to market developments now that they have their inventory in the cloud.
In the dynamic environment of modern businesses, it is important to run a solution that can very easily integrate with an e-commerce store and allow suppliers to self-service with their own B2B portal. A boutique retail shop also needs their own point of sale (POS) functionality, which GAP now possess.
Their new system gives them vital sought-after functionality as well as insights into their inventory that previously was not possible. Before the rise of cloud applications, this level of sophistication and functionality would have cost a business a small fortune. These days the cost of setting up such a powerful, simple yet amazingly affordable system is now within reach of most small to medium enterprises. Life is better in the cloud!