Patio Warehouse, the provider of the largest selection of patio furniture and accessories in Africa, implemented Sage 300 Retail in 2010. Four years since its implementation, they are a true witness to the solution’s business benefits.
“The software enabled us to effectively automate our stock management process and to seamlessly integrate the databases of all new stores into existing systems,” says Jacques Delport, director at Patio Warehouse.
Patio Warehouse officially opened its doors in Randburg in June 2005 and has four stores nationally in Randburg, Centurion, Cape Town and Somerset West.
Before the implementation of Sage 300 Retail, Patio Warehouse had no integration to their point of sales (POS) system. Stock management and the synchronisation of data between the different branches had to be done manually.
“Sage 300 Retail was the perfect solution for Patio Warehouse. It is an end-to-end solution that effectively allows for integration and automation within the sales environments of retailers,” says Jeremy Waterman, MD at Sage ERP Africa and Middle East.
“Our retail solution is easy to configure and quick to deploy with the options to both operate in an online or offline environment. As all data is created and maintained in the standard Sage 300 ERP environment and synchronised to the POS till at store level, rapid rollout and return is easily achieved.
“From a central setup and design, each POS till can be configured in a matter of minutes and all the tills deployed countrywide. As each branch trades, information relating to stock, sales, credit limits and pricing is sent to and from the store to head office on a real time or scheduled basis,” says Waterman.
Patio Warehouse placed their trust in Accquire Consulting as the vendor of choice.
“Their knowledge, support platform and ability to customise the solution to suit the requirements of our business, gave us the confidence to choose them as our partner in implementing Sage 300 Retail,” says Delport.
According to Derick Pretorius, director at Accquire Consulting, the implementation and training was done according to a process called SDLC (System Development Life Cycle).
This included a detailed system analysis to identify all the weaknesses and requirements within the sales value chain. A dummy system was then developed and tested by users and management. After the approval process, the training commenced at the various branches and was in the form of classroom or one-on-one.
“Sage 300 Retail was definitely key to the success of opening new stores. Being a retailer also means trading seven days a week and the software has enabled us to trade everyday with minimum downtime and live data availability anytime of the day,” concludes Delport.