Electronics retailer Best Denki wanted a solution to enable their staff to focus on the process, minimize the administrative considerations whilst maintaining high data integrity. With Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, it streamlined its financial processes by cutting month-end reporting from one week to a day. Integrating its front- and back-end operations, Best Denki has enhanced its data integrity, stock management, customer responsiveness, management visibility and business agility.

Business Needs

Best Denki, the leading electronics retailer in Singapore, prides itself as a niche player, pioneer and innovator in the industry. Focused purely on electronics retailing, Best Denki wants to go beyond price competitiveness to offer its customers a complete retail experience with its industry-leading product range and comprehensive after-sales service.

As its business grew to its current volume of more than 50,000 transactions per month and 200 deliveries per day across its nine-store network, Best Denki knew that its disparate, standalone accounting, purchasing and inventory systems could no longer meet its requirements. Issues with data integrity meant time wasted on manual data-entry and reconciliation. Prompt order fulfilment was difficult due to the limited visibility into real-time stock status. Scheduling of its massive delivery commitments were done manually. It was also tedious to trace customer warranty documentations for purchases made in the past.

To sustain its growth, Best Denki wanted a complete total retail solution that will seamlessly integrate its front- and back-end operations. It should also streamline Best Denki’s business processes, enhance stock management and improve data integrity with a centralized database that can be updated from its Point-Of-Sales stations (POS) distributed across its nine stores, and eventually its tenth store, slated for opening in the second half of 2009. 

“Business agility and customer responsiveness are key competitive advantages in our industry. We want to maintain our lead by deploying an integrated system that can scale as we grow, increase business agility and sharpen competitiveness,” said Mr Jeffrey Sim, Director, Finance, Human Resource and Administration, Best Denki (Singapore) Pte Ltd.

Solution

After a detailed evaluation,  Best Denki selected Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV and LS Retail NAV, an end-to-end retail solution built on Microsoft Dynamics NAV. “With both Microsoft Dynamics NAV and LS Retail NAV built on an integrated development environment, the extension of the solution with LS Retail NAV enables CyanSYS^® to fit the industry functionalities to our environment. This makes it an ideal solution for us,” said Sim.

Best Denki implemented the Financials, Purchase and Payables, Relationship Management, Sales and Receivables, and Warehousing modules from Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The company also selected Microsoft^® SQL Server™ 2005 as its database. The system went live in October 2007.

To adapt the solution to Best Denki’s business processes, the company engaged CyanSYS Private Limited (CyanSYS), a Microsoft^® Gold Certified Partner, to design several customizations. These include the Transporter capability for the real-time booking of delivery time slots; the Procurement capability to automatically replenish stocks with major suppliers, and the Gold Points System launched in October 2008, which rewards customers with points for every purchase.

Commending the CyanSYS team, Sim said, ”The CyanSYS team impressed us with their commitment, especially in their on-site support and rectification when the Gold Points System was launched. They were committed to support us even after the stores were closed. With their in-depth expertise, we are assured of a successful Microsoft Dynamics implementation.”

Benefits

With Microsoft Dynamics, Best Denki enjoys new business efficiencies with an integrated front- and back-end system. Staff across its stores now login to the centralized system to access critical information including delivery schedules, stock status, latest sales offers, price changes, product end-of-life information and more.

Stock management has also improved, as stocks are now allocated by their actual physical locations within a store. With instant updates to inventory figures once delivery orders are generated, Best Denki enjoys real-time visibility into stock movements. The customized capability to automatically replenish stocks with major suppliers also streamlines its procurement processes and ensures optimized stock levels.  

As daily sales information gets posted directly to General Ledger, Best Denki management enjoys visibility into daily business activities without waiting for month-end closing. Month-end closing has also been streamlined from one week to one day.

“With Microsoft Dynamics, we are more agile in launching new programs quickly and confidently, which translates to cost savings and shortens our time-to-market,” said Sim. This is evidenced by the successful launch of its Gold Points System within two months. Participation in atrium sales events and tradeshows is also eased, as Best Denki now takes less time to setup temporary POS, product codd and promotional pricing. The POS deployed at atrium sales events and tradeshows can transmit daily sales figures to the head office or designated store at the end of the day, thus improving visibility of sales performance.

• Streamlined financial processes: Cut month-end closing from one week to one day. Freed up financial resources to handle financial analysis. Elimination of overtime work and expansion of job roles increase staff morale.
  
• Enhanced stock management: Enhanced order fulfilment with better stock management. Ability to allocate stocks by physical locations empowers salespersons with latest stock status and location information.
  
• Empowered sales and marketing initiatives: Shortened preparation for participation in tradeshows and atrium sales.
  
• Improved customer service: Centralized delivery scheduling system and stock management ensure accuracy of information provided to customers. This improves customer service and increases customer satisfaction.
  
• Enhanced management visibility: The drill-down capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics and the freeing up of financial resources for business analysis provide Best Denki’s management with unique insights into business operations.
  
• Increased business agility: Faster management and operational decision-making enhances Best Denki’s agility in responding to industry dynamics.

For more information on Microsoft Dynamics, visit Microsoft www.microsoft.com/asia/dynamics or email: mbsasia@microsoft.com

For more information about CyanSYS Private Limited, call 65 6535 3257 or visit www.cyansys.com