Classic Sheepskins have been crafting quality sheepskins for over 50 years. A tradition forged in the rugged plains of New Zealand and honed in their Napier facility, they create home furnishings, footwear, personal care and infant products, designed to enhance life with comfort.
Soft to the touch, Classic Sheepskins’ products bring wondrous textures from the wilderness into the sanctuary of your home and lifestyle: pure, natural gifts for love ones, 100% sourced from and proudly made in pristine Aotearoa New Zealand.
When the country went into lockdown due to COVID-19, Classic Sheepskins saw a dramatic increase in online sales, which then had to be manually entered into their stock management system. They needed integration between their website and internal business software, so gave Devine Technology a call.
Here’s what Kieran Callaghan, sales manager from Classic Sheepskins, had to say about working with Devine Technology to integrate their inventory management systems.
Can you briefly explain how the nature of your retail sales, in the physical store and online, have changed due to COVID-19?
“As a result of COVID-19 and during the lockdown period, we had an increase in sales via our website including local customers taking advantage of our click and collect service, which we hadn’t previously marketed to any great degree.
The necessity to reduce cash handling and unnecessary steps through the point-of-sale process (both online and in-store) and the desire to improve efficiencies with a more lean workforce, were identified.”
How did the referral to Convergence from Devine come about?
“As a result of a large amount of invoicing data from our website eCommerce store needing to be entered into our internal inventory management system, we started to explore options for integration between the management of stock in-store and sales via our website.
So we contacted Devine, who were already supplying our IT services and Infusion accounting software support, for some advice about integrating Infusion with our website.”
Once you’d met with Devine and they’d listened to what you needed help with, what did they offer as a solution?
“Jacqui from Devine listened and understood our issue before concluding we required expertise from a third party who had experience dealing with website integration.
So she immediately facilitated an introduction to Convergence, eCommerce integration specialists. From there Convergence sorted our integration in no time at all with a minimum of downtime or disruption. It now all works exactly as we’d envisaged.
Jacqui also provided us with a follow up to ensure we were happy with the solution provided and there were no further issues that had not been covered.”
Once your new way of managing inventory was up and running, what were the changes staff noticed and how were business operations improved?
“The key improvement was the time we saved from not having to carry out manual data entry, which depending on orders, was taking up to 90 minutes a day.
Not only was time saved on not having to complete this data entry, but due to the capability of the integration software, more valuable data was able to be entered into the system. This is especially helpful for any follow up work including order checking, problem management or reporting, which happens on a weekly basis.
The full integration has also helped prevent any human error with data entry, which has resulted in less mistakes and greater time savings right across the business.”
What was the learning curve like, coming to grips with the new way of working with regards to downtime, training and ongoing support?
“The new integration has dramatically streamlined our order fulfilment, and although this didn’t involve any great new learnings for our existing staff, it did enable us to train new staff across this part of the business, which allows more flexibility for the team.”
Can you identify any benefits of working with Devine over other IT providers you’ve dealt with in the past?
“Devine Technology’s consultancy and support in this situation was a good example of knowing that the resolution of our integration issue was best suited to one of their partners. This ability to diagnose and ensure the right experts were working on our integration resulted in a fast and economical solution that has more than delivered for our business.”
Classic Sheepskins online:
Website: www.classicsheepskins.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/classicsheepskin
Instagram: www.instagram.com/classicsheepskins