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Improving For You

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN OUR SYSTEMS FOR A BETTER SERVICE

Established in 1985, Lighting Services have become one of the largest distributors of lamps, control gear and luminaires in the UK. Based in Bristol, Lighting Services supply a huge range of products to a diverse and populated customer base ranging from electrical wholesalers and industrial manufacturers to historic homes and properties throughout the UK.



Our 500m2 warehousing facility is home to a vast stockholding of over 7000 product lines, and success has been built on providing a fast and reliable service to our customers whilst ensuring full product availability from both stocked products and even wider product sourcing. An in-house Lighting Designs team provides an additional service to our customers.

As our business has expanded, our previous software package was unable to efficiently manage the increasing product ranges and our rapidly expanding and diverse customer base. As sales have grown and orders have became more frequent, it became clear that the limited functionality of the stock control features were causing some operational bottlenecks and visibility of customer and product information was poor. Staff were regularly involved in lengthy reporting procedures and time was often wasted searching for specific information on a product or customer.

With an increasing supplier base too it also meant that price changes were frequent and it was becoming difficult to update the old system quickly enough to reflect them. Warehouse staff could sometimes be plagued with picking notes being sequenced in entry order rather than location and fulfillment processes were therefore inefficient as a result.

Overall, our old system was time-consuming, inefficient and the requirement for a sophisticated software package would help optimise efficiency and streamline our processes.

What did we need from our new software?

With our vast product stockholding we needed a system that could streamline our entire stock management process and improve the visibility of warehouse operations. Quick and efficient order processing was also a high priority along with an integrated CRM package to effectively manage the growing customer base and integrate with our brand new ecommerce solution to provide an effective online-ordering facility for customers.

To help us maintain excellent service levels, the system had to be flexible enough to cope with constant product price changes, promotions and specialist products as well as provide full traceability and sophisticated reporting features. Instant access to customer and product information was also needed to ensure sales staff could close sales on the spot.

Why we chose OGL?

After careful and lengthy consideration of the marketplace, the prof.ITplus software solution from OGL was exactly what we were looking for. Its easy to use Windows format presented an array of information on order history, stock levels, profitability and overheads on clear screen displays.


As price changes are frequent from manufacturers prof.ITplus could easily process price amendments in a fraction of the time compared to the previous system. The flexible reporting features would also automate a variety of manual procedures and fulfillment processes within the warehouse which would be completed much more effectively with picking notes sequenced by location.

The optional additions to the software would also provide Lighting Services with additional benefits:
» The integrated Order Processing module would allow us to easily process kit assemblies as well as cater for complicated multi-level bills and outwork.

» The Customer Relationship Management module will enable us to manage our growing customer base more effectively whilst targeting potential customers through proactive sales and marketing activities.

» The fully integrated eShop module will also fulfill another part of the wish list, as it will enable orders and transactions to be processed online via our web site, whilst automatically updating sales ledgers, stock information and customer details within prof.ITplus without any user intervention.