Acumatica saves British distributor time, enhances customer service and sets stage for growth

Industry: Design, manufacture and distribution of specialised footwear for hygienic workplaces. Headquarters in Bristol, UK; products sold in 50 countries

Founded in England in 1978, in a small apartment above an office, Toffeln has grown into a company that distributes its products in 50 countries. Toffeln designs, produces and distributes ergonomic footwear worn in hygienic environments such as hospitals, dentist and veterinary offices, and food service.

Toffeln’s sales have grown about 12 to 13 % each year, according to Sales Manager Bradley Leflaive. Toffeln continues to be a family-owned firm based in Bristol, England, but it now has 25 employees with two sales representatives outside of the United Kingdom, primarily covering continental Europe and the Middle East.

As Toffeln expanded, Bradley says, it outgrew the data management systems it had been using: Sage Accounting, Sage ACT for CRM, and Orderwise, with which they managed their stock and order processing. Bradley reports the lack of connection between the systems caused problems, particularly when sales personnel could not easily get access to customer records. “It wasn’t a very seamless integration between the three systems,” he says.

Finance Manager Justin Leflaive reports, “We had two key criteria when looking for an ERP. The first was to solve the problem we had with different sets of data stored on various systems, which made our reporting very time-consuming, and caused a lack of efficiency between our sales and operations departments. The second was we wanted a solution that would position us correctly for growth and future requirements over the long-term.”

In addition, Bradley Leflaive says, “With our old systems, we were finding it a little tricky to work outside of the office or out in the field. They weren’t on the cloud, or they weren’t designed for using whilst remote.”

When Toffeln looked for a new CRM to integrate with its accounting and order management systems, they found it difficult. They turned their attention to finding an ERP, considering a number of options, including NetSuite, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. They discovered Acumatica through an online review, and then researched what Acumatica offered.

Bradley says they decided Acumatica had the flexibility Toffeln needed, to address both their current and their future needs: “They are a company that is constantly developing their product, that’s up-to-speed with the latest movements in the industry, in particular Microsoft.” He adds, “We thought that Acumatica would continue to make changes in the future, and being a cloud-based system you would get the advantage of that ongoing improvement.”

Toffeln opted for Acumatica with the Financial Management, Distribution Management and Customer Management suites. Bradley says they liked being able to have unlimited users: “That means quite a bit to us here.” They plan to add more Acumatica features. Justin says, “One thing we’d like to take advantage of in the future is the customer portal, allowing customers to log on and look at their orders.” They also look forward to bringing in the Fixed Assets module, according to Bradley: “We can see more of the accounting picture inside the ERP if we’ve got the Fixed Asset information inside the ERP, instead of it being with the accountants and we have to wait for them to input the information.”

Finance Manager Justin identifies their integrated financial and customer data as the key benefit of Acumatica:

“Having everything in one place – having our CRM contacts alongside the orders that are flowing through – and being able to report on it.”

He’s appreciated “the generic inquiries function for reporting, and the general ability to pull out data using reporting tools. We found that very useful, and relatively easy to use.”

Sales Manager Bradley adds,

“Being able to drill down inside reports, so we can see from a profit-loss statement right down to the customer that’s placed the order has helped us to see exactly what is going on at the moment. We can very quickly drill into what’s happened.”

Justin reports they’ve found Acumatica easy to customize, and they like having automation schedules. They can also update a large number of records all at once, he says: “We can select a load of different customers or different records and update a certain field with a click of a button. It saves a lot of time.”

Justin says they also value the Exchange integration for email. “We think that’s a brilliant feature to have.” Toffeln also hopes to integrate their ERP with the email service MailChimp, bringing the MailChimp customer data into the ERP.

Changing to Acumatica is also allowing the company to remove its servers. Justin reports,

“We’re able to host the database on a virtual server, which means we don’t have to maintain a server anymore… We probably would have had to invest in new ones soon, because ours are quite old. That would have been quite expensive.”

Justin looks forward to Acumatica helping Toffeln to grow more quickly. He points out, “Having the order system and the CRM separate from each other before, we couldn’t see too easily what our sales efforts were yielding, whereas now we can, which is good. If we can see what’s working and what isn’t, we can grow easier.”

Toffeln is adding employees to focus on international growth. Bradley says Acumatica will help with that expansion: “It will mean we don’t have to reinvest and start all over again. We feel a bit more futureproof.” Justin confirms, “Acumatica has already proved effective in handling future needs with a clean and simple integration to our ecommerce system, and we are confident it will continue to do so for many years. I would recommend Acumatica to any growing distributor looking for a great system.”