NetSuite’s One System Architecture Helps Popular Retailer Expand Wholesale/Retail/Online Sales and Boost Revenue 62 Percent POS Merchant Services Are Easy to Control and Manage with NetSuite
SAN MATEO, Calif. and MIAMI, Fla (January 15, 2008) – NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N) , a vendor of on-demand, integrated business management application suites that provide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Ecommerce functionality for small and medium-sized businesses and divisions of large companies, today announced that The Art of Shaving, a top-selling brand of men’s premium shaving products and accessories at high-end department stores, with 25+ locations in the U.S., has realized substantial companywide sales growth — 62 percent growth in 2007 — with minimal increases in back-office costs, since it moved to NetSuite’s One System Architecture to help it sell via multiple sales channels, including retail, wholesale and the Internet. One key to this multi-channel approach has been NetSuite’s integration with The Art of Shaving’s 25+ point-of-sale (POS) retail locations — for easier management of merchant services.
In 2004, after eight years in the business and with rapid growth on the horizon, The Art of Shaving needed a new software system to run their business. The company realized its software platform — with separate packages for accounting, inventory management, and point-of-sale (customized POS) — was unprepared to handle the expected expansion of its sales channels from retail to the Web to large distribution partnerships with high-end department stores such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s. Knowing it had to move into a more powerful system to unify its disjointed processes, the company went shopping. The Art of Shaving’s key needs were three-pronged. First: POS metrics available on customizable dashboards. Second: a Web-based system for back-up peace-of-mind in light of Florida’s yearly hurricanes. Third, and most importantly: having one system, including CRM, for its growing, multiple sales channels, to replace its hodge-podge of non-integrated software applications.
“Our goal was to have all this without breaking the bank, if that was possible,” said Eric Malka, CEO of The Art of Shaving. “NetSuite was able to give us the tools we needed in one system, and give it to us at significant savings over other popular systems when you factor everything in. And as a CEO, most important to me was the ability to have a dashboard that alerts us to trends at our point-of-sale locations, giving us very strong comparability across stores and regions, and helping us understand more precisely what our metrics should be.”
Since launching on NetSuite in January 2005, The Art of Shaving has leveraged a full slate of NetSuite CRM and ERP features, including sales force automation, customer support, email marketing campaigns, inventory management, UPS shipping integration, dashboards, accounting, and reporting. The company has been able to support a rapidly growing business, both in retail, Internet, and wholesale channels, without having to create a rapidly growing payroll. Companywide, sales have increased during that time — 62 percent growth in 2007 — with a minimal increase in staff.
Email marketing campaigns are among the most visible of NetSuite’s successes at The Art of Shaving. Thanks to NetSuite its Internet business regularly sees a 20 to 35 percent sales increase on the items they’re promoting. Those sales benefit from a cross-over effect, too, when people come to the site after receiving an email and buy other items as well.
Similarly, The Art of Shaving has integrated NetSuite with its retail stores, starting at the point of sale (POS). Each day the company imports a journal entry into NetSuite, with each of its 26 stores represented as one division. This gets information such as gross sales, inventory, and cost of goods into NetSuite’s central database, which allows The Art of Shaving to generate crucial reports. For example, a report could compare metrics between stores and regions. “NetSuite lets us run reports by store, state, and region — even by regional manager — so we get a very good understanding of our retail business,” said Malka.
In addition, merchant services are reconciled as NetSuite gives the company control of its cash receipts and helps it manage its banks and credit card services. NetSuite identifies which sales transactions were cash, which were MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and so on. So when The Art of Shaving receives its merchant statements from the credit card companies, they can be reconciled exactly with the data in NetSuite and anomalies are instantly recognized. This is normally a fairly challenging task for retailers because in POS software there is no connection between the receipt of payment and the merchant statement. With NetSuite, The Art of Shaving is able to easily control and manage its merchant services.
Through NetSuite, The Art of Shaving found itself in a win-win situation. It got the Web-based solution and the features it needed — without the typical IT investment. Going forward, the company plans to bring even more detail from its retail sales into NetSuite — in particular, individual customer transactions. This will enable The Art of Shaving to do the kind of email marketing for its retail customers that has proven so successful with its Internet customers. And that will help support the continuing expansion the company envisions.
Source: NetSuite