“Clearly the architecture of the aACE suite has been thought out very well. aACE is already helping us save hundreds of labor-hours each month.”
–Daniel Chapman, Founder and CEO, Redd Remedies
Redd Remedies, a manufacturer of nutritional supplements, aims to help consumers put their health in order—but their own technological health was deeply out of sorts. A friend from Vital Planet, a satisfied aACE client, recommended a simple solution: switch from NetSuite to aACE 5. Daniel did, and the result is a business as healthy as its products.
CHALLENGES & aACE SOLUTIONS
User-Unfriendly Interfaces
Training new employees to use the old software was a difficult and time-consuming task, and even experienced users like Daniel had trouble pulling reports. After making the switch to aACE, the entire staff was up and running in just two months. aACE’s custom reporting options are easy to implement and tailored to fit Redd Remedies’ workflow, and its user-friendly design means training new employees on the software is a breeze. Its drill-down, drill-around capabilities expose the entire chain of a single transaction, providing 360˚ visibility for the accounting team.
Time-Wasting Processes
Promotional pricing, a key aspect of their business, was tedious in the old solution. Joni Jarnagin, Marketing & Key Accounts Manager, would have to search, open, and change the price on individual products one at a time (often the same products over and over but for different promotions), a process that could take over an hour depending on how many items were going on or off sale and how many different promotions were running. With a custom feature in aACE, she can configure all item prices in one window for each promotion, thereby reducing this process to a fraction of the time — 15 minutes or less!
Increasing Prices
Their old ERP suite’s increasing yearly subscription fee had become untenable for a medium-sized business such as Redd Remedies. aACE is priced to be affordable to SMBs yet powerful enough to compete with big-ticket ERP suites like NetSuite.
RESULTS
Expedited Order Management
Automated workflows in Customer Care and Shipping have been able to reduce order entry and fulfilment errors, minimize the time it takes for order approval due to automated pricing built into promotional campaigns, and drastically improve their ship time from order entry to out the door. Overall this means more satisfied customers as their orders arrive more quickly and with greater accuracy than ever.
Increased Visibility in Shipping
Efficiencies in the shipping department are crucial to Redd Remedies’ success. In aACE, once an order is drawn up, the details are automatically handed off to warehouse iPads via the aACE Pick App. Barcode scanners make picking products off the shelf both quick and error-free. After an order has been picked, the details are handed off to ReadyCloud, a fully integrated shipping solution that calculates costs and prints labels. When the shipment is ready to go, final details are passed back to aACE to charge the customer’s credit card, and if the card is declined then the warehouse is notified to hold it until payment is received. The aACE shipping solution has helped reduce picking errors, assisted in a speedy pick and pack process, and prevented the loss of unpaid merchandise going out the door.
Smoother Sales Promotions
A custom “mix-and-match” feature allows pricing to be configured dynamically depending on the type of product and the volume ordered. This saves time and effort, especially since multiple promotions are run simultaneously, each with different start and end dates. The system automatically calculates prices based on the promotion so staff don’t have to input sales prices manually, saving time and preventing user errors.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Here’s what Daniel Chapman has to say about his company’s switch to aACE:
“A friend at Vital Planet — another midsize business in the nutrition industry that has been using aACE for over two years — brought aACE to my attention. As a possible alternative to NetSuite (which we had been using for five years), he explained that aACE is user-friendly, offers easy-to-pull reports, and is priced attractively for a solution of its caliber. My team did some homework and felt we should move forward decisively, deploying aACE on an aggressive timeline to avoid another year’s subscription. In only two months we were able to hit the ground running with aACE 5, and overall the change has been seamless. The more we use this program, the more we love it!
“The biggest asset to our company has been the automated workflows, especially in our customer care and shipping departments. We have been able to reduce order entry errors, minimize order approval due to built-in double checks and accuracy of promotions/campaigns, and drastically improve our ship time from order entry to out-the-door. The shipping integration has helped reduce picking errors and assist in a speedy pick and pack process. Clearly the architecture of the aACE suite has been thought out very well. aACE is already helping us save hundreds of labor-hours each month and we feel aACE 5 is a much better match for our company.”
