Client: Autobox Garage Interiors
When people think of a garage, they envision just a place to store their cars. Garages keep our vehicles not only out of the road but also protect them from accumulating piles of snow, being pelted by rain or hail, or from turning into an oven from the blazing sun. Typically, garages also hold our trashcans, recycling bins, and miscellaneous tools.
But, what if, you could take your garage and turn it into your dream space? Autobox Garage Interiors turns their customers’ dreams into reality. From simply organizing the clutter to transforming garages into workshops or entertainment spaces, Autobox takes the biggest room in your house and makes it the most beautiful.
Challenges: Project Management & Inventory Control Limitations
With beautiful outcomes and a vast number of happy customers, people were lining up for Autobox’s custom design and installation services. Due to these increases in growth, Autobox found it more and more difficult to manage their projects. As one can imagine, many of Autobox’s products (floor coatings, cabinets, wall storage, etc.) had to be used for each project. Therefore, it was challenging to track projects, assess profitability, and monitor the exact number of products used for every project. However, Autobox didn’t just have challenges with project management. With a small team of employees, they struggled with tracking their leads, subcontractors, billing, and payments.
Autobox needed a transformative change. They required a platform that would eliminate all of their challenges above. They were looking for a system that would keep track of the materials needed for their products, help plan and manage multi-step projects, and streamline their business. These overall limitations in project management and inventory control led them to investigate ERP systems. Fortunately, NetSuite was the perfect fit. Just like Autobox specializes in garage interiors, Paapri is an expert at NetSuite implementations.
Solutions & Results: Using NetSuite to Its Fullest Capabilities
Project Management:
Using NetSuite’s Project Management tools, Autobox gained visibility into project progress and resources allocated to projects. Additionally, all under one application, NetSuite allowed Autobox to link invoices and supporting documents to each project.
Inventory Management:
One of the biggest pain points that Autobox faced was their inability to trace inventory consumption that occurred during the execution of a particular project. Utilizing NetSuite’s Project & Inventory Management, Autobox was able to check real-time consumption and stock on-hand to allocate to other projects. This NetSuite application removed all manual adjustments due to inventory consumption.
In other words, NetSuite enabled Autobox to better recognize which items need to be ordered for a project and which ones were already in stock. This minimized both the additional expense and headache of not knowing which products were readily available to complete a project and which ones must be ordered.
Lead to Invoice (Project Completion):
Autobox has an extensive process flow when it comes to their projects. Rather than having multiple, isolated systems, they used one platform to streamline their business from beginning to end, saving time and reducing potential errors.
Tracking Profitability:
NetSuite’s Project Profitability Report, a native application to the system, eliminated the need to manually create a report, which can be prone to missed steps or products. Now, Autobox can use this functionality to generate a customized, accurate report of their profitability. Using the cost of materials and the respective revenue of the service, profitability for each project is easily calculated. In practice, Autobox can increase the price of a service in order to maintain a certain profit margin.
Conclusion: Breaking Through the Limitations
With NetSuite’s endless features and Paapri’s expertise in implementing the system to fit Autobox’s unique needs, Autobox no longer has to waste time and resources to monitor their projects, leads, invoices, and more. They now have better management, visibility, and control over their crucial business processes. Most importantly, they are better prepared than ever to transform their customers’ garages into dream-worthy spaces.
If your business is facing the same challenges as Autobox had prior to their ERP implementation, and/or if you are interested in the NetSuite features listed above, schedule a free consultation today!