ideas-and-tool: Technology planning

“How Cin7 saves us $130,000 a year.”

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Jennifer Xidias on how Cin7’s inventory management integrations saves Peta+Jain time and hundreds of thousands of dollars, every year.

One of the most quantifiable things in my decision to go with Cin7 as my software choice was not only its futuristic focus, but also the amount we could save on our IT spend.

 

Most companies allocate a spend for marketing or IT improvements. We spend a lot of money on marketing. As one of Australia’s fastest-growing fashion companies, we have to keep relevant with competing brands. Unfortunately, because of Covid-19, everything was postponed.

So, when I was looking for an inventory management solution, I needed a good IT product that suited what we did and was great value for money.

Cin7 is that product. It has seriously saved us about $130k this year alone, through not having to employ extra warehouse and admin staff. And when it comes to time savings, with our Shopify, The Iconic and Starshipit integrations now operational, it saves hours every day not having to key in the data manually or create spreadsheets to import.

 

Over the last 12 months, orders through our own website (powered by Shopify) and the Iconic Marketplace have steadily grown, from around an average of 50 orders per week to well over 200 per week. At sale times, this can reach around 100 per day.

Before Cin7, we were manually entering the shipping details into Australia Post and Excel to create consignments and picking lists, and then updating the tracking numbers in The Iconic and Shopify. As you can see, this was extremely labour-intensive during peak volume times!

We then moved to downloading the orders and creating spreadsheets to upload into Australia Post and update the tracking numbers. This was less labour intensive, but still a time-consuming process. It would still take at least one hour of time twice a day for the warehouse to just do the paperwork. The other downside of this system was that someone would generally have to then key all of the Shopify and The Iconic orders into MYOB to remove the stock and record the sale. This could then take at least another hour of time per day or if 100 orders, several hours.

The last issue that we had was that we would then have to remove The Iconic invoices every two weeks, and re-key their invoice to align with the actual statement from The Iconic, so that our records matched with what we were getting paid.

 

Our Cin7 implementation has removed all these issues. With our new, automated workflow, we’re saving at least 30 hours a fortnight. Also, with Cin7 integrating directly with The Iconic, reconciling orders from that channel only requires a two-second journal, each fortnight, to take up the commission amounts as all orders and stock are automatically taken care of. This makes for an additional saving of three hours a fortnight.

As well as the colossal time saving, we’re also saving $130,000 a year on not having to hire employees to do hours of tedious work. If we hadn’t used Cin7 to integrate our systems to deal with our rapid growth, and replace those manual processes, we would have required an additional two employees (one in the warehouse, and one admin person) to assist with all of the paperwork. Shopify and The Iconic are only part of our business, and we’d still need to deal with all of the other wholesale customer orders each day, and pack and ship their orders too.

The cost of each additional employee is approximately $65k per year, which gives us a cost saving of $130k a year.

The Cin7, Iconic, Shopify and Starshipit integrations give the warehouse manager and I approximately two day’s worth of time per week to concentrate on other parts of our business, without having to get other staff. I love Cin7. I think it’s a fantastic product.

Cin7 Debuts Danny Ing’s Founder Story

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Every business starts with someone who knew how to bring an idea to life. But like anyone else, you can’t boil down their motives and drives to a single element. Their lives supply the ingredients that make them an entrepreneur.

So, to better understand what drove someone to create a business, it helps to know their founder story. Cin7 invites you to watch Defying the Odds, a short video telling the founder story of Danny Ing.

Defying the Odds, a Founder Story Video

Cin7 is proud to present Defying the Odds. This short founder story video tells Danny Ing’s journey from early childhood in Vietnam to launching a global software company in 2012.

Among Danny’s earliest memories are playing while his mother worked in the fields of their rural village in northeastern Vietnam in the late 1970s.

While his parents’ hard work would later become a source of inspiration, the young family’s fate back then was still uncertain. Consequences of decades of war left many ethnic-Chinese in Vietnam with difficult choices. So Danny’s parents took a risk along with millions of other “boat people”. Many others did not survive their attempt to seek refuge in other nations. Fortunately, Danny’s family defied the odds. In 1981, they gained refugee status in New Zealand. There, they settled in Te Puke, where Danny would spend his formative years.

He absorbed the Kiwi culture, worked in his parents’ restaurant and became a bit of a computer geek. His parents’ hard work and determination allowed Danny to attend University and earn a business degree. From there, he took life step by step to follow his dream, ultimately founding Cin7. “My biggest takeaway from making this movie is in the title,” Danny says. “If I look back to where I came from, a village in Vietnam then a small town in New Zealand, I never would have imagined then being where I am now.” Cin7 hopes you enjoy the video, and that it inspires you to think about your own journey.

Cin7 releases enhanced B2B online store and warehouse management modules

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Cin7 is excited to announce the introduction of two new modules that enable product sellers to manage warehouses and sell to online B2B customers.

Today, Cin7 is very proud to announce the release of our all-new, all-improved B2B online store and warehouse management products, included for customers subscribed to our Business subscription plan and higher levels. Warehouse management is automatically included for qualifying customer accounts, which means customers can start using it right away. To add a B2B online store, send a request through Cin7 Connect or through the App Store in Cin7.

B2B online stores — with inventory built in!

Cin7 B2B online stores are a simple, yet mission-critical concept: they’re online stores specifically for your major retailer customers. On-account customers can now enjoy a high-speed online purchasing and checkout experience. And because the store is built into Cin7, their orders flow directly to the branch you choose for fulfillment. B2B online stores offer an amazing shopping experience for your wholesale customers and a time-saving solution to help you grow your distribution and sales to other businesses.

Here’s how it works: Once you give your store a name and URL, in just a few clicks you can set up a B2B online store to showcase particular products, with real-time stock levels, and invite specific customers to start an account for that store. You can repeat these steps to create multiple stores.

Your customers log in, select what they want from the interactive catalog, and purchase. To make it faster, they can re-order products they’ve previously purchased. It means you no longer have to go through time-consuming exchanges with wholesale customers to work out each and every order. When your customers can easily purchase what they want at their price — especially if it’s a routine order — that leaves you more time to develop new business and new customer relationships. And because the B2B online store is built into Cin7, there’s no integration or development work to connect your store with your inventory. It’s ready for you to set up and start selling.

It’s simple, and customers love it. Here’s what businesses who’ve been previewing the new B2B online store have to say:

“For us, the manual entry was the problem, and that’s what Cin7’s B2B Online Store has stopped. And it’s definitely time saved. It’s a brilliant little platform that allows business customers to go on a website, order what they want and… happy days.”

— Daniel David, KAS Australia. Read the full case study

For more information, visit Cin7 Connect

Warehouse management — with inventory built in!

Cin7 warehouse management is a comprehensive, centralized warehouse management product. As a Cin7 product, it seamlessly connects your inventory management to your warehoused products and procedures. If you manage your own warehouse and you need a comprehensive inventory management solution, this is a game-changer.

Warehouse management’s mobile-optimized interface connects inventory, sales channels, and orders to every process in the warehouse. Customers can receive purchase orders into zones and bins, move products into racking locations, pick with printed slips or scanners, and pack products (and there’s an option to print labels if you integrate with Starshipit or Shipstation.). Here’s just some of what you can do:

  • Receive purchase orders,
  • Receive orders and put products into locations,
  • Move orders between locations,
  • Pick orders and assign orders to totes,
  • Pack orders,
  • Create pick groups to organize picking activity,
  • View sales orders in the warehouse,
  • Track incoming orders, shipping deadlines, and picking activity.

A few Cin7 customers have already been test-driving warehouse management features, and the feedback has been great. Here’s what one customer had to say:

“Cin7 warehouse management has been a critical element in our warehouse optimization and expansion strategy. The barcode scanning functionality and informative dashboard have allowed us to reduce the number of errors made and effectively manage team productivity and efficiency. The friendly and intuitive interface has also made it easy to educate and train new team members.”

— Mario Pontes, Warehouse Manager, St. Agni

If you’re a customer already using Pick’n’Pack, a Cin7 feature that a lot of customers deployed in their warehouses, we’re continuing to support Pick’n’Pack so you can continue using it for stock counts.

For more information, visit Cin7 Connect.

We hope you enjoy the new features. As always, we want to hear what you think. Visit Cin7 Connect, or send us an email at feedback@cin7.com.

3 Reasons you don’t really need on-premise ERP

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When you scale your business to a certain point, you need various software solutions to manage your operations smoothly. For example, enterprises use separate software for accounting, payroll, manufacturing, inventory, and customer resource management. However, it can get challenging to keep tabs on all these applications. Thus, it makes sense to graduate to an ERP solution that brings different applications together in a unified solution.

The term ERP arose in the early 1990s, with a direct connection to manufacturing processes. Since then, big manufacturers and other large enterprises have used ERPs to integrate a broad range of business processes.

Conventional on-premise ERPs required massive investment in setup and maintenance. But thanks to technological progress, ERPs have pivoted to cloud-based solutions. Let’s explore how conventional ERPs pale in comparison to cloud-based ERPs.

 

Downsides of an on-premise ERP

1. Requires a dedicated IT team

The primary difference between cloud and conventional ERP is that conventional on-premise ERP solutions are configured in your business’ local computers and servers. This means that you need to have a dedicated IT team to maintain the servers. Moreover, it’s your responsibility to constantly upgrade your ERP system to enhance its security.

You don’t need to face such hassles with cloud ERP solutions. Instead, the vendor bears the burden of deploying and maintaining the ERP solution. Moreover, the vendor is responsible for constantly patching the ERP to make it secure.

2. It’s expensive

On-premise ERPs have a reputation for being expensive. At first, you incur the upfront cost to acquire the hardware and software for setting up the system at your premises. Then you must pay the IT team for regular maintenance and debugging.

The cost is comparatively lower for a cloud-based solution as you can access it from your computer. All that you need is a stable Internet connection and a computer. As the ERP provider hosts and manages the IT infrastructure, you don’t need to buy fancy equipment to access the ERP.  If you go with a cloud solution, you don’t need to incur the expense of having an IT team to look after the ERP.

A whitepaper by Netsuite compared the overall cost of ownership of cloud computing software to locally operated ERPs. The paper found that even if you increase the number of ERP users, still the overall cost is less with cloud-based services. The study revealed that in the case of 100 users, cloud-based options cost 50% less than on-premise ones. In the case of 200 users it cost 35% less.

3. Lacks accessibility

At a time when remote work is flourishing, it can be challenging to give access to users for on-premise ERPs. Cloud-based ERPs offer real-time data that can be accessed from any convenient device — be it a laptop or smartphone.

Moreover, as on-premise ERPs are deployed and customized locally, upgrading or integrating them with other tools can be challenging. Cloud-based ERPs are superior in terms of integration and scalability. They are flexible enough to integrate with the latest offerings, and the hassle of developing the integration is borne by the ERP vendor.

 

Try Cin7 to manage your business

We’ve discussed how on-premise ERP solutions are inflexible and expensive to implement. However, having a unified solution to gain visibility over your entire business operations can add a lot of convenience. That’s where Cin7 comes in. Cin7 offers a cloud-based ERP to gain visibility over your business processes.
As Cin7 is cloud-based, it can be accessed from anywhere, and the implementation cost is less than an on-premise ERP. Cin7 completely manages and updates the cloud-based ERP. The system also integrates with more than 700 business tools. Using Cin7 advanced configurations, our implementation team will configure Cin7 to meet your business workflows and unique requirements.

With Cin7, you can manage your production, inventory, warehousing, sales, logistics, and even accounting. You can easily integrate new sales channels and effortlessly manage them.  Thus, you get better supply chain visibility and much-needed flexibility to outsmart your competition.With Cin7, you get real-time visibility of your inventory, which can help in timely purchasing and with evaluating performance. Cin7 allows you to automate sending your purchase orders to your suppliers, so whenever your inventory levels fall below a certain level, a purchase order is sent to the relevant supplier. Cin7 also comes with built-in EDI.

Cin7 provides a modern cloud-based solution at a fraction of the cost that must be paid for on-premise ERPs. Book a free call with our experts to learn more about our product.

Decode Science

Decode Science has used Cin7 since its founding. Twenty years of experience in the life sciences and diagnostics sector had taught Director Josh Warburton that inventory software was something he could not live without.

“I’ve worked in other businesses, and if you don’t have a good operating system for your inventory, it kills you,” Josh says. “Cin7 had the functionality that we required and needed minimal optimization to implement into our business.”

Enabling Discovery Throughout Oceania

Based in the Melbourne suburb of Carrum Downs, Decode Science imports and distributes medical research and clinical diagnostics equipment to facilities across Australia and New Zealand. “We’re direct-to-business distribution model, so the customers that we sell to consume the product, typically.”

Their clients include universities, medical research institutions and hospital labs, so it’s literally vital that their customers get the correct products within the required time frame. Decode Science carries laboratory equipment, reagents and plasticware for cancer and cardiovascular research, neuroscience, genomics, developmental biology and even agricultural biology. Items they sell include next-generation DNA-sequencing machines and library preparation solutions for whole-genome mapping.

“It’s a combination of research and in vitro diagnostics for things like cancer, coronavirus,” Josh explains. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Decode Science has seen an increase in demand from diagnostic test labs.

In layman’s terms, “What customers are doing most commonly is, they’re taking DNA from the world or RNA from the world and they’re turning that into data using our machines. So they’re taking the DNA and sequencing it to identify the code of that DNA.”

A Collaborative Onboarding Approach

Before going out on his own to helm Decode Science’s team of nine, former biologist Josh was a manager at a larger company in the same industry, with business units specializing in medical devices, diagnostics and life sciences. Which is why he knew from the outset that skimping on inventory management would be an unwise decision.

“We’re using inventory and the associated purchasing and sales order management that goes with it and then the Xero integration and reporting as well.”

Josh describes the onboarding experience as “well-handled.” A dedicated onboarding specialist took the team through training, troubleshooting and data management. “It was a very collaborative type of approach that got us up and running in about two or three weeks with something that was functional.”

Dependability Is in Their DNA

Being quick to market is crucial in the breaking world of bioscience technology, so Decode Science was pleased with the speedy implementation of Cin7 and minimal need for intervention.

“[Decode Science] is all B2B, but our sales process is a little bit more combination B2C/B2B.” By this, Josh means they use relationship building as a key sales strategy, partnering with companies like Bionano Genomics to host seminars to educate the medical community on emerging genetic technologies.

And because Decode Science performs this integrated sales and marketing function in-house with a very lean and agile team, less time spent managing orders is certainly welcome. While Josh knows that many small businesses operate on a shoestring budget, he says he “actually can’t imagine” being without Cin7. “I can’t imagine running a business off an Excel spreadsheet. [Inventory management software] is a relatively low-cost part of it.”

Cin7 named one of the Best Places to Work in 2021

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Technology news and recruitment platform Built In announced this week that Cin7 was awarded one of the 100 Best Places to Work in Colorado, 2021.

Auckland, New Zealand and Denver, Colorado — January 15, 2021

Technology news and recruitment platform Built In announced this week that Cin7 was awarded one of the 100 Best Places to Work in Colorado, 2021. Cin7 also placed in the Best Mid-sized Places to Work and the Best Paying Companies categories.

The Best Places to Work awards recognize top employers across the US, featuring those that go above and beyond for their people with employee benefits, support, cultural programs, and initiatives.

“We’re thrilled to be recognized as one of the best places to work in Colorado,” says Cin7 CFO Nolan Smith, who is based in Denver. “Colorado is recognized all over the world as an incredible place to work and play, and it’s fast becoming a favorite location for startups and tech businesses to set up shop. For Cin7 to be recognized among the best is a great achievement, and it’s a real testament to our efforts to build a values-based culture across the company.”

Built In determines winners for Best Places to Work based on an algorithm using company data about compensation, benefits, and cultural programs. To reflect the attributes candidates are searching for on Built In today, this year’s program weighted criteria more heavily on remote opportunities and programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“There’s not much that’s better than getting up in the morning and genuinely looking forward to the day ahead,” says Bronny Jacobsen, Head of People and Culture at Cin7. “That’s why we’re passionate about creating a workplace environment where our team can thrive, be energized and challenged, and have fun along the way as they build great software and look after our customers. We live it and love it, so to be recognized in Built In’s annual list of best companies to work for is the icing on the cake!”

Tech professionals rely on Built In’s Best Places to Work lists to seek out employers that align with their preferences, passions, and values. Since its inception three years ago, the award has expanded in reach, growing from tens of thousands of online views to just under one million views today.

“These companies raise the bar for cultural excellence and the ability to adapt to meet changing needs of employees,” says Sheridan Orr, Built In’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The 2021 winners show a commitment not just to creating meaningful cultures but to delivering talent needs as they change in a dynamic landscape. We’re thrilled to extend our congratulations to the winners.”

ABOUT CIN7

Cin7 helps businesses get their products to more customers, more efficiently, through more sales channels — faster than ever before. Every month, millions of sales orders flow through the Cin7 platform, reducing cost, effort and time for product sellers — so they can quickly get products to customers and build their brands without worrying about their operations. Cin7 is built on the values of striving to be your best, trusting each other to do the right thing, innovating and thinking outside-in, and collaborating — we’re better when we work together. Cin7 is currently hiring, and you can see the positions available here.

ABOUT BUILT IN

Built In serves more than 1,800 innovative companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprise, delivering content and digital recruitment solutions that work. The platform amplifies companies’ brands as national, local or remote employers of choice, as well as leaders in DEI. Monthly, 2.5 million tech professionals rely on Built In to stay up on trends, grow in their roles and discover companies with missions they want to join. The platform publishes stories about companies’ tech, culture and people. This activates sought-after professionals to apply to customers’ open roles.

ABOUT BUILT IN’S BEST PLACES TO WORK 

Built In’s esteemed Best Places to Work awards, now in its third year, honor companies across numerous categories: 100 Best Places to Work, 50 Best Small Places to Work, 100 Best Midsize Places to Work, 50 Companies with the Best Benefits and 50 Best Paying Companies. Two new national categories reflect what candidates are searching for, including 100 Best Large Companies to Work For and 50 Best Remote-First Places to Work.

BEST PLACES TO WORK: METHODOLOGY

Built In ranks companies algorithmically based on compensation information, benefits and culture programs. This year, based on data showing tech professionals’ needs, the Best Places to Work algorithm added weight to companies’ commitment to Diversity & Inclusion, and remote culture. Rank is determined by combining a company’s score in each of these categories.