Technetix

Katy Mealy, Head of Purchasing at Technetix, was concerned that her planning team were spending too much time combing through spreadsheets to find those orders causing trouble. Having recently changed ERP systems by adopting Exact across the whole group, a solution already present when they acquired their Dutch subsidiary, Katy was looking for that ‘extra’ bit of functionality to take Technetix forecasting and inventory management to the next level: “I had been working with systems for many years that offered clear, easy to use management by exception principles. The link to Slimstock actually came through Exact, as they have successfully combined the systems in a number of companies.”

Having gained insight into how Slim4, the forecasting and inventory management tool from Slimstock, and Exact would work together, Technetix decided to go ahead with the implementation in September 2009. “Once we decided to go ahead, the implementation could not have been easier. We had some particular requirements that fell outside of standard functionality, but even so we were live by the end of November that year, with day-to-day work continuing as normal throughout the project. We had decided early on that we would need to have planners in both Burgess Hill and our offices in Veenendaal in The Netherlands, so the whole project was built around the idea of working from different sites.”

Although reducing the workload for her team was a key point for Katy, Slim4 also had to deliver more tangible benefits to Techetix as a whole. “A very important part of deciding to implement Slim4 was based not just on its ability to deliver better availability, mainly through the exception management, but also the potential for stock reduction it offers. The analysis carried out as part of the implementation highlighted clear areas in which we could reduce our stock position, resulting in an overall reduction of £1.5m throughout 2010.”

Technetix have made the jump ‘across the pond’ and are currently successfully expanding their market share in the US. “The expansion into the USA forced a rethink of our entire supply chain. Slim4 gave us the opportunity to streamline our S&OP process and meant we were able to hit the ground running.” Not content with ‘just’ achieving success on a financial level, Technetix have also been listed as one of the ‘Sunday Times – 100 Best Small Companies to work for’. “Now we have Slim4, we are confident that we will be able to make our philosophy an intercontinental as well as international one”.