Charles Green - Sage Line 500 Case study

The challenge
Despite having invested in a wide range of software packages Charles Green had experienced very little success with them. Most recently the company had installed an American owned financials and distribution system in an attempt to streamline its processes, but could still not find a suitable manufacturing solution that fitted the business. The company relied upon manual records and experienced particular problems with the traceability of raw materials coming into the business and their subsequent usage. The method of dealing with incoming orders involved a lot of paperwork with the danger of costly mistakes being made. As the company prided itself on its fast order turnaround, its inability to track jobs and have up to the minute stock control made this area of the business a very stressful area to manage. Furthermore, the absence of relevant workshop data meant that production planning was very difficult. As a result of these problems, Charles Green’s management team decided to look to the IT software market to try and resolve its issues.

Richard Sutton, Deputy Managing Director at Charles Green comments, “Specifically, we needed a system that would allow us to cope more efficiently with the large number of orders we process each year. We wanted product photographs, together with detailed routings and BOMs on our job cards. We needed workshop data to help improve our efficiency; data which could be used to improve work flow and to track against targets. Our stock is complex, the value being subject to rapidly changing exchange rates and precious metal prices. So stock control, which was still a manual system, was a vital area for us to tighten up on.”

The benefits
Charles Green quickly began to benefit from the newly implemented Sage Line 500 solution. By introducing Enhanced Order Processing orders could be quickly taken over the telephone and input into a template, calling upon online stock files complete with colour photographs. This saved sales staff considerable time and effort in identifying the correct product codes and recording variations in style, stone or metal. A bill of materials was produced and a works order printed directly from the system, creating a full colour document with instructions, materials and a photograph for workshop staff to follow.

Charles Green believes that it has finally found the product and the partner with which the company can work moving forward. It is experiencing a greater degree of control over its production and is giving management vital visibility of orders, tracing them from the point of sale through the workshop to completion and dispatch. The company also runs a robust stock control system that can quickly and easily manage the variations in product, giving the company greater flexibility and an insight into stock costs and buyer trends.

In addition to this, Charles Green is very happy with the output from the system including automatically produced job cards, invoices, statements and purchase orders.

Sage Line 500 was also integrated into the company’s existing Cognos Business Intelligence software, and alongside easy drill through functionality from the Sage Enquiries, management has an easy, effective and timely reporting solution on which to make decisions – of vital importance in the ever-changing jewellery industry.