Customer Success: Digital Planet's Rapid Growth with Acumatica ERP

Digital Planet Boosts Cross-Team Collaboration and Alignment Through Acumatica ERP

Industry: Distribution, Cross industries, Services, Professional Services

Application Replaced: Other and Sage

For 20 years, South African-based Digital Planet used various proprietary systems and manual processes to run its operations. For years, the company operated on an in-house order and stock management system, two separate financial management applications, a standalone workflow management platform and an in-house developed application that surfaces reporting data from Microsoft SQL. While their financial management application worked for financials, it couldn’t handle the operations side of the business, and thus Digital Planet had to build its own systems to manage operations. With so many disconnected systems, Digital Planet was also forced to retain many manual processes.

Seeking one version of the truth and a scalable solution, the smart-device fulfilment company deployed cloud-based Acumatica ERP as its platform for rapid growth. Unexpectedly, it also gained greater collaboration among its employees.

More Efficient, Productive

Digital Planet’s departments are much more efficient working in a single, easy-to-use, connected solution.

They have:
• Cut out the need to maintain multiple systems
• Reduced administration, operational and infrastructure costs
• Eliminated the reliance on spreadsheets
• Gained the ability to run reports from a single data source, eliminating “version of the truth” discussions

As a result, executives estimate productivity increases and time savings of 30 percent in finance, 20 percent in operations, 20 percent in after sales and 20 percent in the warehouse. “We now get more done in the same timeframe with increased accuracy,” says Opperman.

Finance productivity increased 30 percent because invoicing is now automated. Previously, receiving a purchase order would take 20 to 30 minutes and it now takes less than 10 minutes, including attaching paperwork, which previously was a headache.

“Our people are more effective and can focus on relevant issues rather than manual work, and that’s as good as gold,” adds Zietsman. “We’ve gone through substantial growth, and as our order volume has grown, our headcount has shrunk. We can do more with less; financially, that is a big win for us.”

KEY RESULTS

• Gained a single source of truth, providing visibility throughout the business

• Reduced time to accomplish tasks by implementing a single solution, increasing employee productivity

• Increased transaction volume with a lower staff complement, allowing the business to grow efficiently

• Pivoted to work from home seamlessly during the COVID-19 pandemic, avoiding business interruption

• Increased collaboration among siloed teams leading to greater operational efficiencies

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"In the cloud, we have access to an unlimited capacity to adjust resource levels on the fly, accommodate any change in demand in seconds, access data from anywhere, and have empowered our workforce to set their own working hours". – Chris Opperman, Solutions Architect