Big Save Furniture

New container tracker delivers big saving for Big Save Furniture

When major furniture retailer Big Save Furniture knew time was running out for its container tracker system, they turned to Integral to develop a new one. “The old container tracker was unwieldy, very unstable and we weren’t getting enough or the right information out of it,” says Big Save Furniture’s Business Systems Manager, Brent Rollings. “Instead of being a separate database, the tables were spread throughout our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. We were updating one piece of information potentially three or four times in different spreadsheets.”

In 2008, Integral had redeveloped the system that generated Big Save’s freight consignment notes, and that became the platform for further development. The other driver was the upgrade of Big Save’s back-end systems, including its ERP system, which would make both the consignment note generator and the container tracker redundant.

The two applications shared a lot of information so we wanted to reduce the duplication of data entry and get more extensive and more accurate information.

Big Save out of the container tracker, We’ve certainly achieved that. And because it’s now in its own separate database, it’s easier to manage from a systems backup, upgrading and administrative point of view.

Integral has since developed additional facilities to streamline vendor payments and manage container stock allocation records.It also developed a branch container notification system. “Now, the stock allocations are within the container tracking system, so if a date changes, the system automatically sends an email out to the branches based on customers or stock listed.”

Brent says that, as well as delivering huge improvements in usefulness and accuracy of information, the new systems are saving Big Save’s support team about an hour and a half a day.

Moving the Integral systems to the recently upgraded ERP system was completely painless. We definitely see Integral as a business partner. They have a good understanding of our business and come up with some great ideas. They’re very responsive and because they are just around the corner, can pop in if there’s something that needs sorting out quickly.