Giving mobility customers affordable independence with the help of SAP Business One
Ableworld needed to upgrade its technology infrastructure to keep pace with its fast growth.
Using SAP for our ordering and MRP process is much easier because it maintains our stock levels in our stores and reduces the manual process. It also gives us visibility of what products are selling and what’s not, and if products are out of stock.Administration Manager
The Client
About
Ableworld
Ableworld is the largest mobility and stairlift retailer in the country, providing a wide range of disabled and mobility aids to suit all needs. It was founded in 2001 after one person’s vision of making people’s lives easier. The aim was to be able to provide independence to people who may have difficulties and to provide them with whatever they need in order to overcome their difficulty.
Ableworld currently operates over 35 mobility stores around the UK with a vision of continuing to expand and provide support to more customers around the UK.
Understandig the Problem
The Challenge
Voted the No.1 Mobility Dealer of the Year UK at the 2019 Access & Mobility Professional Awards, Ableworld has grown from one store into a successful nationwide business. But the business had outgrown its multiple legacy software systems, and Ableworld was keen to ensure customer and product data were being collected and stored efficiently.
Appointments for product demonstrations, services and repairs were being recorded manually which was very time consuming. In-store, the customer purchase experience involved paperwork that required signatures on different physical documents.
With growth areas in engineering, product delivery, stairlift provision and in the mobility stores, Ableworld needed to upgrade its technology infrastructure to keep pace with its fast growth.
“It can take customers quite a while to buy one of our larger items, because of the series of paperwork that goes on, so it’s not always the best customer experience.”
The Solution
Making it Work
Ableworld chose Codestone as its technology partner to implement SAP Business One as a Service on the SAP HANA database. The new solution will enable the firm to integrate its entire franchise operation, and twenty company owned stores, by deploying three best of breed software solutions into one single platform.
It includes Geopal, a mobile service management solution providing key functionality to support the engineers with route planning and scheduling, Maxoptra for route optimisation and Maeko EPoS, a real time integrated retail and wholesale till solution. BPA from Codeless Platform provides the link enabling users to integrate and automate the flow of data.
SAP Business One acts as a central hub to allow data to be managed seamlessly, whether from the in-store tills, online purchasing or service data from engineer visits. Stock management is easier with the automated resource planning capability. All 1,700 or so stock items are recorded within SAP ensuring the prices are updated and fed directly into the till systems across all the stores.
Using SAP for our ordering and MRP process is much easier because it maintains our stock levels in our stores and reduces the manual process. It also gives us visibility of what products are selling and what’s not, and if products are out of stock.
Discover the Benefits
Ableworld will gain tighter financial controls with the increased visibility of each store’s activities and performance.
Ableworld will gain tighter financial controls with the increased visibility of each store’s activities and performance.
Customer experience will continue to improve as the purchase experience and subsequent service support is seamlessly managed.
Ableworld now has a platform for growth and more time can be spent focusing on core business activities.
With SAP Business One we’re set for the future. We anticipate more stores opening over the next few years, either owned or franchise, and as we grow the system will grow with us.Administration Manager (Project Manager), Ableworld