• Customer: Tropical Marine Centre (TMC Iberia)
• Website: www.tropicalmarinecentre.co.uk
• Location: Lisbon, Portugal
• ERP system used: Sage X3
• IT Partner: F5 IT www.f5it.pt

Tropical Marine Centre has been Europe’s leading supplier of ethically-sourced marine livestock to the trade for over 40 years, as well as manufacturers and distributors of quality, innovative products for the aquarium, planted aquarium and pond.

The Challenge

Dealing with up to 4000 invoices, backorders and credits a month, previous methods of document processing were laborious and lengthy. Documents needed to be printed, rescanned onto headed paper and then sent via email to the customer. In cases, some items of a customer’s order may be out of stock so a part shipment would be made. Once back in stock, customers, who could be of multi-languages, would then be contacted to clarify if they would like the remaining items to be shipped, to add additional items to the order or to hold off shipping the items until their next large order. Such methods were time-consuming, relying not only on customer experience, but internal processes. Existing workflows were equating to an unnecessary amount of employee’s valuable time that could be better spent on more important tasks.

The Solution

Leading on from a Sage Portugal event, TMC were presented by F5IT Consultancy the opportunity to implement Spindle Professional to their Sage X3 system, to greatly reduce the time TMC were spending on processing documents and to improve the way back orders were being handled. The enablement of speeding up processes and integrating “must read” emails with sales information, the ability to correspond in customer’s own language and to associate weekly promotions, product information and company brand were strong factors which TMC found invaluable to their business operations.

After the initial meeting, the implementation of Spindle Professional by F5IT was incredibly quick and simple. It only took 2 days to set the basic parameters of 4 main workflows including invoices, credit notes, statements, back order allocations and receipts/payment remittance advices. All reports were readily available within Sage X3. Thanks to Spindle Professional, TMC are able to communicate with customers much quicker and easier. The ability to create a report when new items come back into stock, and automatically send an email to the customer asking how they would like to manage the remaining order, has significantly improved customer service and internal efficiency. TMC are now modernising into Sage X3 with Spindle Professional and will be rolling out the implementation of the software solution throughout the rest of the group.

What They Said 

Spindle Professional provides a much better customer experience and makes our life easier in terms of time spent processing documents. Every week we receive hundreds of products, which get allocated to existing back orders. Previously we had to tell our customers that these had arrived and ask if they wanted to add something, explain the promos and by the time we finished, it was time to start a new arrival! Now it’s a case of pressing a print button! Done… 
Brian Schaff, General Manager TMC Iberia 

Implementation was very easy. With just a few changes on our crystal reports we managed to create a really complex and comprehensive integration between Sage X3 and our daily routines.
Lucia Cordeiro, Internal IT Developer TMC Iberia

The Facts  

• Up to 50 email enquiries saved a week by emailing back orders directly in customer's language.
• 10 - 15 man hours saved per week amongst a team of 15 people
• Less time processing documents has greatly improved the customer experience.

For more information about Spindle Professional visit www.draycir.com/spindleprofessional