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| Key
features & functionality used
by Learning Streams: |
| E-Commerce |
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Running web store
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operations |
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• Real-time
integration |
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with
back-end |
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accounting
and |
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business
operations |
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• A-Z listing |
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Managing Shoppers |
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• Secured
account |
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management
(SSL) |
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• Credit card
security |
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Selling products
online |
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• Full product
selection |
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• Kit configuration
and |
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upgrade/downgrade |
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items |
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• Multiple
image sizes |
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such
as thumbnail |
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and
actual sizes |
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• Storing
of item |
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description
in HTML |
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Taking orders online |
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• Real-time
order |
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creation
in the back-end |
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• Real-time
order status |
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• Authorization
of credit |
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cards |
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| Accounting |
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General ledger |
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Accounts receivable |
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Accounts payable |
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| Sales |
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Sales Order |
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Store/validate credit
card |
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information |
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| Inventory
control |
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Serial number tracking |
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Graph inventory
levels |
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Multi-level categories |
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| Purchasing |
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Purchase orders |
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Generate/assign
serial |
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numbers on purchase |
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orders |
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| Shipping
& Receiving |
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Everest Freight |
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Estimator option |
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Company
Background |
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K through 12
Founders Jim and Robyn Bailey started
Learning Streams in 1998 to provide
a large selection of family-oriented
and quality guaranteed products for
home education. It currently offers
thousands of educational books, software,
science sets, and educational games
online at Learningstreams.com.
With a background in brand marketing
and an MBA, Jim Bailey and his wife
were already home schooling their children,
while together doing mail order catalogs
in the home school market.
Located in Cumming, GA, the business
that started in their garage quickly
grew until it took over nearly every
room in the house. Today, working out
of a 10,000 square foot office-warehouse,
the business continues to grow with
a product selection that now includes
thousands of items and more added every
week. Learning Streams opens its warehouse
on select days for the public to come
in and shop for thousands of curriculum
materials and used books. The Baileys
employ a staff of four full-time and
four part-time workers who are also
experienced home school parents.
Learning Streams runs on Everest ERP Software. |
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The
Challenge |
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Starting out his business
in the hardest possible way, Bailey
would spend twenty-four hours a week
to do a manual inventory count, wandering
around a garage full of products looking
through boxes, and using numerous Microsoft
Excel spreadsheets to keep track of
things. Bailey ran his accounting on
QuickBooks, which wasn’t a pleasant
situation at all. “Not too many
people probably know this but after
you enter 14,500 customers in QuickBooks,
a message pops up that says ‘QuickBooks
is full’,” recalled Bailey.
“We found out to our alarm that
it would not take one more customer
so at that point we realized this was
not going to be the answer for us.”
Using Microsoft FrontPage, it took Bailey
four months of his own full time to
get his static web store up and running.
He would manually create the static
pages for his web store, which also
had a little shopping cart plugged into
it. Though customers could place orders
online, it lacked any integration with
all other processes of the business;
it required manually re-keying of every
order’s information into QuickBooks,
and again into the ICVerify credit card
processing software, and then again
manually writing it in the UPS shipping
log. It took up a lot of time, introduced
errors into the process, and Bailey
was spending $40,000 for two employees
just to manually re-key all this data,
full-time. |
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As the business grew, it got to be extremely
complex and unmanageable. Bailey was forced
to turn down a new product line of popular
books as it was just too big an undertaking
to manually update the static website using
FrontPage. Bailey looked at the Microsoft
Great Plains solution, which he felt was not
only too expensive, but also lacked additional
functionalities which thus required custom
development. "For instance, Great Plains
doesn't have the ability to calculate the
freight rate based on zip code and weight,
it's all just a flat rate for anywhere in
the United States, it's not nearly as sophisticated
as the Freight Estimator in Everest and you
are paying a whole lot more for Great Plains,"
Bailey commented. The costs of custom development
required for Great Plains far exceeded Bailey's
limited budget. |
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The
Solution |
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Since initially purchasing
just a two-user license of Everest Standard
Edition in October 2002, now for Bailey, working
on his web store is easy as flipping a page
in a book. “I am happy with my purchase
of Everest. I think Everest was the right
place for us to start from where we came with
QuickBooks – it was a quantum leap for
us,” said Bailey.
Presently with a product line of over 5,000
items, Bailey does his purchasing and inventory
combined in half a day. “I’d say
one of my very favorite parts of Everest is
the inventory control because even though
QuickBooks had some built-in functionality
to track inventory it just wasn’t good
enough to use,” Bailey continued. “Now
it creates the purchase order, I just print
it and fax it, that’s it.”
Previously, the busy 'back to school' season
meant running a week behind, inspite of people
working round the clock, paying over-time,
and even working Saturdays and Sundays. Learning
Streams now ships all orders within 48 hours
during peak season compared to fully seven
days' peak season order fulfillment cycles
prior to Everest, due to all the manual processes
that have now been eliminated by Everest.
Today Learning Streams looks different to
a customer: it offers lower prices
on some items and a much larger selection.
“For the first time, our customers are
able to buy books either as a set or individually
and just that, that alone approximately doubled
the sales of the product line,” Bailey
said.
With a growing customer-base and 50% increase
in revenues, Learning Streams is handling
50% more orders with the same number of employees,
which in turn has improved productivity by
50%. It has also seen an increase in bottom-line
and profitability over the last fourteen months;
Bailey has been able to clear over $100,000
in accumulated business debt and has even
been able to take his family on its first
real vacation in eight years.
Having just upgraded to Everest Advanced Edition,
now there is no looking back for Bailey. "We've
been aggressively working on adding new items
and building the business that way to fully
utilize the marketing capabilities in Everest."
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The
Result |
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Increased bottom-line & profitability |
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Saved twenty hours a week with better
inventory management |
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Eliminated two full-time employees’
previous workload by eliminating multiple
order re-entry |
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Handling 50% more orders without additional
overhead |
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Cut down shipping time by five days,
thereby facilitating better customer
service |
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