Overview
Price Modern is an innovative company that provides modern office furniture and design solutions—designing and showcasing office furniture, and developing compelling, functional layouts. Founded in 1904, Price Modern specializes in space planning and design by using personal expertise and computer-aided design (CAD) technology to create workspaces that utilize square footage in the most efficient way. Price Modern combines office design services, workstation planning, inventory repurposing, canvas renderings and furniture specification to provide a positive client experience.
Background
Price Modern was using aging, disparate technology and many manual processes to operate the business. Company stakeholders felt this archaic architecture was not allowing them to provide the best customer experience or to optimize profitability. Their ability to forecast sales was limited to Excel spreadsheets that were static and often inaccurate, and managing client orders and costs was often challenging.
Ultimately, most financial information provided to decision-makers was made available after the ability to make changes, thus Price Modern was in a tracking mode. In addition, the company also had a legacy industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with limited flexibility, and the vendor had a very small team to support the software; this became an unacceptable risk.
“It was outdated, and it didn’t provide us with the kind of current information that we really needed,” said Tom Morton, Price Modern’s chief financial officer. “It was time for us to step into the 21st century, so to speak.”
Price Modern wanted to implement a more modern technology framework, with customer relationship management (CRM), a centralized quoting system, greater visibility into the business, enhanced reporting and dashboard functionality, and improved customer experience capabilities.
Project
Price Modern evaluated other industry-specific ERP solutions, as well as the NetSuite business management platform. While many available systems designed specifically for office furniture and office supply dealers are modern and updated, the small pool of support personnel can be a challenge.
Therefore, Price Modern chose to go in a different direction, knowing that NetSuite has thousands of users and could be customized to its specific needs. In addition, one of Price Modern’s affiliated furniture dealers successfully adopted NetSuite, presenting opportunities to integrate and align with that key vendor.
“I knew I wanted to go with a cloud-based product, so NetSuite seemed to make the most sense from a support perspective,” said Morton. “From everything I saw, it could be customized to our industry and our particular business.”
After selecting NetSuite, the company chose RSM to implement the NetSuite solution based on a previous relationship with Morton, as well as RSM’s reputation as one of the country’s largest and most successful NetSuite partners.
“I got the top-notch product, and I got the top-notch consulting firm,” said Morton. “And I personally know that if there are any issues, I can pick up the phone and I would have no problem getting everything resolved quickly.”
RSM began the analysis and design stage of the implementation, with a focus on requirements and gaining a deep understanding of Price Modern. At the end of that phase, the RSM team performed a proof of concept for critical design components, working closely with the core team at Price Modern as well as other key stakeholders.
Given the customized approach that Price Modern takes with its clients, RSM integrated strong workflow capabilities into the NetSuite system for approvals, alerts and actions. The company’s complex processes with its clients made the design and configuration of NetSuite more complicated, but the results provide users the tools and functionality to effectively manage their job functions.
Ultimately, RSM provided several critical improvements for Price Modern through the NetSuite implementation, including CRM, a customized quote and sales order creation process, and custom general ledger processes for accounts receivable and accounts payable orders.
RSM assisted Price Modern to gain the deep visibility into the business it requires for continued growth. Since sales reps were previously generating quotes out of different systems, pulling data to get operational reports was very challenging. Today, all quotes are going through NetSuite and key individual are leveraging dashboards and mobile functionality for more visibility and insight at all times.
With the NetSuite implementation, Price Modern is moving toward a real-time system with much better reporting on what stakeholders need to support decision-making. Some key reports took more than a day to produce within the old legacy system, but with NetSuite, the company can generate those reports in minutes.
“The biggest improvement I’ve seen, and that many people in the company have seen, is just the transparency and the ability to see data in all kinds of different slices and views,” commented Morton. “And we can do that very quickly and easily.”
Another major accomplishment in the project was how RSM integrated almost every Price Modern employee into NetSuite, enabling the company to manage every aspect of the business in one place. The company had very limited users in the previous legacy system, with most work completed manually outside the ERP.
“We have a lot better communication among our various departments because of the reminders within NetSuite, and the things that show up on people’s dashboards,” said Morton. “The system prompts people to perform tasks, and everybody is getting tied into transactions more efficiently and effectively.”
Moving forward
While NetSuite has already enhanced many of Price Modern’s key processes, the company is planning on taking advantage of more extensive features and functionality in the future. For example, Price Modern has its sights set on leveraging NetSuite’s customer portal capability to provide customers with more personalized, interactive features and insight into orders. The company also plans on rolling out mass email capabilities for collections, freeing up employees for more strategic tasks and increasing revenue.
Additionally, as Price Modern’s vendors move toward using web services for order placement, NetSuite can help the company automate this process and place orders via web services—a function not possible under the previous legacy system.
“I feel like right now, we have only scratched the surface of the capabilities of the NetSuite system,” said Morton. “I know it’s going to be just amazing once we start doing more of the things the system can do.”
Outcomes
After the comprehensive NetSuite implementation, Price Modern now has enhanced visibility and standardization of processes across offices. The RSM team spent significant time understanding Price Modern’s business processes and needs and custom tailored the NetSuite system to the business. RSM also provided a great deal of help in the change management process to move nearly 200 company-wide users to NetSuite.
Instead of simply tracking the business, with NetSuite Price Modern is now able to truly manage the business. Stakeholders can view real-time dynamics of sales, review the cost of sales and manage customer expectations more actively while eliminating manual processes.
Key benefits of RSM’s NetSuite implementation for Price Modern include:
- Increased transparency and ability to drill down into key business data
- Access to reports and data within seconds instead of hours in the previous legacy system
- Streamlined, consistent processes throughout the business
- Enhanced automation, increasing efficiency and eliminating manual, paper-based functions
