Appliance parts specialist saves 240 HOURS a month with Brightpearl after going live in just three months.

“We were thrilled at the speed of the implementation. Where Microsoft Nav took 6 months just to upgrade, Brightpearl was set up in a matter of weeks. We now save 60 hours per week on order entry alone thanks to its automation component.”

 

– Nick Ernst, Co-Founder, Snap Supply

Making it Snappy 

Founded by two brothers in 2017, Snap Supply was born from 40 years of experience within the appliance repair parts industry. Nick and Shawn Ernst are appliance repair professionals who have utilized their hands on experience  to launch an appliance parts business that really knows how to take care of the customer.

What initially began with Nick selling parts on Amazon and Ebay during his lunch break, quickly grew to become one of the most highly respected suppliers of appliance parts in the American midwest. 

Today, the company trades across its new Shopify Plus-powered direct-to-consumer and wholesale websites, as well as multiple marketplaces, and stocks a wide range of item to support the appliance replacement parts community. 

However, with any great success story, there are speed bumps, and like many other quickly scaling businesses, manual data entry became a time consuming process for the firm that needed to be addressed. 

“With our existing ERP, Microsoft Navision, everything was too manual,” says Nick Ernst, Co-Founder, Snap Supply. “As we grew we got to a point where processing 400-500 orders per day by hand just wasn’t feasible, we wanted a one stop shop for operational commerce that would automate data entry and allow us to focus on growing our sales.” 

After a brief consideration of ERP system Netsuite, Snap Supply opted for Brightpearl’s retail focused Digital Operations Platform, due to its extensibility, with  a host of out of the box integrations, including to 3PL softwares such as Shipstation, as well as Brightpearl’s its ability to easily handle fluctuations in sales volume. 

“Netsuite claims to be a complete commerce system, but truly doesn’t connect. It requires a third party to stand between everything and transfer the data, and, when you start to evaluate the cost of customizing everything, it doesn’t make sense. Brightpearl was the only option as an all in one solution  that could handle the volume that we were doing and was easily extendable with the other 3rd party apps and services we use to run our business.” 

Saving Time and Scaling Up 

As the only Digital Operations platform capable of automating the entire ecommerce workstream, on average Brightpearl customers save two months a year as a direct result of automation. After a lightning quick deployment time of less than three months, like many other members of the Brightpearl family, the Snap Supply team saw these unique benefits kick in almost immediately. 

‘We were thrilled at the speed of the implementation,” says Nick. “Where Microsoft Nav took six months to upgrade, Brightpearl was set up in a matter of weeks. We now save an incredible 60 hours per week – 240 hours each month – on order entry alone thanks to its automation component.” 

Without the need for masses of manual data entry, Snap Supply was able to diversify its team, promoting staff internally and shifting the focus of the business to supercharge its sales growth. 

“We used to have two full time employees whose remit was just data entry. Brightpearl has saved us so much time on inventory, invoicing and reporting that we’ve been able to pivot our workforce to become both more customer focused and sales driven. We are now 3x more profitable as a direct result of how the software allows us to balance our employees!” 

Brightpearl’s demand planning capabilities and holistic approach to data has been integral to boosting the margins of the Illinois-based business and providing it with vital data to implement new sales strategies.

Speaking to Brightpearl’s impact on its bottom line, Nick says “Overall we can track everything more closely, whether that’s inventory, cash, and where our product is going. One of the hardest things was tracking sales in Navision. With Brightpearl, being able to segment sales channels and see what’s performing really highlights where we can improve and helps us to keep an eye on our margins.” 

A Rapid Ecommerce Expansion

Since deploying Brightpearl, the firm has gone from strength to strength, developing new sales programs, expanding its catalogue and striking the perfect balance between exceptional customer service and increasing profitability. Nick explains: 

“Before Brightpearl, due to our lack of automation capabilities we were behind on shipping times and overselling on Amazon. We resolved that pretty quickly and I’m happy to say that since implementation we’ve been growing at a rate of between 5 and 10% every month and have tripled our net profits over the last five.”   

Due to its rapid expansion the firm has just registered with Canada as a business and has big plans to extend its reach across the US over the next 18 months. 

“Without Brightpearl it wouldn’t be possible to be growing at the rate we are”, adds Nick. “It’s helped improve our margins, given us the capability to work remotely and will be an integral part of our expansion as we look to open new locations on the West Coast by 2022.”