Qnetex case study: Savona

What the Savona team love most about Qnetex

“The functionality is impressive – so far we haven’t found anything we need to be able to do that the system can’t handle”

“Its flexibility has been a game-changer – there’s room to log non-conforming data now (rather than just bypass controls like we used to, which always caused issues later) so our error rate’s reduced by 75%”

“The fact that it’s browser-based is great – our staff can access it anytime, wherever they’re working, and know they’re all looking at the exact same data”

“The people are just fantastic – Peter and the team really understand wholesale and its many complexities, and working with Qnetex every day you can see that it was designed with our specific set-up in mind”

“It’s so intuitive and easy to use – even our most tech-shy people haven’t needed a manual or anything, it’s been a very easy adoption process”

“It’s so accessible – it integrates smoothly with our other systems and our reporting is so much quicker and more meaningful now we can see and share data from across the business”

Hear from Mike Morgan, Savona’s Managing Director, about how Qnetex has revolutionised their business

What made you go looking for a new ERP in the first place?

“The immediate motivation was simply that the systems we were using were quite old and just weren’t meeting our needs anymore. We also had a few different systems in place across our two businesses and going forward we wanted to have them completely aligned. But I think there were bigger things at play too.

We’d had some negative experiences before, of getting stuck in very unhelpful ‘parent-child’ type relationships with ERP providers, and we were keen to find a company we could build a more personal, equal partnership with. We were also quite firm on not wanting to go through a reseller, as that had burned us financially in the past in terms of significant costs any time we wanted to make even small changes to the system.

Once we began our search it quickly became clear that Qnetex ticked all our boxes, as well as fitting within our budget – and after more than a year on the system we’ve got zero regrets about our choice.”

Now you’ve been using Qnetex for awhile, what are the things your team most appreciate about it?

“Well the functionality is really impressive, it’s very clear that it’s purpose-built for foodservice. So far we haven’t found anything we need to be able to do that the system can’t handle. And it’s very intuitive and easy to use – even our most tech-shy people haven’t needed a manual or anything, so it’s been a very easy adoption process. Also the fact that it’s browser-based is great. Our staff have found it so helpful that they can access it anytime, wherever they’re working, and know they’re all looking at the exact same data – and that the data is up-to-the-minute accurate.

And personally I’ve been so pleased with the wider relationship, as the people at CSD are just fantastic. Right from the initial presentation made by Peter and the team we felt we would be working with likeminded people, who had the ability to talk in a language understood by all levels of the business – not just the tech bods! And that’s been proven again and again over the months. It’s definitely a peer-to-peer relationship, where they’re very respectful, accessible, and responsive as well as bringing huge amounts of wholesale experience and expertise to the table.”

How has using Qnetex practically improved the way you work?

“Its flexibility has been a game-changer. We used to have a lot of problems in the warehouse, and actually on the deliveries and customer service side of things too, when issues came up that just didn’t fit into the data fields on our systems. People would just end up bypassing certain controls and this caused so much confusion later. But now in Qnetex there’s room to properly log non-conforming data and flag up anomalies, and the impact is genuinely incredible – our error rate across the business has reduced by 75%!

Our customer service has leapt up to a whole new level as well, thanks to the ePOD capabilities. We can basically track all our deliveries as they’re happening and engage with customers as soon as we spot something awry, putting us on the front foot. That, combined with all the brilliant customer-facing elements like being able to place and track their deliveries digitally, has made it so much easier for people to engage with us. We’ve had some really terrific feedback.”

What kind of impact has Qnetex had on the business as a whole?

“Probably the biggest thing is the clarity it’s given us, in terms of finally having a single view of the truth of what’s going on in the business. It’s helped us standardise and streamline how we measure things in each individual area, as well as bringing all those parts together to more easily see how each one feeds into and impacts the others. Plus it integrates so smoothly with our other systems (like Phocas and Sage), meaning that we can see and extract and share data from across the entire business.

So overall our reporting is significantly quicker and more meaningful now, offering us insights we simply weren’t getting before. That has given us confidence that we’ve genuinely got our finger on the pulse of the business and aren’t going to miss opportunities (or fail to spot problems).”

Find out how Qnetex helps you with everything from processing orders and managing stock to organising your warehouse and tracking deliveries – all in a single ERP