Interview with Jon Roberts, sales director, OrderWise.
What does your company do and what is your USP?
OrderWise is the go-to solution for businesses looking to streamline, automate and grow their operations. Our stock-centric ERP solution provides the key features and functionality needed to empower workforces, boost productivity, reduce costs and increase profit.
While a lot of ERP solutions on the market are finance focused, OrderWise has been built for organisations where operations rely on effective management of stock from order to revenue and whose primary concern is managing products and orders across the supply chain.
With a single end-to-end solution including integrated WMS, businesses are able to benefit from improved stock transparency, reporting accuracy, workflow optimisation and comprehensive stock management. This means they can make more informed forecasting and strategic decisions, drawing from multiple data sources and accelerating their overall growth.
How do you deliver on this USP?
Whether it’s a 570% increase in online orders or 242% increase in annual turnover, we’ve seen some incredible success stories produced within the OrderWise Community. In these fast-paced environments, we understand it’s essential the technology we provide customers is constantly improving. That’s why significant resource is focused on OrderWise, covering ongoing R&D, strategic development and the release of new functionality every month.
What retailer needs do you fulfil? And which retailers do you work with?
No two retail businesses are the same, but we’ve seen first-hand the transformative impact that data integration and automation have had on our retail customers. That includes:
- Achieving end-to-end operational visibility by integrating information across different platforms, as well as third-party websites and couriers.
- Automating alerts and notifications across operations for real-time insights on performance, sales, stock levels and communication.
- Utilising business intelligence to maximise sales performance and insight.
- Tracking and processing specialised industry information such as serial numbers, batch identifiers, source information and point of origin details.
- Monitoring customer behaviour to improve experience and create automated workflows and alerts to sales targeting to increase profits.
OrderWise works with a wide array of retailers, and in recent years we’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with several customers on a series of case studies, including: Sam Turner & Sons, Obaby, The Wright Buy, Latham’s Steel Security Doors, Gift Universe, Leon Paul.
How are you using the emerging technology to support retail growth?
With increasing consumer demand around next-day delivery, fast and easy returns and personalised buying experiences, retailers are under immense pressure to keep up, protect their supply chain and manage customer service.
Under the weight of these pressures, unintegrated and disjointed technology is failing retail businesses, and as a result, many commerce businesses are struggling to maximise their sales potential across multiple channels.
By integrating data across different systems and third-party platforms with solutions like our own, businesses gain complete end-to-end visibility of all their retail and ecommerce operations. With this level of data insight and analysis, organisations can unlock new levels of optimisation – increasing profit margins, automating processes and improving customer service.
What do you see as challenges for the supply chain and logistics sector over the coming years? How are you prepared to meet those challenges?
Successfully managing and tracking materials and products right through to the final stages of delivery isn’t easy. Especially while navigating bottlenecks and everchanging market conditions. But with customer expectations higher than ever, the pressure to keep up with stakeholder needs, maintain industry standards and deal with economic turbulence is only set to increase in the coming years.
Despite this, we still see many businesses still relying on disjointed and legacy systems to manage such complexities across their networks and supply chains.
For example, if raw materials or products are damaged in transit, delivery deadlines can’t be met, and there begins a delay in production. When these issues start to amass, it’s easy for a few seemingly small problems to lead to a significant loss of time, money and resource.
The most effective way to prevent these issues is by gaining real-time visibility into your operation. And while not all complications can be prevented, having a greater understanding of each stage equips logistics managers with the ability to plan ahead and anticipate demand.
How would you describe your vision?
To help wholesalers, distributors and retailers in the UK who are strategically focused on delivering value and growth, to connect their processes, optimise their workflows and transform their stock-related journeys from order to revenue.
How would you describe your growth, what have been the main points in your expansion and what has been key to your success?
For more than 30 years, OrderWise has been developing, implementing and supporting ERP software solutions for SMEs in the UK. In 2022, OrderWise was acquired by Forterro, a European provider of software solutions to more than 10,000 small and midsized industrial companies across the globe. OrderWise significantly expanded Forterro’s northern Europe region, with the product representing the group’s fourth largest revenue stream and fourth largest customer base.
The next few years are due to be the most exciting yet for OrderWise, and following a year of double-digit revenue growth we have even more to deliver to our customers to help them compete on the local and word stage over the coming months and years.
Orderwise in brief
HQ location: Lincoln, UK
Website: https://orderwise.co.uk
Bio:For businesses with complex stock requirements, the primary concern of their operation is managing products and orders across the supply chain. This requires specialist functionality to not only improve stock transparency, but reporting, accuracy and planning as well.
Built for growing enterprises in wholesale, distribution, retail and manufacturing, OrderWise automates and streamlines stock-centric operations within a single end-to-end solution. By drawing from multiple data sources, OrderWise helps organisations to manage their everyday business activities whilst providing the tools to make more informed decisions on forecasting and strategising. Uniting supply chains, order management, stock control, distribution, financial processes and more, our solution channels all business processes into a connected hub.
As well as synchronised reporting and automation to reduce the need for disjointed systems, OrderWise offers critical insight into how to cut costs and increase efficiency, providing the information to make real-time decisions. By collecting and comparing metrics across departments, businesses are provided with a complete view of performance, with immediate visibility into how time and money is being spent or saved.
Read more: Automation within reach in 2023, written in collaboration with OrderWise. Download the full report here.
