Leads and Cables Business

Leads Direct Relies On Synergy To Produce Dramatic Cost and Time Savings

The Problem

Started in 1999, as a growing company Leads Direct Ltd was struggling to find a solution to the limitations of products like QuickBooks and Sage.  The company had previously used both products but each had significant limitations as well as being expensive to maintain.  As they outgrew these products it became clear that there was no suitable and affordable option for a growing business – until Synergy Accounts the available options started at well over £20,000 with ongoing annual licenses costing tens of thousands of pounds per year which was way beyond what the business could afford.

This was in fact the catalyst to the creation of Synergy Accounts, and throughout its creation Leads Direct has been a driving force in ensuring that it provides the right features and capabilities.

The Solution

Leads Direct decided to invest in Synergy Accounts right at the beginning, providing the initial financial support to enable to the product to be built in exchange for a non-expiring unlimited license for the Ultimate Edition of the software.  This enabled Leads Direct to ensure that the features needed by the business were provided.  The total cost of that support was still less than one of the alternative options that had been previously available, and over coming years this will lead to an amazing return on their investment.

The Results

Using Synergy Accounts to run the business, Leads Direct Ltd has generated some staggering statistics, just a few of which are reported here:

• 66% improvement In Staff Utilisation: Leads Direct can now handle the same level of sales with just three full time staff that had previously required a total of eleven workers.
• 80% saving on website maintenance: The Ecommerce module has slashed the time taken to maintain the website and online store by over 80% with changes made in Synergy during the course of normal business automatically propagating to the site. As well as the cost savings this almost completely removed the need for any HTML editing has resulted in technical staff being almost completely freed from the need to do website maintenance tasks allowing them to work on improving the business in other ways.
• 80% reduction in the cost of processing online orders: Automated transmission of orders from the online shop to Synergy removes the need for manual intervention in the majority of cases. This frees significant amounts of time which translates directly to cost savings and redeployment of resources to tasks more beneficial to the business. It has also benefited customers because it has enabled the company to reduce its carriage charges and offer alternative shipping methods that were previously uneconomical.
• 90% reduction in the time taken to process shipping information: Previously a largely manual system required customer records to be looked up, invoices modified to contain the tracking information,  individual emails to be manually created, and then sent.  This is now down to a few seconds for a user to enter two simple bits of information: Invoice Number and the last few digits of the tracking reference, the rest being completely automated.Stop Press: The time to handle this process has now been further reduced to around ONE SECOND using a barcode scanner.  Now all that is required is to scan two codes on the same package and the rest is fully automated with all the tracking information including where applicable links to the carrier tracking website and a fully updated copy of the VAT Invoice sent to the customer.  Notifications can even be sent by text message in addition to the email notification if required, using the Synergy SMS Module.
• 90% reduction in the number of software packages needed to run the business:  Synergy has replaced many different applications that were previously required for running the business, including
  • Stock Processor
  • HTML Editor
  • Label creation software
  • Payroll
  • DTP
  • Etc.

  The vast majority of these functions are now directly replaced by Synergy features, many of which are completely automated.

• 90% reduction in software training costs: By removing large numbers of extra packages and providing a simple and consistent interface Synergy has enabled massive savings in the cost of training new and existing staff.

Company Details:

Leads Direct Ltd, 89 Railway Road, Newhaven, East Sussex BN9 0AY

Telephone: 08448 155 955

email: sales@leadsdirect.co.uk

website: www.leadsdirect.co.uk