Oracle NetSuite, one of the world’s leading providers of cloud-based financials / ERP, HR, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that OSL Cutting Technologies, a manufacturer and importer of magnetic drilling machines and cutting tools, has improved its on-time delivery, reporting and streamlined its financial operations with the implementation of NetSuite OneWorld in May 2017. OSL Cutting Technologies, a division of the OSL Group, is using NetSuite OneWorld to manage financials, multi-currency accounting and financial consolidation, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), email marketing and advanced manufacturing processes.
Amongst its market leading brands, OSL Cutting Technologies owns Rotabroach, G & J Hall and Taylor and Jones and has a more than 100-year history in the cutting technology industry. Based in Sheffield, England – the traditional heart of the steel industry in the UK, it manufactures drills, drill bits and related equipment and distributes to over 100 countries worldwide, to customers that range from small tools shops to large national distributors like Cromwell and Buck & Hickman. When the company acquired G & J Hall, a provider of specialist tools for the fabrication and engineering industries in 2015, it found itself struggling to manage its business in two separate systems. The multiple systems limited overall business visibility and impacted everything from managing sales teams to production to its two warehouses. Moreover, as the company expanded to launch a new subsidiary in the United States, it needed to account for the complexities of a new currency, taxation rules and additional financial consolidation.
The company considered consolidating on Efacs, the system used by G & J Hall, or Microsoft Navision, the system Rotabroach had implemented a few years earlier, but determined NetSuite would better suit its needs. Microsoft Navision didn’t have the manufacturing functionality the company needed, forcing it to do planning in Excel spreadsheets and the CRM functionality was limited. OSL Cutting Technologies determined NetSuite’s cloud-based architecture, unified platform and advanced manufacturing capabilities presented the best method to modernise its existing systems.
“NetSuite really took the time to understand our business and our needs,” said Graeme Swift, Operations Manager at OSL Cutting Technologies. “With the flexibility of NetSuite, I feel it can mould around any business model you can think of. We do more and more customisation every day. That is what makes it so powerful.”
With on-site assistance from the NetSuite implementation team, OSL Cutting Technologies was able to combine the processes of the two companies into one on NetSuite OneWorld. As a result, the company has seen significant savings in the warehouse, where two separate teams had previously been working with paper-based pick and pack processes. Now, they receive automated orders in NetSuite via iPads. On-time delivery has improved from 85 percent to 95 percent, and the company has been able to reassign two members of the five-person team to other roles. Purchasing staff, who used to manage processes across as many as 10 different spreadsheets, now have real-time dashboards automatically displaying task lists, orders overdue and stock levels, while purchase orders can be created with the click of a button.
In finance, the two companies have now been consolidated into one. NetSuite OneWorld – with support for 190 currencies, 20 languages, automated tax calculation and reporting in more than 100 countries, and customer transactions in more than 200 countries – will allow OSL Cutting Technologies to quickly and easily set up its US operations as a subsidiary and expand into other regions as opportunities arise.
The sales team has also seen the benefits of the implementation with synchronisation between NetSuite OneWorld and its Outlook accounts and visibility across the customer record with a unified system. In manufacturing, OSL Cutting Technologies has real-time visibility into backlogs and bottlenecks, enabling the company to continue to innovate and improve on the manufacturing process.
