Gateway Liquor Wholesalers is located in Lane Cove, Sydney. Gateway distribute a wide range of over 2000 lines of beer, wine, spirits and mixers to hotels, bars, clubs and restaurants in the greater Sydney region.
The Infoware Solution
Gateway discussed their main concerns with us. Buoyed by finding a solution that met all of their current pricing issues plus also offering additional pricing structures and margin controls, Gateway were pleased to find Infoware includes an advanced web portal. In additional to customer orders, the web portal provides transparency to both customers and suppliers.
Customers can easily view any special pricing and rebates while placing orders. They can also retrieve past copies of invoices, account details plus download electronic invoice data to upload directly into their own systems.
Suppliers can define rebates plus check stock levels and history of all products in their portfolio to reduce the amount of admin and phone call traffic to the office.
After verifying Infoware’s reliability and other additional benefits with other Infoware clients, Gateway decided to implement Infoware Services.
The Outcome
Aware of CPI cost increases coming at 1st August, Gateway Liquor made the decision to go live with Infoware Services in mid June.
The benefits were significant and immediate. Invoices were emailed direct to customers. The sales force started training customers on placing web orders on the first day. Loading of special prices and rebates which previously took 3 days to be keyed for a major supplier for a number of customers, were uploaded electronically from a worksheet into Infoware in a matter of minutes. CPI increases similarly were uploaded saving significant time (and stress) well in advance of 1st August.
“Being able to monitor daily profit including rebates is critical for our business. Then being able to analyse margins by almost any criteria is a big plus when reviewing performance by supplier, sales person, customer, group and product groups. We can even analyse the value of lost sales to focus on covering quick growing sales lines.
There has been significant reduction in administration not only in the pricing area that we had hoped for, but also across other areas as well. Previously it took 6-8 hours to process our pays plus process a single payment from Woolworths that had to be split to each individual outlet before cash allocation. These processes combined now take an hour with an efficient payroll and being able to electronically upload the payment remittance which Infoware allocates automatically across each outlet’s account.
Support has prompt with an understanding of our wholesale liquor industry.
We are now focusing on our business – not our administration.”
The Opportunity
The Liquor industry is a very competitive, low margin industry. Gateway is a member of NILWA (National Independent Liquor Wholesalers of Australia), so there are many national deals plus date sensitive supplier driven pricing and rebates that must be maintained. Added to this is special pricing driven by their own salesforce.
Gateway’s prior system was struggling to handle this complex pricing structure. Significant administration in the claiming of rebates from suppliers plus a lack of quick and accurate margin reporting was hindering their business growth.
Their current system’s inability to handle mixed product quantity rebates also became an increasing constraint to compete in the liquor market.
There are many more great time and money saving features of Infoware that Gateway can now utilize, like automated credit control and predictive supplier ordering, to help them increase their margins through greater efficiency while still providing better service to their clients.
The implementation of the new system was made easier with prior planning and input from Infoware’s knowledgeable and experienced personnel, as they understood the complexities and issues particular to our industry.
Infoware continue to assist after implementation to ensure the system provides the desired outcome expected, which is refreshing as normally you are sold a system and then you are on your own to maximise its effectiveness.
Infoware have provided us with a cost effective system in our infancy which will continue to cope with our rapid growth.
2020 – Year In Review