Name of Company: VJshop
Number of ERP Users: 45
Industry: Retail
Services Implemented: Inventory, Invoicing & Accounting, Point of Sale, Purchases, Production Management, VoIP, Barcode Management, Office 365, Collaboration & Communication, Business Intelligence and Data Lakehouse
Overview
Familiar with multiple retail business management software (KiosViet, MISA Accounting) VJshop wanted to centralize their islands of information and incorporate a single IT solution that could help them see all the data in order to make managerial-level decisions.
The Parallel Insight Solutions (PI) team used their experience and skill-set to right certain wrongs in order to help VJshop experience the full benefits of integration Odoo ERP, Office 365, Data Lakehouse and Power BI.
At the end, all the goals were met as per the requirements and transformed VJShop into innovative retail chain and helps VJShop to overcome the pandemic time with positive profit.
About VJShop
This company was founded by a group of friends who had a shared appreciation of photography technology. Based in Vietnam, VJshop is a retail chain that provides DJI Drones, Photography Camera from famous brand such as Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm and Sony.
VJshop has 14 retail stores in different cities across Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh, Ha Noi, Da Nang, Quang Ninh, Thanh Hoa . Their main office, on the other hand, is based in Ha Noi. That’s typically where the magic happens because not only is their head office the source of their B2B deals, that’s also where supply chain management happened.
As such, their business includes procurement, B2B sales, and B2C sales – both online and offline – through their own retail shops as well as via their website, social networks channels. In four short years since established, VJshop managed to grow into the biggest Vietnamese Photography and exclusive DJI drones authorized reseller.
One of VJ shop’s stores
Key Challenges & Requirements
Prior to connecting with PI, VJshop used different IT solutions for communication, accounting, POS sales, and warehouse management – all of which were accessible via different islands of information. While their old system worked when their company was just starting out, the company’s growth made what used to work nearly obsolete. Now, to make decisions, a larger amount of real-time data was needed. As such, VJshop went on the hunt for a single IT solution that could control all business processes and provide up-to-date data for decision-making purposes.
After about 4 months of searching and negotiations with over 8 seed-to-sale ERP vendors and integrators – VJshop came across the PI team. Our team was selected due to our profound understanding on VJshop’s business as well as our client-oriented approach. On the other hand, VJshop was impressed by the success that PI team has achieved with previous projects.
The company explained that they wanted to implement a system that could help with accounting and provide management with information for both analysis and decision-making. In a nutshell, they wanted data like: revenue breakdown by product, product category, by company, sales manager, cities, expenses, and even stock transfer.
VJshop’s main requirement was simple: to have a tier-1 software solution with a proven track record and with the ability to cover all their business processes – from production to sales, including something that was compatible with their Management Accounting system.
The Implementation
So, with requirements jotted down and the proposal drafted – both VJshop and PI decided to get down to business. Duc Ngo (Sr. Business Analyst and Managing Director at PI) was the main point of contact between PI and the Leadership team of VJshop.
The implementation began in December of 2020 and ended in June of 2021. It took six months in the midst of a pandemic for VJshop to optimize their business processes with the help of the PI team.
VJShop Store
Unfortunately, travelling on-site wasn’t possible due to global circumstances and therefore the entire process was virtual – from meetings and support, to the actual implementation of services.PI also implement and roll out Office 365 for all the team members in 6 cities to work together, remotely and it was effective.
Once everything was completed, PI ran a trial-run, also known as a User Acceptance Test (UAT). This usually happens before the project goes live to catch any potential errors or to fix any last-minute issues. The UAT concluded that the accounting and sales team would have benefited with further training. While this delayed the implementation from going live, the UAT also provided valuable insight and allowed for company optimization.
Another issue that arose was the Out-of-the-box reports on Odoo didn’t quite reach the expectations of the VJshop team. They wanted more insight & intelligence sets of report that helps them to shorten the inventory turnover and increase after-sales services.
To rectify both issues, PI became even more accessible. Even though they were always available for the team members of VJshop, this time it meant accepting text messages from VJshop employees who struggled understanding the functions of the ERP and Power BI system, attending to back-to-back calls and providing the necessary service 24/7. When it came to tending to the accounting & Sales team, as mentioned above, PI resorted to training. This wasn’t particularly easy. The biggest issue was the gap of knowledge of VJshop team on ERP and BI system since they are not used to ERP. It was challenging. However, despite the challenges, the VjShop team did gain the knowledge needed to perform tasks.
Even though the implementation has long ended, PI’ relationship with VJshop hasn’t. PI has provided the company with over one year of support related to the implementation – and this support is still on-going.
Working with the PI Team
According to VJshop Leadership, the best thing that came from working with PI and implementing the Digital Transformation was how they were informed about the mistakes they were making with their operations.
VJshop had moved into a new business model and was operating with their old organizational structure. PI was able to identify their pain points and help them in that area. As the result, it helps them to reduce operation cost per store by 14% and increased revenue by 12%.
This soon turned into a bottom-up approach. VJshop was able to identify the mistakes they were making when working with information they saw (via Odoo and the BI solution). Then by analyzing those mistakes the VJshop team was able to fix them, which helped fix the organizational structure.
The payment at VJSHOP is also handled very quickly and professionally, to keep up with other customers
The Outcome
The PI helped VJshop get very useful and detailed information regarding their operations, as well as the ability to better measure the efficiency of their company. Based on the information they received, VJshop has decided to develop a KPI-system – and take this information into account when coming up with new strategies for the company.
Upon the implementation, it saves accounting and sales teams at least 90% of the time in sales analytical report preparation processes. Additionally, some implementation results like Sales and BI system have exceeded expectations of the team at VJshop. And while other business processes are still under development with PI, the biggest and most important goal VJshop had was achieved. The company was able to digitize each process and provide all managers with daily, weekly, and monthly reports for analysis and decision-making purposes.