A second-generation wholesale distributor ran purchasing, sales and stock on three disconnected systems and an informal consensus maintained by two long-serving staff. Reconciliation between stock records and the ledger happened twice a year, took a week, and always found money. The family board wanted to modernise before the two long-serving staff retired, but the business could not pause for an implementation.
The difficulty
Scope was the whole operation: ledger, documents, assets, reporting, workflow and the support desk, across two warehouses. The difficulty with full-suite projects is not any single module; it is the temptation to swap everything at once. The second difficulty was that staff who had invented the informal consensus were being asked to replace it, and knew more than any system about the exceptions it handled.
Project snapshot
- SectorWholesale Distribution
- Modules deployedFull InsightSuite — all six core modules
- DurationOne quarter, in three verified waves
- Written up withClient permission; identifying detail removed
Numbers quoted in this study were measured by the client before and after the change — they are not our estimates. Where a figure could not be measured cleanly, it has been left out rather than rounded flatteringly.
What we changed
We ran the implementation as three waves on one quarterly rhythm. Wave one: Ledger and Reports, with the master data cleansed once, centrally. Wave two: Docs and Flow, moving supplier contracts and the purchase-approval chain. Wave three: Assets and Care, the stock registers and an internal service desk for the warehouses. Each wave ran the full five phases including a parallel month. Critically, the two long-serving staff were appointed process leads: their exceptions were designed into the workflows explicitly, not lost in translation. Training per wave, per role, in short sessions; the business never stopped for a single day.
The results
- All six modules live within one quarter, with each wave verified before the next began.
- Stock-to-ledger reconciliation is now continuous rather than biannual.
- Purchase approval cycle down from days to hours across two warehouses.
- The two process leads retired with their knowledge designed in.
The project ran in three waves, each verified before the next. The two long-serving staff were appointed process leads, and their exceptions were designed into the workflows.
If your organisation looks like this one
If you are replacing an entire operation, stage it in waves, each with its own parallel run, and keep the business running. Appoint the two longest-serving staff as process leads; their exceptions are the specification, and designing them into the workflows explicitly is the difference between adoption and low adoption.
To see how a project like this would run against your own calendar and numbers, ask us for a written quote — Full-suite programmes are quoted wave by wave, so each stage is priced before the next is committed.