As startup manufacturers and distributors experience increasing success, they often find that the small business IT tools they initially ingested became an impediment to future growth. Case in point: superfood provider Genesis Today needed a software “supplement” to eliminate its QuickBooks blockage to future growth.
Genesis Today, established in 2001 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, manufactures a variety of natural health supplements for internal cleansing and regeneration, and to promote weight loss, joint health, immune health, and healthy sleep patterns. Unlike those of its competitors, the company’s products undergo rigorous scientific testing and certification — its product offerings typically require two-and-one-half years of rigorous trials before going retail.
According to Dr. Lindsey Duncan, Genesis Today CEO: “Unlike other nutritional supplement manufacturers, we develop our programs through prestigious nutritional clinics, not a sales or marketing department. Product development, testing, and validation are overseen by a group of experts from the medical, naturopathic, nutritional, and scientific fields. We don’t produce copycats — only products that have an organic reason for being. Our goal is not to become the biggest supplement company, but the very best, most respected, and loved by our customers. The Genesis Today mission is that of a healer, not a marketer.”
Despite spurning the goal of bigness, Genesis quickly came to provide more than 150 SKUs of nutritional liquids, powders and capsules to distributors and retailers, primarily throughout the US, Canada, and Korea. Genesis employs six primary manufacturing facilities, and fills over 4,000 orders per month for its 3,700 customers from three US warehouse locations.
Genesis’s sales burgeoned by 1,030 percent from 2004 to 2006, and the company received the Austin Business Journal’s award as the fastest growing company in 2007. At the same time, they rapidly discovered that their QuickBooks software had become a serious impediment to further growth. “Our growth clearly required a new software system that would enable us to track the status of an order from booking through invoicing, while handling a great deal of line item data,” says Ron Tennell, CFO at Genesis Today.
Tennell inputted his company’s requirements into an online service that analyzes alternative software packages, which presented him with six CRM alternatives. After thoroughly investigating his options, Tennell chose SYSPRO, primarily based on four criteria:
- The quality of its accounting interface
- Price
- A comprehensive choice of modules
- A reputation for problem-free upgrades.
Upon implementing SYSPRO ERP, Tennell quickly realized the wisdom of his selection. Just as Genesis Today’s goal is to “truly make a difference in people’s lives,” SYSPRO has truly made a difference in Genesis’ day-to-day operations.
Genesis now actively tracks the flow of orders going through the system, so management can optimally distribute support staff, project monthly revenues, monitor back orders, and do daily comparisons of salesperson goals vs. actual accomplishments.
“The query functions within SYSPRO let us create just about any report imaginable, from giving the sales department real-time information on the performance in various markets, to providing accounting with annual audit reports,” said Tennell. He noted the vast improvement over the old system in which they had to enter data twice: once for sales, and again on the accounting side.
“The marketing campaign tracking facility in SYSPRO gives us quick and comprehensive feedback on the effectiveness of our promotional efforts,” continued Tennell. “We also like how SYSPRO’s security options enable us to fine-tuning access for various groups of employees.”
When asked to quantify Genesis Today’s return on its SYSPRO investment, Tennell replied, “All I can say is that for the two years we have been running SYSPRO, our a net income has been 22 times the cost of the software and licenses, and we are no longer faced with IT bottlenecks.”
He concluded: “It is hard to attach a figure to what SYSPRO has saved to our company, since we the growth pressures would have collapsed our infrastructure without it. We would have cratered long ago! For lower- to middle-cost software, SYSPRO’s power and effectiveness has been most rewarding.”
SYSPRO ERP, it turns out, was the perfect supplement for Genesis Today.
For more information, please visit: www.genesistoday.com and www.syspro.com.
