Case Study: My Stationary Pty Ltd. Background: My Stationary Pty Ltd is a Brisbane based… 1 answer below »
Case Study: My Stationary Pty Ltd. Background: My Stationary Pty Ltd is a Brisbane based business which supplies stationary (paper, pens, labels, etc.) to business clients but primarily specialises in educational supplies to schools and parents with school age children (text and exercise books, classroom aids, etc.). My Stationary’s busiest time of year starts towards the end of the school year when they supply back-to-school packs to parents and schools. My Stationary was bought by businessman and ex school principle Ben Duffy in 2012 and has become well respected for its quality range of educational supplies and the good advice Ben is able to give teachers and parents. My Stationary is especially well known among the Home Schooling community who value Ben’s advice and the range of text books that are always in stock and exclusively available at My Stationary. Management and Retail sales processes are managed through Quickbooks. Ben has a small but experienced team of staff with Sandra as general manager, Janice is great managing the retail shop floor, Joe manages the warehouse and Bev in accounts keeps the business accounts organised. A big money earner for My Stationary is the annual back-to-school (BTS) process where over 4500 school pack orders are received, packed and delivered. This starts early November, runs through Christmas, and winds up a few weeks after school goes back in early February. The BTS is one of Sandra’s special areas of expertise where she has many years’ experience and knows all the products well (Joe in the warehouse is sure she can read barcodes!). During this BTS time of year Sandra manages 5 extra people to pack school stationary boxes and help with the BTS process. There is a particular skill required in making sure packers are packing the right items for the right people in the right school. There are thousands of different items and each school is very particular about which products they want! However, Sandra is continually frustrated by the online BTS book pack ordering system, which Ben inherited from the previous owners. The online BTS system allows parents to order and pay for book packs specific to their children’s school. Ben negotiates with each school to supply specific stationary at a specific price. Parents can choose to either pick their book packs up personally or have them shipped to their home address. It is basically functional but Sandra has to be very gentle with it and is constantly contacting the support people when things don’t go quite right and something else is broken as a result of a previous ‘repair’. One of its good features is the online BTS system’s ability to interface with Quickbooks where it automatically enters orders, adjusts sock levels and generates invoices
