Founded in 1923, Kissler & Co. is a family operated manufacturer and distributor of plumbing repair parts. Striving to be a one-stop-shop for plumbing parts, they now offer over 30,000 individual parts consisting of faucets, handles, drain repair kits, ancillary products and more.
As they began to scale, the need for a powerful manufacturing ERP system became apparent. Building an automated system that scales with their business is critical to continuing to provide world class products and service to their customers while increasing efficiency, improving visibility, and scaling with ease. Kissler & Co. started a NetSuite implementation in March of 2021.
However, the implementation team they hired was struggling to deliver quality results. In the 7 months that followed project kick-off, Kissler had gone through 2 project managers, 6 different individual consultants, and 2 separate support teams but still wasn’t where they needed to be.
When they finally went live in November of 2021, NetSuite had not been tailored perfectly to their business which created headaches, lost efficiency, and lack of visibility into key metrics. Fed up with the way things were going, they knew it was time for a white-glove consultancy with a proven track record to help them maximize the ROI of their NetSuite instance.
Kissler turned to ScaleNorth to lead their NetSuite optimization efforts.
Apart from being heavily certified NetSuite consultants, ScaleNorth boasts a team of CPAs and financial operators who understand business strategy and how it relates to ERP configuration. They have significant exposure in the manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution industries and have helped countless firms in this space implement and optimize NetSuite to its fullest potential. ScaleNorth’s “NetSuite Innovation” team consists of some of the best and brightest NetSuite consultants in the world, many of whom are ex-NetSuite employees themselves.
This made ScaleNorth well-positioned to take Kissler’s implementation to the next level by leveraging their industry-specific knowledge and business strategy. Since Kissler champions innovation within their own organization, partnering with ScaleNorth’s NetSuite Innovation team was an easy decision.
ScaleNorth started an assessment of Kissler’s overall business, processes, and strategies and how they tie into NetSuite. Once they had a deep understanding of the business and its goals along with the current NetSuite configuration, ScaleNorth created an “Innovation Roadmap.” This roadmap provides a detailed path from the current environment to an ideal environment. It highlights what will be accomplished and when, and gives a certain tangibility to the project. Throughout this roadmap, the NetSuite Innovation team will fix/mitigate known issues, improve reporting, create automations for routine processes, highlight areas for improvement and more.
Another reason the Innovation Roadmap proved to be such a success, is that it identified a handful of new opportunities to further optimize Kissler’s NetSuite instance. The roadmap kept the team grounded with what could be accomplished, and presented possibilities the Kissler team hadn’t previously considered.
One goal throughout the partnership was for the ScaleNorth team to proactively address systemic issues before they become reactive support cases, essentially getting ahead of problems before they arise. When users are not proactively managing their NetSuite instance, these ‘reactive’ support cases typically make up 80-100% of all tickets submitted. ScaleNorth was able to get Kissler’s reactive support cases down to just 5% of the total support they receive from ScaleNorth.
Kissler knew that best-in-class reporting and visibility would be tantamount to their success, and it was a goal to capitalize on this feature within NetSuite. Despite being a key opportunity to add value, Kissler was not utilizing the reporting, dashboards, and saved searches to their fullest potential after they were live on NetSuite. ScaleNorth’s Innovation Team was able to not only set them up with customized dashboards and reports, but helped the management team learn how to run these for themselves.
This 360-degree visibility, now available at their fingertips, will allow the Kissler team to better navigate market fluctuations, make smarter decisions, and operate more efficiently.
In 6 short months, ScaleNorth had completed dozens of NetSuite consulting and optimization projects for Kissler. After nearly losing hope in the quality of the NetSuite support available, Kissler was proud to announce that ScaleNorth had positioned them 3 to 4 months ahead of where they expected to be. ScaleNorth’s fluid and transparent relationship was an added bonus to the team. Being able to reach out directly to their support team via live chat, phone, and email without having to wait on support tickets allows their team to get rapid responses and quick fixes.
“I wanted to give your team 5 stars…When I send an email to [the team] I get a response within the hour. Unheard of in the software industry. If they don’t have an immediate answer I get a time frame on when I will have one, and they usually are ahead of their estimate. Please in your best way possible, offer my pleasure and excitement with being able to work with these incredible professionals.” Doug Tanner – VP of Manufacturing
Due to NetSuite’s robust functionality, it takes an extremely talented team of NetSuite consultants to optimize it to its fullest extent, and cutting corners on this front will end up costing you more in the long run.
ScaleNorth boasts a 100% NetSuite implementation success rate and are experts at turning around struggling NetSuite instances. Our NetSuite Innovation team can fix and mitigate the issues you’re experiencing, integrate third party tech, automate routine processes, and unlock the full power of the world’s leading cloud-ERP system.
You can learn more about our NetSuite Innovation consultants by clicking here.