Down on the Farm with Wiggly Wigglers
On Wednesday a group of pearly wearly’s (as we’re affectionately called) visited long time and loyal customer Wiggly Wigglers to see our software in action.
Set up in 1991, Wiggly Wigglers is owned and run by Heather, and is a successful business that sells wormery’s, composting products, bird food, gardening products, flowers, goat socks and much more! And yes, some of their products definitely do wiggle! Wiggly Wigglers resides on her husband Phil’s Great Blakemere Farm in Hereford, who is a supplier to the business.
We arrived at Wiggly’s to be welcomed by Office manager San and Farmer Phil as well as their dogs Toast and Jam (who enjoyed several enthusiastic pats!). After being show around the farm, and seeing some of their produce (grass seed, beef cattle and Boksahi) we got into the running of Wiggly Wigglers and how Brightpearl software helps them.
The site is split between an office and warehouse. The office is based on the farm where they take orders and deal with enquiries, process orders, run the accounting and general admin. The warehouse is 4 miles down the road, housing over 2,000 products.
How it all Works at Wiggly Wigglers
The Wiggly Office
San heads up the office at Wiggly Wigglers, and her team includes Nicole, Gareth, Tanya, Ginny and Heidi. When a customer buys a product/s via their website or over the phone, the customer service team in the office pick up the orders in Brightpearl. Wiggly Wigglers don’t use the Brightpearl website element, but orders are still integrated over API to feed into the Brightpearl system.
Each day the team look at every new order coming in and check for issues or discrepancies with orders and payments. They look at stock levels and may need to split the order if it’s not all in stock, releasing the item at a later date for shipment when it then comes into stock – all using the Brightpearl system. Nicole or Gareth allocate the stock that is available for the order and set the dispatch date for the warehouse to meet the customers requested delivery date. They then process the order through the system.
If an order comes in via phone or mail, the order details will need to be inputted manually, existing customers can easily be found by using the postcode look up function in the CRM or for new customers a new client record will need to be created. It’s much easier for web orders, whose order details will automatically be in the system, as they can skip straight to raising an invoice against their record. On saving the invoice an email copy is sent to the customer, and a goods out note is created, forming the queue of orders for the warehouse.
Wiggly Wigglers office team also use the Mailchimp integration with Brightpearl to email their customers and subscribers with the latest offers. In fact the day we visited they were still seeing the impact of an e-shot over the weekend meaning the phones were ringing and web orders coming in thick and fast!
Tanya, the mistress of money, looks after invoicing, and using her favourites in Brightpearl she was able to get to her main tasks quickly and easily e.g. listing orders due to invoice. Using the notifications feature, Tanya could see overdue sales invoices to follow up on. Tanya would then receipt payments in Brightpearl on receiving payment either via a customer remittance notice or bank statement. Whilst we were there our trainer, Jen, was able to show Tanya a handy little tip using the bank matching process in Brightpearl to speed up the process.
Tanya said she benefited from Brightpearl as she had “learnt so much more about accounting through using the system, plus I’ve saved 2 days a month from not having to manually raise invoices for every order!”
The Wiggly Warehouse
Rach heads up the Warehouse end of the outfit at Wiggly’s where there are 4 stations set up each with a computer (with Brightpearl open of course), printers, lots of boxes and tape! Each station is manned by a member of staff (either Wendy, Silv, Sooty & Mary) who go through the orders to pick, pack and ship them. Using Brightpearl they can see those that need to be sent out each day (as set up & prioritised by the office), and print off each shipment and labels. They have set up favourites in Brightpearl so they can organise who does which shipment, for example, post using royal mail vs packages going via courier. Even down to non live vs live products e.g. mealworms which need to go out on next day delivery!
With who’s doing what sorted, they can get to work, everything they need is on the order summary, printed from Brightpearl, including the warehouse location for each product and the label for the package.
The warehouse is setup in aisles alphabetically e.g. A, B, C, D etc. Each aisle is set up in numbered bays e.g. Bay 1, 2, 3, etc. Each bay has numbered shelves e.g. 01, 02, 03, 04, with numbered boxes e.g. 01, 02, 03, 04 etc. The packing note lists the specific warehouse location so Silv, Sooty, Wendy and Mary know where to find it e.g. B.1.03.02 = Isle B, Bay 1, Shelf 3, Box 2.
Brightpearl enables them to be more efficient to know where to find the items organised in alphabetical rows, by rack, shelf and place. They can go through the printed orders, and collate based on common items so they can pick out several similar orders at the same time, again saving time. It also enables Rach to staff according to demand, depending on how many orders are coming through she may need to bring in additional help when things get really busy.
Rach uses Brightpearl to manage stock levels – at the end of everyday she can complete all the shipments that have gone out that day (all those that have been picked, packed and shipped) which will adjust her stock levels. Crucial when she has 100’s of products going out each day. Rach can then pull a report in Brightpearl on low stock items, which she can then run through and re-order those that are running low directly through Brightpearl.
But how does Rach benefit from Brightpearl the most? In a nutshell she tells us “Stock was a nightmare before Brightpearl, its essential that you know what’s in stock and Brightpearl helps us hugely with that. Plus using Brightpearl means every product has a location, it’s helped us to become more efficient by being able to locate products.”
We thoroughly enjoyed our day with Wiggly Wigglers, it’s a great company with fantastic products, many of which would make the perfect Chrismas gift, check them out for yourself at www.wigglywigglers.co.uk. Thanks to Heather and the team for showing us around, and it’s great to see Brightpearl in Action!
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