Adriatic Furniture – A family legacy transformed
Pronto Xi enables a furniture retailer to modernise its business operations
For 50 years, Adriatic Furniture has been making and sourcing luxury furniture locally and from around the world. From humble beginnings as a cabinetmaking business, the family-owned retailer now spans three generations, eight Melbourne showrooms, an online store and 50 employees – and is characterised by an unwavering commitment to evolve and modernise its operations.
About our customer
An Australian-owned and family-run retailer celebrating over 50 years in business. They sell high-quality furniture, made and sourced locally and worldwide, with eight retail showrooms in Melbourne, and an online store distributing nationally.
Pain points
The business needed to evolve to keep up with the times. This included optimising delivery processes, enhancing the instore experience, increasing visibility of stock levels and gaining better strategic insight into their financial performance.
Benefits gained
Logistics have significantly improved through the move to cloud-based Pronto Xi. Dispatch, picking slips and delivery dockets all upload directly to Pronto Xi’s Proof of Delivery App. Pronto Xi has removed double-handling, and reduced paperwork on the floor and in the back office.
The time for change
When you’re used to doing things a particular way – and have found success – change can be hard.
For Adriatic Furniture’s third-generation executive team, the decision to revolutionise its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and, in the process, its business operations, was a long and difficult one. In fact, it took close to four years, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing a pause.
“We were comfortable,” says Lenny, Group General Manager and Associate Managing Director of Adriatic Furniture. “No-one likes change, and we had a fear of change. But we also knew if we had stuck to our old system, it would have hampered us. We would have been left behind.”
Adriatic Furniture’s old ERP had served the business well for the last 25 years. “It still had an MS DOS interface,” recalls Simone, Customer Service and Operations Manager. Moving to Pronto Xi was a “generational change” for the furniture retailer. “We were implementing something that was completely different to what we’re used to.”
The business, started by Lenny’s grandfather in 1974, needed to evolve to keep up with the times. “People would laugh at us sometimes, especially the younger generation. They would come into the store and say, ‘Oh, you’re still writing contracts, still writing up sales manually’,” says Simone.
Enhancing the client experience
The upgrade to Pronto Xi is helping Adriatic Furniture transform its operations, including the instore client experience. This has created efficiencies, removed double-handling, and reduced paperwork on the floor and in the back office. With carbon-copy contracts a thing of the past, sales staff can now focus on spending more time with new customers.
“The average time to write up a sale was about 14 to 16 minutes from the moment you sat a client down to them leaving,” says Lenny. “If we’re averaging about 20 transactions a day, that’s a lot of time to write up an order. It’s taking those salespeople off the floor and preventing them from being able to service another client, With Pronto Xi, write-up time has halved.”
The flow-on effect has been immediate too, with the system automatically generating emails and text messages to keep clients in the loop about their purchase.
Streamlined, automated delivery
Logistics, says Simone, is a key area that’s been significantly improved through the move to cloud-based Pronto Xi. Dispatch, picking slips and delivery dockets all upload directly to Pronto Xi’s Proof of Delivery App, where drivers can take photos of completed deliveries and get client signatures “on glass”. Now everything is in the one place, ensuring things run smoothly from start to finish.
In addition, Pronto Xi also connects to Adriatic Furniture’s drivers’ platform, Circuit, which enables the business to track where drivers are, how much can be loaded onto a truck, the number of jobs a driver can complete, the best route and so on – again making the delivery process far more efficient and streamlined. “It’s all just a couple of clicks away,” says Simone.
“For me, I can now dedicate more time to doing all the tasks in a day, because the ones that were taking me a long time now take a quarter of the time.”
Finally, “Pronto Xi doesn’t allow you to make a mistake,” says Simone, referring to the system’s ability to recognise and flag anomalies. “For example, if you try to ship an item where only part of the invoice has been a paid, a warning comes up, and only a specific number of people have access to approve that shipping.”
“For me, I can now dedicate more time to doing all the tasks in a day, because the ones that were taking me a long time now take a quarter of the time.”
Lenny, Group General Manager and Associate MD
Identifying retail patterns
Retail is a tough environment and has been for some time. “And it’s just going to get harder,” says Lenny. One thing he has noticed? Since the COVID pandemic, key selling period patterns have changed.
“November is probably one of the better months, and it probably outweighs January, possibly June, although that’s changing again, so all of those patterns have been broken. And I think you need this type of ERP system to be accurate, because I don’t think you can make an educated guess like we used to be able to do. It gives us great clarity in our gross profit.”
Pronto Xi’s reporting capabilities mean that gross profit, along with stock levels, cash flow, product pricing and margins, and discounting structures, can all be closely monitored in real time. This gives the business strategic insight into the bottom line, and provides a clear understanding of what stock is performing well, particularly during advertising campaigns, when product demand surges.
“We’ve developed efficiencies in being able to recognise how much of a product is sold. It’s all automated, whereas in the past, it was all manual and reactionary. We get real-time data reports, which help us order the correct amount of stock.”
A bright future
Adriatic Furniture went live with Pronto Xi in July 2024. But while it’s relatively early in the partnership, Lenny sees a “bright future” ahead.
Pronto Xi’s Payroll and Advanced Warehouse Management modules and Point Of Sale App are all on the list to be rolled out. Another exciting addition for the business is its new eCommerce platform, which fully integrates with Pronto Xi to provide a complete end-to-end digital retail solution. “We also plan to go interstate in the next 24 months, and with software like Pronto Xi that’s possible, and a much easier feat than with an older ERP,” says Simone.
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