Mercator Lighting

Located in the outer Melbourne suburb of Coolaroo, Mercator Lighting has supplied quality decorative interior and exterior lighting to leading lighting retail outlets throughout Australia for over 30 years. Major customers include large national retailers such as OfficeWorks, K-Mart, Bunnings, and Freedom, along with several hundred independent retailers.

Challenge

Mercator's goal was to take logistics out of its more historical back room style role where it was largely viewed as an unavoidable overhead, and instead place the function in a front line strategic position where it could add substantial value to business operations and help drive future business growth.

Solution

Mercator Lighting is leveraging the OpenEdge-based PULSE WMS, a warehouse management system developed by Progress Application Partner PULSE Logistics Systems.

Results

• Enabling business expansion: PULSE WMS is enabling the organization's logistics to help drive business growth without adding substantial labor costs, versus the old processes which actually limited expansion.
• Improving productivity and customer service while reducing costs: With its previous system, stocktaking was done twice a year, with each stocktake costing $25,000 and requiring the company to close for 2-3 days. With PULSE WMS, Mercator no longer impacts customer service by shutting down, and the company is realizing substantial cost savings.
• Achieved smooth implementation and immediate business benefits: The organization hit the ground running soon after it went live with PULSE WMS—with no negative impact on revenue or customer satisfaction. And the system readily exceeded the output of the old manual system just two weeks after the cut over.