Verbatim Since its beginning in 1969, Verbatim has been at the forefront of the evolution in data storage technology.

Today, more than 35 years later, Verbatim remains one of the most recognisable names in the data storage industry and is an international market leader in the distribution of optical and magnetic media, computer hardware and computer consumables. Established in 1980, Verbatim Australia is a customer-driven organisation, known for adding considerable product value - above and beyond its competitors - to established media technology.

As an industry pioneer, Verbatim is recognised for the role it plays in early product development and commercial product introduction of new technologies. Verbatim's leadership role is especially apparent in the evolution of optical media recording including MO and the CD/DVD family of products. 

When growth is your biggest challenge
Verbatim’s business in Australia and Asia Pacific continues to grow, with new offices opening in India and China, requiring the deployment of business systems that are robust and scalable, yet flexible enough to meet the unique requirements of the business. Paul Johnson, General Manager for Verbatim Asia Pacific, comments, “As our business grows bigger and we expand into more products, and business becomes amore complicated, we need to analyse our business better. Also, as we globalise with new operations in new regions, to reduce the complexity we need to become more consistent in the way we do things”.  

Sage Business partner Info Tech Accounting, was first engaged by Verbatim some 8 years ago to implement an integrated financial and e-commerce solution. Johnson says, “Our previous mainframe computer system, was large, old, and woefully inadequate for a marketing and distribution company as big as ours”.   ”We wanted to use the Internet to do all our marketing and technical support. Our company’s e.business strategy was to help us provide our network of distributors and resellers with a 24-hour virtual store of information to improve both our staff and customer’s productivity, and get ahead of the competition,” says Johnson.  

“We looked at many different solutions. Local products were not SQL supportive and had no linkages to the Internet. Other competitive products were not quite available, and we had major concerns about the level of support we would receive. We were looking for new ways to move forward. We wanted a partnership with a company that not only had the product, but was also progressive and had the infrastructure already in place to provide the support we need. Sage ACCPAC  had all of these things. The competitors were just not up there.”   Since then the relationship between Info Tech Accounting and Verbatim has grown. Johnson comments, “We’ve most probably never engaged Info Tech more than in the last few years, there is always someone here from info Tech”.  

The continual road to improvement  
”We are doing a lot of work at the moment. We are escalating what our systems can do, as well as introducing a new data warehouse and CRM solution. We are standardising our business systems and processes across all our operating regions. Sage Accpac is the tool we are using to ensure consistency and standardisation in the way we do things. So someone working in Australia could go to work in India, without having to be retrained or use the system differently”.  

The initiative to standardise also aims improve the quality and consistency of information across the entire enterprise. Without this, the numbers and the way performance results are measured may come out different from region to region. ”The data warehouse solution gives us greater tools to make comparisons, therefore, we need to make sure everyone is doing things in a similar way and that the way information is entered into the system is standardized”, says Johnson.   With these new projects Verbatim have adopted a staged approach, implementing and testing each piece of the overall solution before moving onto the next. The advantage of this approach means that results are constantly being achieved without too many disruptions to the business.  

Currently, Verbatim is implementing Sage CRM internally to manage internal communications, relationships and reporting, to improve their internal process, and ultimately to improve communications with all stakeholders in the organisation. Johnson says, “One of the biggest issues companies have is communicating and specifically, communicating useful information. There’s a lot of communication of useless information. With CRM we aim to able to identify what is the most useful information and the most relevant audience, so decisions can be made quickly and alerts generated when necessary”.    

The measure of success  
In moving forward Verbatim is looking to forward to a host of improvements from the range of projects they are implementing. By expanding their Accpac ERP implementation and the data warehouse solution, they are experiencing greater productivity and standardisation across the enterprise, where greater consistency in information is generating more accurate reports and analysis of the business.   In many areas of the business efficiency gains of 30 per cent have been achieved. But when looking at the potential benefits of better communication and greater analysis of the business over years, the returns start to become immeasurable.  

As their use of CRM expands, greater accountability and better communications across the whole organisation will be the main outcomes. “On CRM, if someone sends an enquiry it is flagged – someone has to do something about. If not it is escalated and an alert is generated to flag that action as outstanding.”   To achieve what Verbatim has achieved required a partner they can trust. Johnson says, ”We’ve been very happy with Info Tech, we find them fair and honest, know the products very well, and are very patient”.