Advanced Hair Studio

Founded in 1973, Advanced Hair has become a household name thanks to the success of their treatments and therapies, strong brand messaging, celebrity endorsements and their customer centric approach to business.

The success of their business has lead to international growth bringing with it increased complexities for the business, including different legal entities and multifaceted logistics requirements, much of which is fuelled by their geographically dispersed network of treatment studios, offices, staff and warehouses.With this increased sophistication, came the need for an Accounting solution that better suited their complex structure and ambitious growth.

Identifying drivers for change

Shortly after taking on his new role at Advanced Hair, Jan Schotting, Financial Controller in charge of operations across the ANZ region, identified several opportunities for process improvement. Jan was looking for a way to automate key processes; particularly the month end processing which he believed could be simpler and less labour intensive for his organisation. He also wanted to reduce the amount of time it was taking to put together key management reports, because much of the preliminary work was being done in Microsoft Excel. The need for greater efficiencies and improved work flows proved to be key drivers for change.

With the support of his CEO, the team at Advanced Hair decided to evaluate the Tencia solution to determine whether it would be the right fit for their business. They needed a system that could deal with their sophistication and complexity, one that could cope with intercompany reporting, foreign currencies and their requirements for advanced inventory management. After a review of their possible options the organisation decided to upgrade their existing system to Tencia.

The right partner

Advanced Hair understood the importance of working with an experienced implementation partner that had a deep understanding of their processes and an intimate knowledge of their business. They recognised that this was a vital ingredient in ensuring a smoother transition from one financial system to another.

Advanced Hair shared a 12 year business relationship with their Arrow Business Partner. This longstanding history made their them the ideal choice as a trusted implementation partner. Their Business Partner had a clear understanding of the business and an extensive knowledge of what needed to be automated and how their specific business needs could be aligned with the technology.

“We worked with Advanced Hair to identify the key needs of the business and to ensure that we could offer a solution that delivered what they were looking for, we understood that they wanted a solution that would deliver noticeable time savings and stronger reporting functionality.” Said their Arrow Business Partner.

A significant amount of preliminary work was done to ensure that the migration from Arrow Financials to Tencia would be as smooth as possible. “The migration from Arrow Financials to Tencia was very smooth, Explained Jan. “The process began on Friday evening and we were up and running on the new system by mid morning on Monday so we had very little down time.” Said Mr. Schotting.

Customised training was also provided to key staff from Advanced Hair which was tailored according to their specific job roles. This enabled the staff to feel comfortable and confident performing their specific roles in the new system. “The familiar look and feel of the software also made the transition much more straightforward,” explained Mr Blode.

The Results

Along with the significant time savings that have been experienced and the improved reporting that has been delivered, the transition to Tencia has been a positive change for the business. “Before vital business data was harder to extract from our previous system, and Tencia has allowed us to leverage our database resources and access the information we need in real time. The result is that we are better informed and this makes it easier to make management decisions and to respond to customer service calls with real time knowledge.It’s easier to know the status of a job or an order.” Said Mr. Schotting,“sometimes we would find ourselves battling with a query for up to 2 days, now with real time data and a much more flexible system we have reduced the time it takes from days to hours or less.”

In today’s competitive environment it’s important for businesses to continue to use technology solutions to give them the edge they need to continue to grow and keep up with their competitors. “Stock-takes have become simpler for Advanced Hair and the paper trail has been reduced. The reporting function is much better to work with in Tencia also. It means less paperwork for us and a history of reports is always available so there’s no need to re-print them each time you need them.”

This coupled with Tencia’s seamless integration with Microsoft Excel has also been a very useful feature. “We’ve found that it is much easier to export data into Excel for further manipulation using Tencia than it was in Arrow Financials. It’s also easier to drill down into the transaction level details to find what you are looking for,” Mr. Schotting explains.

Advanced Hair will continue to look for ways to further automate their business and improve their organizational performance. They are particularly eager to continue to streamline their management reporting now that Tencia is in place and will carry on looking for opportunities for further efficiencies in the future.