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Scotts of Stow goes for quality and value with Navision Solution

Scotts of Stow, Britain's favourite mail order source of products for kitchen, home and garden, has recently gone 'live' with Navision Financials enterprise business solution. The software was supplied and implemented
within a very tight timescale by Datawest Computer Services, a Navision Solution Centre in the West Country.

Scotts of Stow was founded in 1991 in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, on the basis of providing 'elegance and value in kitchen to tableware'. It has grown to a £21 million turnover company and sells its expanding product range through four retail outlets and through four mail order catalogues. Over 1½ million customers order products from the award-winning Scotts of Stow catalogue, which has an annual circulation in excess of 70 million. Its other catalogues are The Traditional Garden Supply Company, The Scotts of Stow Gift Collection and The Expert Verdict. And to keep up with the Internet age, Scotts has created an online catalogue with a carefully selected range of products for kitchen, home and garden, together with its
most popular gifts. As an expanding company with 120 staff, Scotts has recently moved its headquarters from Cirencester to Swindon, where its two warehouses are located.

Scotts had been using Tetra 2000 for five years, but the software had become outdated and unreliable. "In January we started looking for an advanced solution for fast implementation. After evaluating Sage Line 100 and
Navision Financials, we decided on Navision, says Helen Wenham, management accountant at Scotts. "As well as being impressed with Datawest's professional approach and knowledge of our business, Navision had all the
features we needed and could be implemented immediately. We didn't have time for training, as we had to transfer the data from Tetra to Navision, so that we could go 'live' soon after the software was delivered."

Scotts signed the contract with Datawest for Navision Financials integrated applications covering General Ledger, Sales & Receivables and Purchases,Payables and Fixed Assets. The ledger went live in March and are running on a Microsoft NT server. Fixed Assets will follow on in phase two of the project.

According to Helen Wenham, one of the main benefits so far is the fact that Navision is extremely stable and reliable. "We have found Navision very easy to learn and quick to use, so that we got up to speed almost
immediately. We are finding the drill-down and filtering features absolutely fantastic. As we deal with so many invoices, transactions and suppliers, to be able to find something at the touch of a button is extremely time saving. On the reporting side, it took me only a day to set up the reports on the same principles as the Tetra ones. Another benefit is that we have all our historical information on the system, having transferred 36,000
lines of information from the old nominal ledger."

She also points out that as their shops order separately from suppliers, this generates a huge number of invoices, and the speed of Navision has greatly reduced the processing time of these. "In phase two later this year,
interfaces will be developed between our other software and Navision to speed up processes even further. For example, we want to be able to import order confirmations from our shops into Navision, so that we can match the invoices
to those orders."

As far as Datawest is concerned, Helen Wenham is full of praise. "We've had fantastic support and they always respond quickly if we need any help. With full commitment from both my staff and Datawest, we managed to implement
Navision in the shortest possible time and within 15 minutes staff were happily using the system."

For further information, please contact:

Chris Rawson
PR Consultant
tel: 020 7609 0515
email:mailto:crawson@aol.com

Nicola Newton
Navision UK
tel: 020 8207 4141
email: mailto:Nicola@navision.co.uk

www.navision.com

Navision, 6-Jun-2001
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