Company Name: HAUS Collective Pty Ltd
Location: Australia
Industry: Construction
Company Size: 1-9
Apps Implemented: Notes, Manufacturing, Studio, eCommerce, Website, Employees, Email Marketing, Purchase, Inventory, Sales, Invoicing, Discuss, Skills Management, CRM, Contacts, Calendar
Hosting Type: Odoo.sh
Implementation Time: 6 weeks
HAUS Collective is a natural stone and fireplace retailer with premium products and 70 years of combined experience in material supply, interior design, and construction. The company supplies reputable manufacturers to build homes for families and businesses with quality products at affordable prices.
It manages one showroom and three warehouses in Australia as a micro-organisation. This positioned the company in great need of comprehensive inventory and sales tools to immediately buy and sell stock and respond to the latest design trends while maintaining adequate communication between teams working in different locations.
Unreliable Standalone Solutions
Previously, HAUS Collective sustained services utilizing Xero, Microsoft Excel, and TradeGecko for its accounting, inventory, and customer relationship management (CRM), respectively, and experienced multiple blocking points.
1. Time-Consuming Manual Work
The sales team manually entered and migrated information into TradeGecko each time they made a new sale. First, they would need a photocopy of the same invoice for each team and warehouse to communicate all essential information and dates. Then, they must manually enter the updates onto Xero to balance the books. The same happened to inventory management, which was as troublesome as it sounded.
What added to the problem was the data scattered across the individual platforms—the sales team needed to jump onto at least three different systems to get an overview of project status.
3. Long Lead Time
Due to insufficient software support on the inventory front, HAUS Collective observed a prolonged project lead time. For instance, the team had to spend more time looking for order details on the over-complicated master Excel sheet when arranging time-sensitive international shipments, especially for stone products, which usually take longer to dispatch.
2. Limited Warehouse & Inventory Management
Building its suite of systems around TradeGecko with very limited warehouse and inventory management capabilities, HAUS Collective had to support it with a manually created spreadsheet to document all product information. Over time, this contributed to a master file with over 3000 products listed, leading to a substandard pickup process due to undocumented stock level and making it incredibly difficult for the team to search for a specific product and order when closing deals.
4. Unstable System
HAUS Collective started looking for more comprehensive business management software to serve its business better as the company expanded. The announcement of TradeGecko to cease operations in Australia in 2022 officially set this transition in stone for the retailer.
Efficient & Integrated Odoo Solution
Impressed by Odoo's comprehensive features and modularity, HAUS Collective now boasts a streamlined supply chain management (SCM) and retail operations using Odoo Sales, Purchase, Invoicing, and Inventory apps.
Standardized Sales Process
The Odoo solution has allowed us to track the entire sales process, from quote, sales, and invoicing to picking and dispatching orders, within the one-user environment, sometimes in a very short period of time.
Integrated with Odoo Purchase and Invoicing, the Sales module helped centralize all in-store and trade sales and standardize the process and customer communication. The benefits are myriad:
1. Accurate Data Flow
The Sales app records sales data, including customer information, project status, and revenue. Thanks to Odoo's intuitive interface and preset buttons, salespeople can easily update the order details and send new invoices to customers within the same window, immediately updating the revenue.
Such updates are automatically synchronized across the Odoo Invoicing and Purchase apps, saving time for internal project alignment as all changes are reflected on all employee accounts in real-time. Data can then be filtered and exported to Xero in a report using Odoo to facilitate a more streamlined and rigorous auditing process.
Also, the team can easily catch up with the project status once they are back from the holidays. This contributes to accurate and easy bookkeeping and a 40% boost in team efficiency!
2. Automated Operations
On the managerial level, the automated and standardized procedure supported by Odoo has also saved time while improving productivity.
Having most sales activities managed online, HAUS Collective records a 20% reduction in paper usage to avoid duplication or doubled workload—Scott also claims productivity is up by 50% on his end. Previously, Scott would have had to dedicate a period of his day to data migration and checking and fixing any errors he spotted on the numerous systems in use. Odoo now handles that with automation and data sharing within one platform, freeing Scott's time on more important tasks like evaluating business performance and planning for upcoming expansion timelines.
Streamlined Inventory
Inventory management is a much easier process with Odoo, and our warehousing staff can meet and maintain on-time KPIs.
Connected to Odoo Purchase and Sales, the Inventory app provides a holistic overview of the company's storage capabilities and inventory level to reduce stockouts while speeding up stock movement and follow-up replenishment process.
Centralizing all stock information on Odoo Inventory, HAUS Collective can closely monitor stock levels in the three different warehouses at different locations to facilitate faster product and service delivery. Within one app, the home builder can effectively plan product deliveries from the nearest warehouse(s) beforehand. Consolidating inventory management on Odoo also allows the service provider to strategize its pick-and-pack process in an orderly manner: single, cluster, wave, or batch picking.
Data-Driven Decisions
HAUS Collective needs data to support every purchase as a time-sensitive business that constantly adapts to seasonal demands and industry trends.
Without a centralized system, the company made purchase decisions based solely on speculation and experience. For example, they know for a fact that there will be more fireplace requests when winter approaches because of previous experience. Still, it would never be presented on paper with numbers of earlier sales.
Thanks to data centralization, Odoo has promoted data-driven decisions in the company with dynamic reports and sales forecasts.
The team regularly generates reports for the top 10 best-selling products using the Inventory app to identify home design trends and the different customer groups' spending habits. These reports support HAUS Collective's ability to replenish hot items in advance and diversify its product range to respond to the latest aesthetics.
For the long term, the home builder also utilizes Odoo's reporting function to generate monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales comparisons to pin down top sales and for greater clarity of its business performance.
Building Success
The Odoo implementation has reformed HAUS Collective's operations with a standardized sales process, streamlined inventory management, and data-driven decision-making, benefitting the team from the top down. Backed by Odoo, HAUS Collective now experiences a seamless workflow between departments and is looking at a new showroom in the north of the state in 2025.
HAUS Collective Pty Ltd
Stone And Fireplace Retailer HAUS Collective Dispatches Business Success With Odoo