It takes three things to write real success stories: a problem, an efficient solution and a convincing result. Haarkosmetik Jürgen Kramer from Gablingen near Augsburg sells hair-related products – from tinting to curlers. Initially, Jürgen Kramer offered his product range to hairdressers in the area as a sales representative. In 2005, he ventured into the end customer business via e-commerce and listed the first items on eBay. The result of his entrepreneurial courage: the online business developed magnificently and eBay was soon joined by his own store (ePages) and sales via Amazon.
Software as a time waster
The company’s success made it necessary to adapt the internal organization in order to keep the constantly increasing order volume under control in terms of accounting. To this end, Kramer initially implemented the ‘Lexware Büro-Easy’ merchandise management system. Continued growth necessitated a further changeover: in 2010, the ‘Sage-GS-Office-Professional’ merchandise management system was introduced. “A neat and efficient merchandise management system with integrated financial accounting,” says the entrepreneur about the software, “which unfortunately wasn’t designed for e-commerce as I would have liked it to be.” The data exchange between the ePages store and Sage worked, but the eBay and Amazon orders, payment transactions from PayPal and Amazon invoices had to be entered manually into the ERP system.
Business continued to develop positively: at the beginning of 2014, Haarkosmetik Jürgen Kramer received between 200 and 250 orders per day. In addition, Kramer continued to personally look after around 300 hairdressers on site. This meant that he spent three days working in the field and the rest handling online sales. Although the number of employees was increased to 4, the workload increased steadily. The reasons for this were the lack of multichannel capability in the merchandise management system and numerous manual tasks, such as manually posting eBay listings or manually processing order confirmations. The result: working hours of 14 to 15 hours a day were no longer sustainable.
More efficiency thanks to a tailor-made solution
After receiving an average of 350 orders per day in mid-2014, peaking at up to 500, a new merchandise management system was essential. By chance, Jürgen Kramer came across Kavendo OHG Bobingen, which is not only a certified JTL Premium Partner, but also operates several online stores. An intensive analysis by Kavendo encouraged the retailer to switch to JTL merchandise management with a connection to eBay and Amazon. The change from the ePages store to the JTL store was to follow later.
That was not enough for the hair cosmetics product expert. He was also looking for a well-organized financial accounting system that he could use efficiently and automatically. “Without a meaningful BWA, I’m practically flying blind,” says Kramer. His goal was clear: the previous workload for financial accounting had to be significantly reduced and the GoBD (principles for the proper management and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form and for data access), which have been in force since 1.1.2015, had to be complied with.
Comprehensive financial accounting
The e-commerce data converter Nexus from dekodi in Fürth was chosen for the redesign of the financial accounting system. The company offers customized software solutions ‘Made in Germany’ for tax consultants, entrepreneurs and programmers. The dekodi software enables the hair cosmetics retailer to assign and post the outgoing invoices from JTL, as well as automatically assign the billing data from PayPal and Amazon to the corresponding invoices and process them correctly for accounting purposes. The postings generated by Nexus are then transferred to the new DATEV-Rewe financial accounting system. Adequate open item accounting is created there.
“What convinced me across the board was the organizational expertise of Kavendo and dekodi: Instead of the frequently occurring ‘no problems at all’ promises, they asked us exactly how we work and where the problems lie. Both companies then drew up specific proposals for the concrete realignment of the company and the workflow. The focus was not only on how the company should be mapped at present, but also on where Haarkosmetik Jürgen Kramer wants to be in the coming years.”
Smooth migration
Jürgen Kramer was able to put JTL-Wawi into operation within one day. The eazyAuction interface to eBay and Amazon was the first step. Under the guidance of Kavendo, Kramer and his employees processed the incoming orders with the merchandise management system. “After just one day, we were able to work independently with JTL,” says Jürgen Kramer. The retailer and his team used the time gained productively to revise the product descriptions and expand the item master data.
The listings on eBay, some of which were outdated, were only gradually replaced by new eBay listings from the ERP system. Shortly afterwards, the entrepreneur decided to map the entire eBay processes completely via JTL-Wawi. After the successful changeover to JTL, Nexus and DATEV were installed and set up. dekodi, in cooperation with Jürgen Kramer’s tax office, installed Nexus, set it up and trained the users in a very short time. “Now we can finally see the data in our BWA that we need to manage the company. Thanks to the separate booking of different revenue areas and fees, we can now determine relatively quickly where it is worth selling certain products and where it is not,” says Kramer.
Conclusion
“Without JTL and Nexus, I wouldn’t even have the time for this success story,” says the hair cosmetics retailer, confirming the great success with JTL and Nexus. Thanks to automation and process optimization, his company now only needs 30 minutes for the shipping business for processes that previously took 6 to 8 hours. The time required for financial accounting fell from 100 to 8 hours. “The fact that we can now send reminders promptly has also significantly improved our liquidity. But the most important thing is that I have time for my private life again and can sleep peacefully at night.” Additional benefits that are worth the time and money.
In conclusion, Jürgen Kramer puts it in the words of the industry: “The hair has been combed, now it needs to be laid. We are also planning to use JTL WMS in the future. And since Nexus is also foreign currency-capable, we can also expand our activities to other platforms such as Amazon UK. This actually saves us one employee. But I now need him for the growing order volume.”
