Since 2013, Lovell has helped companies sell, fulfill, and distribute medical, surgical, and pharmaceutical resources to the federal government. Each of these products are highly critical to government operations. For this reason, the Lovell team has taken a proactive approach to implementing solutions, such as RF-SMART and NetSuite, to safeguard their business processes.
FINDING RF-SMART
Before NetSuite and RF-SMART, Lovell Government Services tracked all their inventory movements on Excel spreadsheets. This manual process limited their ability to fully leverage NetSuite as a platform and prevented their operations from scaling. “We are currently in the process of expanding our warehouse operations,” said Bill Cody, Chief Information Officer at Lovell. “We primarily operate through a drop-ship model, and we recently transitioned into selling directly from our new NetSuite consignment model, as well as from product stock.” To prepare their supply chain for this change, they determined RF-SMART’s team of industry experts would be the best choice to help them grow their processes and future proof their warehouse.
RF-SMART was able to offer a smooth implementation experience for the Lovell team. During onboarding, they worked with both the NetSuite and RF-SMART experts to do extensive testing in their demo environment. “We set up a testing rack to perform tests before our go-live,” said Bill. “We would use the RF-SMART sandbox to print item labels, bins, and shipping labels.” This helped Lovell feel comfortable going live with inventory in the system and aided in user adoption. “Adoption of RF-SMART was easy,” said Jason Pay, Lovell Government Services’ Director of Supply Chain Management.
FULL WAREHOUSE VISIBILITY
With RF-SMART, the Lovell team has been able to revolutionize each step in their warehouse operations. With multiple RF-SMART touchpoints throughout the inventory life cycle, they found clear stock visibility from receiving to fulfillment. Below is their step by step process:
Scanner automatically transmits data to system of record in NetSuite.
Incoming inventory items are scanned in the warehouse with a barcode scanner.
Scanner guides user to the correct inventory putaway location.
Purchase Order is received in NetSuite and prompts user to pick with mobile scanner.
Picker uses barcode scanner to scan validate picks and bring them to the packing area.
Fulfillment is automatically transmitted back to NetSuite from handheld device and all associated records are updated instantly.
RF-SMART has enabled users on the floor to transmit all inventory data directly from their mobile scanner to NetSuite, encouraging greater inventory accuracy as RF-SMART tracks each inventory movement step by step. “As we get bigger, this visibility is going to continue to streamline our whole process,” said Bill.
EASY TO USE
Aside from the many technical benefits they’ve found with RF-SMART, Lovell Government Services has found greater efficiency with fewer user headaches. “From the staff perspective, RF-SMART is much easier to operate than our previous process. There are no bottlenecks now,” said Bill. Ease of use has been a massive advantage for their warehouse operations and is a noticeable upgrade from their old manual tracking. “Now, all of our inventory processes are automated and extremely simple,” said Jason. The simplicity of the UI is further preparing them for continued business success. “When we hire more personnel, product documentation is built into NetSuite and RF-SMART, making it easy for us to train new users,” said Jason. As the Lovell team grows, RF-SMART will continue to empower their team to increase their output without sacrificing efficiency.