A three-generation family business dealing with paint, hardware and general household accessories, Johong Hardware & Paints looks every bit like your friendly neighbourhood hardware store.
However, in their 25 years of operations, the SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) has slowly grown from a single store in Hougang to now include three others, all located in heartland areas. The family-run business has a staff strength of eight.
Fundamental Problems
While the company could count on a steady crowd of regulars for steady business, its backend operations needed a reboot in order to keep up with the company’s expansion plans.
“Previously, even with four staff in store, we always found the work endless, with so many things to do. This included counting our stock, packing the items, keeping track of what was in store and what was in storage.
“This was frustrating for my staff as they needed to juggle with keeping stock, pricing the items, organising everything and serving customers,” shared Diana Cheng, the business owner.
Without a proper system managing the company’s inventory, which had more than 1,000 different items in stock, staff were required to manually count stock before placing any new orders. Other challenges included having management representatives make physical visits to the different stores to collect the daily earnings and sales reports.
Leveraging Technology
Working with e2i, the company slowly implemented a more efficient inventory management system to keep track of stock across its stores. According to Ms Cheng, automating the process by leveraging a computerised system enabled the company to save up to six man-days per month on stocktaking alone.
An added benefit – the system could be synchronised with the stores’ point-of-sales system (POS), which not only helped track inventory, but also provided live sales reports, saving at last two man-hours daily from store visits.
“It has helped us be more efficient, enabling my staff to really focus on attending to customers as service is very important in our line of paint sales. That portion of our sales requires the necessary time to engage with customers to help them find the right paints for their needs,” said Ms Cheng.
To keep up with the times, the company has been able to leverage the system’s capabilities to also include customer management, where Johong operates a store membership programme with discounts for members.
“We have actually noticed more customers returning to us to take advantage of the membership discounts,” said Ms Cheng.
Working with her two sons who help out with the family business, Ms Cheng added that they have also invested in an e-commerce platform as an additional sales channel. It keeps up with customer habits, and lets them shop for products and learn more about the company’s handyman services at their own convenience.
A Win-Win Situation
Tapping on e2i’s IGP initiative, Johong Hardware & Paints has seen its business growing, and this has trickled down to the company’s eight staff, who have each benefited with more than 10 per cent in wage gains.
“We seek to work alongside companies, to help them become more profitable and more competitive. As they achieve that, we hope that they can share some of these productivity gains with their workers.
“Specifically in the case of Johong Hardware & Paints, a typical hardware and paint store, business is usually conducted offline, but the boss has embarked on information technology projects to take it online, with systems to manage inventory. And because of that, she’s able to do a better job and become more productive, earn better revenue and share the gains with workers,” said Gilbert Tan, CEO of e2i.
