Focal Holdings is a specialist wholesaler of photographic supplies and has been in business in NewZealand for over 25 years. They distribute their products to photographic and camera stores as well as photo labs nationwide. Their Sales Manager visits his clients over a six-week cycle with a product range of around 1800SKU's from 25 agencies.

As do most companies, Focal's Sales Manager traditionally used an order book to take his orders and fax them through from a motel at the end of each day. The average turn around of an order was 3 days. Customer service was a major issue as the error rate was quite high. This was sometimes caused by errors in entering the product code or price, both in the field and in the office. Another major factor was the poor quality of fax images received from motels who did not maintain their overworked fax machines very well. Often these issues were solved with 2 or 3 toll calls but errors were frequent and costly.

Focal Holdings invested in SalesLink Mobile software which runs on a Treo 600 Smartphone running on the Vodafone GPRS network. It synchronises with their Greentree accounting system at their Auckland office. They are the only company in their industry segment using this technology and their clients are most impressed when orders are transferred on the spot, whilst still in their store or office.

Focal's representative says that urgent orders are now very easy to handle because they no longer have to look for a fax. Now he can manage them immediately. He even got orders via his cellphone whilst on holiday and was happy to manage them, knowing that it was just a quick entry on his Handspring Treo Smartphone. "You can do orders anywhere, as long as you have coverage."

	Focal’s Rep is particularly pleased with the Sales History Function which allows him to view previous orders and recommend re-orders of product based on shelf stocks. The ability to automatically reproduce a historic order, turning it into a new order which can be edited, and added to, is a real timesaver. They also found it handy to be able to locate customer phone numbers whilst travelling.

The error rate on orders has gone from very high to very low which has had a significant impact on administration overheads aswell as customer confidence. Customers have commented on the difference in turnaround, where instead of waiting up to 3 days to receive their orders, they now mostly arrive the following day.

They have increased their business significantly and dramatically improved customer service, but have not had to increase their resources to manage it. Whilst the company has grown significantly, they now manage it better than before, without increased staff on the road. In the office they have also improved efficiency. Margaret Manning put the payback at "Way less than one year, even six months."