BLUW designs and manufactures 'fun novelty gadgets' for 'people of all ages,' and probably throws a Christmas party worth remembering.

But the company has operations in New York, London, Hong Kong and Shenzen, China, and warehousing in Fort Worth, Texas and Basildon, UK. That's quite a challenge, operating in multiple time zones across three continents. (Heck, it's hard enough for this reporter, currently living in New Zealand, to find the live broadcasts of the NFL playoffs.)

And having a conventional 'on-premise' IT infrastructure, with a centralized server running on UK GMT time without 24 hour support meant 'occasional complete working days being lost due to not having access to centrally held data,' company officials say. 

Compounding the problems, customer management information was managed locally in each country, with the predictable overlaps occurring between the Hong Kong-based merchandising and UK-based sales team. Accounting systems were diverse and restricted to financial operations only, so you can imagine the cash management and forecasting.

Plus, having no CRM in place made it difficult to provide the customer experience they wanted.

It wasn't hard to see what BLUW needed -- globally accessible, real-time financials and CRM, multi-location inventory and distribution chain management, a single platform for e-commerce and inventory management as well as CRM, marketing and financial consolidation of multiple locations and currencies.

So they tried NetSuite (News - Alert) OneWorld. 'We operate on three continents and our business is undergoing enormous growth,' says Ian Harkin, the company's financial director. 'It would be impossible to predict future systems and infrastructure requirements for our business. With NetSuite, we don't have to. NetSuite gives us the flexibility to meet our future needs, whatever they are, with little or no effort and minimum cost.'

For the first time, BLUW officials say, they can formulate executive decisions on 'concise, accurate, real-time financial data, consolidated across multiple locations and currencies.' They can offer timely and appropriate responses, and the globally accessible CRM for account management means BLUW can correctly manage the customer experience of retail group clients -- 'from concept to finished product.'

They also like the multi-location inventory and distribution chain management, improved fulfilment capability and reduced inventory investment.

A single platform e-commerce product, linked to inventory, finance, CRM and marketing -- what a novelty.

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