Sue Ryder

Supporting the right cause

Sue Ryder, the national healthcare charity, supports people through the most difficult times in their lives – whether that is end of life care and bereavement support for families as well helping those with neurological conditions. In 2018/19 they provided over 2.2 million hours of care – most of which was delivered by over 1,000 nurses and doctors in hospices and neurological care centres across the UK. To help support fundraising efforts, Sue Ryder operate over 420 charity shops, all of which are live on LS Retail's retail management system. They implemented Dynamics NAV 2015 in 2017, starting with Head Office and their warehouse before rolling it out across all the shops over a period of 9 months.

Value for money

Sue Ryder regularly reassess their outgoings to make sure that they maintain value for money from their suppliers, to maximise the amount that can be committed to delivering support to patients and families. In 2019 Sue Ryder came to the conclusion that they could be getting more value from their Dynamics NAV support partner. After a successful Health Check (TNP’s free of charge system performance review service) that highlighted ways in which they might solve some longstanding issues related to system stability and stock taking in store, Sue Ryder decided that it was time to change partner – to switch to TNP.

Ralph Larcombe, EPoS Systems Manager at Sue Ryder, described the onboarding process as "very good". Since then, Ralph has been impressed by the TNP team’s hard work, saying, "it’s the definition of partnership. TNP feel like they’re in it to help us get what we need for our business – not the money".

Not a penny more

Corey Power, a Lead Consultant at TNP, helped to write the specification of the stock taking change. He gave an estimation that was "spot on – not a penny or hour over what it took". This was helpful for Sue Ryder, who need to budget carefully to allow funds to go to the right cause. Corey says, "their business provides a tremendous service to those in need of it, so assisting them in any way I can is something I was very happy to do. A combination of efficiencies in stock count preparation, changes to some time-consuming stock processes and some simple amendments to reporting allowed them to better manage the stock take across their 400+ stores".

"I couldn’t praise your teams more because of the way they engage and deliver what we require"

Sue Ryder have other things they want to do – these include a website upgrade, a move to drop shipping some products and the use of more pieces of NAV. Ralph looks forward getting these things done with TNP who are "a breath of fresh air". In the meantime, TNP are proud to be supporting the work of such an important organisation.

Do you have longstanding issues that are causing you grief? We are well equipped to deal with any retail issues you may experience.

Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP solution (formerly Dynamics NAV) with LS Retail's retail management system is user friendly and intuitive - the perfect system for a large network of shops.