Case Study: How technology helped Bensons for Beds improve productivity and boost performance

Bensons for Beds is a British bed retailer with nearly 70 years of retail and 100 years of manufacturing experience in manufacturing and sourcing the best quality beds, frames and mattresses.

It is headquartered in Accrington, Lancashire, has distribution centres in Ayr, Huncoat and Tewkesbury, and employs over 1,800 across its head office, store, manufacturing and distribution locations.

Bensons is backed by Alteri, the specialist European retail sector investor, establishing Bensons as a standalone business in 2020. This acquisition has accelerated Bensons’ growth and the business has an ambitious three-year plan to become the market-leading bed retailer with a strong omnichannel presence. It is reliant on a robust digital infrastructure to meet its goals and combining the power of SYSPRO ERP with best-in-class NexSys Solutions is helping futureproof operations.

Bensons is investing significantly in building a portfolio of brands, the majority made to order at its own manufacturing centre in Cambridgeshire, catering to every sleep need with key brands including Simply by Bensons, Slumberland, Staples & Co, iGel, Tempur, Sealy and Silentnight, and more recently eveSleep.

Expanding the reach

Until November 2019, Bensons was owned by long-standing NexSys customer Steinhoff International, and its manufacturing division has been using SYSPRO as a fully integrated ERP system for around 15 years. Yet its IT team recognised the opportunity to better exploit its capabilities and extend its use to other areas of the business.

Bensons’ Head of Applications and Service Delivery, Laurence Hendy said: “A couple of years ago I attended a NexSys training workshop and realised that we were not fully utilising SYSPRO. It is an incredibly powerful tool, and it became clear that there was potential for us to use it to much greater effect.”

Bensons asked NexSys to conduct a gap analysis exercise which identified key areas for improvement. Laurence added: “At the time, our retail finance team was struggling with an outdated and unsupported system. We showed the team what SYSPRO offers, and they thought it was amazing.”

The new system went live in late 2023 and according to Laurence is helping the team work far more effectively. With the help of DocuWare, it has facilitated automation, saved time, reduced errors and given greater control over who has access to what information. The team has already used the app builder in SYSPRO to develop a far more useful bank reconciliation tool.

Unrivalled integration

As well as benefiting from the transformative powers of SYSPRO ERP, Bensons is also reaping the benefits of NexSys’ own solutions.

For instance, the company’s IT team has become reliant on DataSwitch to allow its disparate systems to exchange data effectively. The purpose-built system integration and data manipulation tool is the missing link to standardise the flow of information between unconnected software systems.

Laurence commented: “DataSwitch has been a game changer for us. In retail, we use it to take the sales orders, payments and GRNs from our own system and then feed them into SYSPRO to generate accounts. We’ve been using it for a long time to allow us to connect different systems and we now know it inside and out. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have done with the retail project without it.”

In addition, DataSwitch has allowed Bensons to continue delivering its ambitious strategy without being constrained by technical barriers. For instance, in 2022 the business purchased the eveSleep brand to add to its product offer. The team was able to use DataSwitch to integrate the website with SYSPRO and launch the brand within just four weeks. “We just couldn’t have achieved that without that tool”, insisted Laurence. “It has been key to helping grow the business.”

Future plans

Now that the business as a whole has seen the impact SYSPRO is having on the retail team, Bensons plans to continue finding new ways to exploit its capabilities.

“What we would like to do now is help manufacturing make more of its ERP system and enjoy even greater benefits”, explained Laurence. “In the past we have done a lot of our own development work which is very time consuming. The retail project has demonstrated just what can be done within SYSPRO. The next step is to go into manufacturing and apply those lessons. How can we now get that team to use the system more effectively, exploit its functionality and really transform the way we do things.”

That will involve making the most of the recent upgrade to SYSPRO 8 to exploit NexSys’ partner solutions like TransLution. TransLution’s mobile solutions allow businesses to streamline tasks including inventory physical counts, purchase order receiving, job issues, inventory movements and sales order picking, using handheld devices or a desktop PC. Laurence says there is also potential to get other areas of the business using SYSPRO, including the property division.

Trusted partner

The successful installation and project management support has further developed Bensons’ relationship with NexSys as its long-term trusted partner. “The account management, consultancy and support is great”, said Laurence. “We have regular discussions about what we can do better and where we can take it next. NexSys is not like a big corporate that only has time to speak to you every 6 months. They are always on hand. They are genuinely interested in our journey and want to support us every step of the way.”

Kim Davies is Bensons’ NexSys Account Manager. She said: “It has been very exciting to see how Bensons has embraced our solutions to boost performance. They have a great in-house IT team who understand the value we can add and are excited about what the future has in store. We have lots of new projects to work on together and I look forward to seeing the impact they have on the business.”