Nebraska Furniture Mart, Inc. Upgrades Enterprise Financial Applications, Eliminates Unnecessary Transactions, Enhances Data Accuracy
 
 

Nebraska Furniture Mart, Inc. Upgrades Enterprise Financial Applications, Eliminates Unnecessary Transactions, Enhances Data Accuracy

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Nebraska Furniture Mart, Inc. was founded in 1937 by Rose Blumkin and now stands as the largest home furnishing store in North America. The company sells furniture, flooring, appliances, and electronics from stores in Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City, Kansas; and Des Moines, Iowa. It began selling to customers through its Website in 2006.

The retailer is looking toward expansion in the near future, with a plan to open a new store in Texas in 2015. Other future sites are also under consideration. To support growth, Nebraska Furniture Mart wanted to ensure its financial systems could handle data and accounting processes as efficiently as possible. With its legacy solution aging and underlying infrastructure nearing end of life, Nebraska Furniture Mart felt this was the perfect time to upgrade its financial management systems and benefit from new JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 functionality that could enhance stability and processes.

Specifically, Nebraska Furniture Mart worked with Oracle Partner Trissential to upgrade to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0. With the implementation, Nebraska Furniture Mart realized a number of new benefits. For instance, it can institute accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) netting, which eliminates unnecessary transactions and the risk for error. In addition, the company transitioned to paperless checks, and rolled out automated clearing house (ACH) payments, which enabled it to reduce paper needs and costs. Further, the company automated import and export processes into its financial system, reducing personnel needs to handle accounts payable and accounts receivable even as the company continues to grow.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Nebraska Furniture Mart

  • “By upgrading to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0, we have acquired a best-of-breed financial system that has provided stability, ensured data integrity, and added new functionality that has enabled optimal financial efficiency. This expanded insight into our finances is invaluable to our future success.” – Lori Hartman, Project Manager, Nebraska Furniture Mart

  • Upgrade a financial system that is aging and acquire new functionality to streamline accounting and financial information from the company’s three stores
  • Extend visibility into corporate finances
  • Enhance financial integrity by automatically inputting data from merchandise sales and payments to suppliers, as well as upgrading data archiving capabilities
  • Ensure timely payments to merchandise suppliers and partners, while reducing paper use and freeing IT and accounting team members for other priorities

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Upgraded to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0 and used the new system to develop electronic data interchange (EDI) processes, which automate the import and export of financial information—such as from the ADP payroll system to the general ledger—reducing AP and AR personnel requirements and improving data accuracy
  • Acquired sophisticated report creation and publishing capabilities with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, which enabled the retailer to enhance data analysis and support more informed decision-making for corporate executives as the company pursues store expansion
  • Reduced system support needs—such as requiring IT team involvement to research duplicate checks for merchandise vendors—which decreased IT operational expenses and freed team members to work on other priorities, such as supporting store expansion
  • Implemented electronic check payments to suppliers, which reduces paper needs, ensures vendors are paid efficiently, and enables better cash flow monitoring
  • Deployed AP and AR netting, which allowed the company to simplify accounting processes, eliminate duplicate transactions, and reduce the risk for errors
  • Enabled automatic export of financial information from JD Edwards EnterpriseOne into tables for more extensive financial analysis
  • Enhanced and automated data archiving capabilities to ensure the accuracy of historical financial information, replacing manual archiving processes that could result in mistyped and incorrect data

Partner

Nebraska Furniture Mart worked with Oracle Partner Trissential, LLC on the implementation, which began in July 2010. Trissential established the scope, approach, and project plan while Nebraska Furniture Mart managed daily tasks. In addition, Trissential provided net change training to educate, prioritize, and plan for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0’s new capabilities and business processes. Ultimately, the implementation was completed on schedule and within budget in April 2011, while minimizing system downtime for Nebraska Furniture Mart.

“We selected Trissential due to its highly flexible and collaborative nature, and its ability to provide deep technical, functional, business process and program management, while fitting our culture. Trissential was essential to our project success. Without its support during the upgrade and training, we would not be able to leverage all the superior functionality that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 provides,” said Lori Hartman, project manager, Nebraska Furniture Mart.