Okuma Fishing, a California-based wholesale supplier of sport fishing gear, needed a more robust ERP solution to handle its growth, and selected NetSuite. As a proactive team, understanding the importance of an ERP-shipping integration, the company upgraded its shipping solution simultaneously to Pacejet. Pacejet’s impact began in the warehouse, but ultimately turned into a growth story for the company, its team, and the individuals who make up both.
Okuma’s Business
The reduction in process time meant customers were receiving orders faster, selling their merchandise earlier, and reordering on a shorter cycle than previously. When comparing September 2021 to September 2020, monthly sales were up nearly 70%.
A global pandemic clearly impacted Okuma, as it did everybody, with some warehouse attrition. However, thanks to Pacejet, no productivity was lost, and the number of orders processed actually increased, with the reduced headcount. In fact, some remaining warehouse employees were able to take on entirely new roles internally. The result was not only growth for those individuals, but retention of their invaluable institutional knowledge.
Okuma’s Team
Deploying Pacejet also gave standout employees an opportunity to shine, such as Okuma’s recently-promoted Logistics Analyst. While still a warehouse packer, with no IT background, he managed the company’s Pacejet implementation! The software was so intuitive that his operational and warehouse knowledge led to him recommending what custom workflows needed to be built specifically for Okuma. It was a true collaboration between software development and logistics experience. He recently received his second promotion directly related to the implementation.
Retention is not the only piece of the talent growth story: The combination of NetSuite and Pacejet led to new talent recruitment, too.
The current IT Manager came to Okuma largely because it leveraged these two specific products. He saw more growth opportunities at a company using a software foundation he knew and trusted – he could spend time learning and building other things, to advance as an IT leader. Trust in the software became an even stronger theme: Okuma’s confidence in the robustness of Pacejet, NetSuite, and the integration connecting them, made the team comfortable exploring new software ideas and connections – experiments that could potentially have “broken” lesser setups.
Growth in revenue and customer base is important – it’s what businesses live and die on. However, growth by teams and team members is perhaps equally important. That is the growth that keeps professionals invested in their careers, bringing their best talent and ideas to work every day.
“My previous experience with, and confidence in, Pacejet and NetSuite is part of what brought me to Okuma. Not spending my days wondering: ‘Will this break?’ means more opportunities to learn new things, add more value, and grow professionally.”