Gündoğdu Furniture

Gündoğdu Furniture founder Aydın Gündoğdu, who makes fully integrated production in many areas from sofa-couches to furniture, spring mattresses to home textiles, box springs to office furniture, kitchen table sets to carpets in separate production facilities in Trabzon Organized Industrial Zone, Bursa İnegöl and Rize Kalkandere in a closed area of 220.000 square meters, shared his views on Nebim V3 ERP and Nebim Production, where they manage all processes from production to sales, from shipment planning to delivery. While emphasizing the importance of the after-sales process for the furniture industry, he stated that they accelerated their processes and completed their operations with maximum efficiency with Nebim V3's furniture industry-specific solutions.

Gündoğdu Furniture Founder Aydın Gündoğdu explained the establishment process and growth journey in the following words:

"Gündoğdu Furniture or Gündoğdu Group is a company of approximately 45 years. In the 1980s, I started my business life by doing haberdashery, garment, wholesale and retail trade. At the beginning of the 90s, we established the furniture company in Trabzon with a team of 8-9 people, initially to produce spring mattresses. In the following years, we started to add panel furniture. In the early 2007s, we built our first factory in Arsin Organized Industrial Zone. Based in Trabzon, we started to sell the goods we produced by opening sales points in the center of Trabzon and in the provinces in the Eastern Black Sea region close to Trabzon. We registered a slogan called “It makes its own, sells its own”. In accordance with this, we started to sell whatever we produced in the nearby stores we opened. When it came to the 2015s, Gündoğdu grew even more and we started to expand outside the region. We are now in 56% of Turkey. In the journey we started with eight people, we have now become a group that can reach 60% of Turkey with a total of 11 production factories, 140 sales stores directly affiliated with the company, and nearly 30 distribution centers."

"Nebim was making merchandising software for the store apparel system at that time. I listened, I looked, it was a professional program. I said okay, let's take store tracking with departments such as stock tracking and sales. That's how we met Nebim. We bought the first department version through it.“ Aydın Gündoğdu also mentioned the transitions between versions and the support of Nebim teams and said, ”After a while, Winner came out. We worked with Winner for a long time, and finally Nebim V3 came out. As you know, Nebim V3 also includes e-Government compliance. We had such a history and we became more intimate with Nebim. They helped us a lot while transferring both Winner and Nebim V3. We are almost like a family with Nebim."

Gündoğdu Founder Aydın Gündoğdu explained Nebim's contribution to payment processes as follows: "When we started furniture 30 years ago, there were no credit cards, banks, bank lending like today. We were following these installments by making 100% installments to the customer by hand. In a process that follows all stores, stocks, warehouses, we saw that the store tracking system was very robust by conducting it well with Nebim. In the meantime, we tried a lot of programs, but it didn't work, we saw that it was weak. Nebim helped us a lot here. In particular, like a financial institution, we were able to report the installment that we handed over the installment instantly on the day, to try to get the remaining ones again, to follow up the remaining ones at the end, all of these were carried out through Nebim. The program worked very efficiently for us in that way."

Gündoğdu said that in the process we walked with Nebim, we started to bring suggestions to Nebim because Nebim is a merchandising software, and continued by explaining the process: 

“We said, ”You exist on the merchandising side, but this business also has a manufacturing side. Not only haberdashery and shoe manufacturing, furniture is also a sector and there is also manufacturing. Nebim gradually became interested in furniture as well, and we established a production program 20 years ago. With this production program, we completely controlled our production under the conditions of that day. Now, 20 years later, we are renewing it.

When we took it up again, we had to make more improvements and developments. Because most companies produce furniture and sell it to the end consumer. There are very few companies like us. In the first place, we thought of a system that produces goods from raw materials, follows all stages of these goods on production lines, takes them to warehouses, sends them from warehouses to logistics, shipment, sells them in the store, delivers them to the customer, checks them again after delivery, corrects any mistakes and comes to the stage of satisfying the customer and approves all the transactions we make. 80-90% finished, there are sections that we use the application very well and that we have added, which many companies in Turkey can not handle, even selling goods on the digital platform through social media, because they cannot control the delivery of these goods to the consumer through the computer, there are companies that have failed or are very close to failing because of the disconnected control and delivery."

Pointing out that the processes are continuous, Aydın Gündoğdu, while explaining the processes of furniture from production to sales, said, "For example, in our system, it is difficult to produce goods, it is difficult to sell them. The most difficult part is that it is furniture. It is not like a shoe, a shirt, an electronic phone. It is not easy whether you sell it online or in a store. Furniture is produced in the factory, but it is reassembled at home and produced again at home. Problems are likely to arise at these stages. These problems should be reflected in the system immediately."

Founder of Gündoğdu stated that furniture processes not only end with sales, but also after sales process is very important for furniture manufacturers and they facilitated these processes with the new features added to Nebim V3; "We sell a product through the system, we have distribution channels after we sell it. The programs are also thought in two dimensions, ERP is not thought as much as we think. If a factory manages the process, it prints a production program. What is required in the process, the part that brings the goods from the first raw material to the doorstep and to the warehouse is enough for a production factory, which is 99% of the market. The one who will receive the program from the marketing side takes the ready-made goods to the customer, delivers them and finishes his work there. There, the work is divided into two. So you write a program for a production factory and you are done. You also need to write a program for the marketing side. The man has goods, the place where the goods come from is already known. He puts it in his stocks, buys the goods from the stock, sells the goods, and the goods go to his customers. SSH (After Sales Services) is not taken into consideration much, which is the most troublesome part. Especially today, according to consumer laws, you cannot win any court case, but SSH is important. There are such companies that the SSH rate, that is, the return rate, reaches 10%. This is a situation that can completely destroy profit. We have taken all of these stages under control starting from production to the final sale."

Explaining how the application of the shelf inventory management to the furniture sector facilitated their work, Gündoğdu said, "Among these, we produced the goods in production, we took them to the warehouses, this is easy. After taking them to the warehouses, the goods from logistics need to be distributed all over Turkey. We have printed a warehouse management program here. Imagine, there are thousands of shelves in an area of 200-300 thousand m2. Imagine that 10 - 15 thousand sofa sets are in one area. We have to take the armchairs out of 15 thousand sofa sets and send the others. We have the smallest areas of 12 thousand m2 as a floor. If I tell you to find a product in a 12 thousand m2 area, if you are a new person until the evening, you cannot find these armchairs. What have we done here? We applied the shelf management system to furniture, which is very difficult. We have solved this, so even if we have 10 large warehouses in Turkey after we produce the goods, we know which of our goods is in which warehouse, in which color, on which shelf. We know if it has decreased or increased. This is a very incredible dimension."

Aydın Gündoğdu, Founder of Gündoğdu Furniture, explained the importance of centralizing shipment processes: "When it comes to shipment, a delivery person came to my warehouse, but at least I explained the program to him, he understands it and he has never seen a warehouse in his life. I gave him a picking cart, and he can find every product in 12 thousand m2 as if he had put his hand on it and bring it to the door. This has given us a lot of momentum as a shelf tracking system, a tracking system where the goods are. Let's say we sent the goods to the distribution warehouse, that is, we loaded them from here and sent them to the Izmir regional warehouse. This program starts to follow the progress of the goods towards the customer in the Izmir regional warehouse. You follow it from the center. You first look at the sales of Izmir and send the goods of Izmir to Izmir. Because we have seen the areas all over Turkey, the areas that the Izmir warehouse will dominate are certain. If a product is sold in that area, it needs to go to Izmir. When Izmir starts the distribution, an employee at the center does not need to know our system fully, because we have set up a central tracking system."

"The employee at the center sends the goods to Izmir, and there are several delivery and assembly cars in Izmir. These carts know which goods should be loaded on which cart and they know that they should be arranged in the order of distribution because these goods are heavy and if you accidentally put a customer's goods on the wrong side, it is difficult to get them back out. They place them in the order of distribution. Also, we are careful in the whole delivery system to distribute customers homogeneously, that is, we take care not to load goods from one side and go to the other side." Aydın Gündoğdu continued to explain the contribution of Nebim V3 Dispatch and Route Planning and Mobile Deliveryman applications to their processes.

Referring to the warehouse tracking system, Gündoğdu said, "All these works are done by an employee at the center. The employee on the road only loads and unloads, but this is programmed at the center. Previously, you had to train an employee in each warehouse and this was quite difficult. When a staff member left, the warehouse was blind. Now we can recruit as many staff as we want at the center. We know all the villages, towns, streets and neighborhoods of Izmir from here and we organize the goods accordingly. This allows us to achieve a perfect result with centralized control. We loaded it on the car and move on." He made statements about the after-sales process.

Aydın Gündoğdu, Founder of Gündoğdu Furniture, explained the after-sales process and the contribution of the Mobile Deliveryman application to their processes as follows:

"There are three types of After Sales Service errors in our furniture system: 

1-Production errors, 

2-Transportation and assembly errors 

3-Customer errors.

Nearly 60% transportation and assembly errors. Production and customer error is around 20%. As I just explained, we monitor the transportation and assembly system from the center. Today, the employee here says to the distributor in the field, "Tomorrow you will go to Efes in Izmir. These are the goods you will load: four tons in tonnage, 37 cubic meters. Your car is suitable for this, we are loading it on your car. He throws it to him in the evening. In the evening, the delivery man looks at it and says, “This is my job tomorrow.” In the evening, the warehouseman brings the goods in front of the delivery man and in the morning he loads the goods and leaves within half an hour. When he delivers the goods, he sets up the furniture and immediately opens a fault record when he sees a fault in the goods. For example, he says, “the shelf is scratched in this place”. Immediately, a fault record is opened and it automatically falls to the relevant fault unit. After the goods are installed, if there is no malfunction, it asks the customer, “Turn around, is there a malfunction around you?”. If not, it says, “I am assigning your phone number to the system. You need to confirm that you have received the goods intact and complete.” This happens again through the program.

When the customer gives this approval, it is a very valuable document for us because the customer first receives the goods intact. If there is a defect, he says "There is this defect" with the reason and does not give approval. Approval is not given until the defect is fixed. This is how we get the customer's approval. This is not enough, he takes a photo of the area and saves it in the system. Tomorrow, when a malfunction occurs, you say the cabinet has malfunctioned and we immediately look at the photo. Look at the consumer arbitration committee, the cabinet was moved on its own. However, in the sales contract, we state that the cabinet should not be relocated, that we should be notified, that we should be notified when we move, and that if not, the fault belongs to the customer. In the case of the defective part, if there is a defect, the system orders us to go to the customer's house again. The system says to take the defective part and bring it or send it directly from here and install it, and then the process ends by getting the customer's approval again. This process is very valuable and almost everyone is looking for it."

Aydın Gündoğdu, who made evaluations about Nebim V3, said, "It is not necessary to be a manufacturer to follow this process and purchase this program. For many companies that are currently suffering from distribution problems, Nebim V3 Warehouse Management and Shelf Tracking System, as well as the Shipment and Route Planning and Mobile Delivery application are very valuable. When you add the production part, the program is completely ERP, it is sold to the producer and also to the consumer, that is, to the marketing side, because it is a program that can be divided into two. The production department is separate, the department we are talking about is separate, Nebim V3 appeals to every department because it is a flexible program. Nebim V3 is no longer a program and software that controls not only haberdashery and garment systems, but has become a system that can follow the processes in a very difficult sector such as the furniture sector."

Referring to the improvements they have made in Nebim Manufacturing with Nebim teams, Aydın Gündoğdu said, "Regarding the improvements, we have created 360-370 workstations in 6-7 factories with the innovations we have made in the production program to do the work. Our factories are factories that produce semi-finished products on their own. A factory that takes wood from the forest, cuts it into wood and processes it into wood. A factory that can take sheet metal and shape it into a certain shape, and all of these factories are in communication with each other. When we give monthly production, the distribution of production to stations, the flow of work from stations according to the day, is organized from the very beginning thanks to Nebim Production. At the beginning of the month, the results of the production meeting are given to the profile cutting or fabric cutting station, divided into days. On which day, which goods should be sent to which station is determined by the program, and it does not ask again. On those days, when it sends that product to that station, the process runs on its own. The program controls this from top to bottom.

For companies like us, which make many kinds of products in a very complex area and have factories located far away from each other, this way of production is important. Factories, some within a certain organized industry, some 100-200 km away from each other, produce semi-finished products for each other. By sending semi-finished products to each other, we create a system that eventually creates a finished product. This is where we use the main capability of the Nebim Manufacturing program."

Continuing to detail the process they carry out with Nebim Manufacturing, Gündoğdu Furniture Founder said, "Again, we can quickly remove Cost Accounting and other parts in the manufacturing program. Of course, we take the goods to the factory warehouses after production with special programs. Thanks to this program, the personnel in logistics can see all the factory warehouses and can transfer between warehouses as they wish. It even sets criteria for the goods before doing so: If the goods reach this level, the goods here will flow to that level. These are still movements within the main warehouses. As I explained in the previous speech, they send the goods according to the incoming sales in the field, they do the logistics, and then the distribution takes place."

"One of the most important features of Nebim V3 is that we do not stock goods in any of the warehouses in the field. We do not eat that cost, we stock all the goods in the center. We only send the sales coming through the sales system to the warehouses because we can ship to each area in 2 days, 3 days, a week. They do not suffer from the shortage of the goods, they only distribute them in transit. Then you don't need warehousemen in the field, conscious warehousemen and very large warehouses. Thanks to the program, we also eliminate this. Otherwise, you have to send a certain amount of goods to each warehouse by chance. It is very difficult to tame this. Since we can move very fast thanks to the program, we adjust the process accordingly. We don't make deliveries in one day. The customer is already waiting for 10-15 days. During that time, we keep the goods in the center and send them to the places where they are needed. Because our central warehouses are very protected, very large and have enough staff. This provides us with great convenience." Aydın Gündoğdu underlined the contribution of being able to perform all warehouse, stock and shipment management from the central warehouse with Nebim V3 to business processes.

Aydın Gündoğdu also gave important information about the sales processes they carry out through Nebim V3 and explained the features they added to the sales screen with the improvements made in line with their needs:

 "As for the sales system, of course, innovations are added to the Turkish Commercial Code every day. We have developed our sales system by taking these innovations into consideration. We are now also selling on digital platforms, and although this is difficult, we have serious sales. We have two types of sales systems: one is the distance sales system and the other is the store sales system. We combined the screens of both systems. While you are sitting at home, for example, you saw Gündoğdu and liked a nice sofa. The sofa comes in four colors and the system asks if you want a fifth color. You say "yes", you enter customization by paying 10% difference and you can do it on the screen.

We also have a distance understanding: If you buy a sofa worth 20,000 TL, we transport it 30 km for free. If you want us to carry a 20,000 lira sofa 80 km, the system automatically calculates a price. At the moment, you can do all this yourself through the system. You can change the color and check the mileage. When you type in your delivery address, the calculation starts from whichever warehouse is closest to you. This is a feature we added to the program.

Secondly, we added the ‘grab and go’ system to the system. In the grab and go system, you say, “I'm going to buy a quilt and I'm 70 kilometers away”. Then we say, "pick it up from the store" or pick it up from our nearest warehouse for free. When the customer chooses the ‘pick up from the store’ option, the program automatically registers it as a pick up from the store. When you arrive, the product is ready in the store or if it is to be delivered from the warehouse, the warehouse attendant makes the delivery with the issued document. This provides convenience for the customer and is a method that has many examples in the world. We customized the sales screen by adding the features I mentioned."

Aydın Gündoğdu, Founder of Gündoğdu, who emphasized the importance of obtaining KVKK and sales agreement approvals from the customer, said: "On the sales screen, the server could give you space up to a certain point, we expanded the sales screen a lot. We created a bridge between the servers and Nebim and connected them to each other through their resources. We switched to the servers that can serve us best. Thus, we can show the goods in great detail, otherwise you can show limited parts of a limited number of goods. We are now able to show much more on this new sales screen. One of the most important features of the sales screen is this: While selling the goods to the customer, we ensure that the agreements made with the customer regarding KVKK (Personal Data Protection Law) are approved on the sales screen. We get the customer to approve the KVKK by entering it into the system, whether online with an automatic signature or in store sales. This approval is necessary for many issues. We create the conditions while selling the goods to the customer."

Gündoğdu stated that they explain all processes with an open attitude towards the customer and said, "After the goods are received from the store, the customer takes the goods away. Let's say the goods did not fit in the house or the house is on the 14th-15th floor and the stairs are narrow, the elevator is not used. There were problems in these cases. We put all of these problems into the contract. If we used to have 10 problems with customers, now we only have 1 problem. Everyone also has these problems. This means that we don't just sell the goods, the customer sees many things when buying. Unless they are very malicious, the customer cannot object. Therefore, we warn the customer in every area. The customer knows everything during sales, delivery, breakdown and installation. There is nothing he does not know, nothing closed. This is what our program provides."

Gündoğdu Founder explained the process of working with external delivery drivers as follows: "Of course, we can no longer make deliveries only with our own power. We have our own team, but we use external delivery people. Now all companies have turned to this. A business line has emerged in external delivery, assembly and delivery teams have formed. Companies have specialized in this field. Those who produce, sell and deliver the goods have become separate. In the past, each store had its own delivery team. However, after digital sales, since it was always done by external delivery, the retailers also learned this business. When you give the goods to the outsourcer, you have relationships with him: the amount of goods you give him, the monthly amount of payment, how much he delivered in 15 days, how much premium he deserved. When he goes beyond the distance you gave him, there has to be an automatic price calculation for that distance. At the end of the month, you automatically see his delivery, the extra distance traveled and other rights. Instead of doing this manually, we do it through Nebim V3. We invoice it by pressing a single button."

Gündoğdu explained the path they follow when the transferred product is not sold for whatever reason: "For example, you live in Silivri, Istanbul and you bought a product from us. Since we do not send the unsold goods beforehand, we send a bedroom, dining room, sofa set to the warehouse in Silivri. God forbid, something happened in the meantime, your engagement broke down or a death occurred and your goods remained in storage in Istanbul. We package each shipment with a barcode other than the product barcode on behalf of the customer. The goods are in the warehouse, but it has gone to Istanbul, it is difficult to come back. That good will stay there now. The goods are wasted. We cancel the last label on this good and take it as anonymous unclaimed goods. Other stores see the unclaimed goods. We say to other stores, “there is unclaimed merchandise, give a 10% discount and sell it.” Let's not take it back to the main center again. Second issue, we are opening an outlet. Let's say there are 12 stores in Istanbul. The top floor of one of them on the Anatolian side is big, we open an outlet there and put unclaimed goods or goods that have deteriorated on display in the stores. Other stores can see the goods through the system. This brings you the expenditure of the goods you have left and you complete the operation in a single store."

Gündoğdu Furniture Founder Aydın Gündoğdu said, "Let's say you have 5 vehicles connected to a warehouse. When planning from the center, you look at the goods that will go to Silivri. Thanks to the program, we calculate both cubic meters and kilograms. When we enter a good, we see how many kilograms it weighs and we place the goods according to the car. Car A will go to Silivri, the center says so. The cart driver and the warehouseman don't know. We send the car from the center. On the way to Silivri, we combine the goods on that road route with the useful delivery system thanks to the Mobile Deliveryman application in Nebim V3. We send the car going in that direction by filling it as much as possible. This is useful for us, otherwise he may have to take a single set and go to Silivri. There we send the goods by accumulating them. We give the customer a flexible delivery date, between 15 days and 30 or 45 days. Although it differs from product to product, this makes it easier for us to cluster the goods and prepare in that direction." With these words, he explained the contribution of Nebim V3's furniture industry-specific solutions to the processes.

We have two types of sales screens: on the digital platform, the customer can directly enter and finish the sale there, and our employees can finish the sale in the store with cards. In the past, you had to come to a table, but now you can see and choose the goods in the system. If the payment system is also arranged through the system, you can complete the process by having everything approved, including the KVKK permission. This was especially useful for department stores, because the fact that customers had to come to a single table caused jams and slowdowns.