About Plastics Plus

Plastics Plus are a stockists and distribution company based in Wolverhampton. They have developed into the UK’s leading supplier of plastic sheet material. Starting with only four employees back in 1991 they now have up to 50 members of staff working within their offices and warehouse. They supply to a wide range of markets, with products designed for use in many street furniture applications such as bus shelters, street advertising, smoking shelters, telephone kiosks and glazed canopies.

Number of Employees: 50

Partnered with OGL since: 1991

Company Location: Wolverhampton, West Midlands

Company Website: www.plasticsplus.co.uk

OGL and Plastics Plus celebrate a quarter of a century working together

Since Plastics Plus opened their business in 1991, they wanted a reliable, effective IT system from the beginning. OGL’s software helped give them the head start they needed to achieve their goal in becoming the UK’s leading independent supplier of plastic sheeting products. Throughout the years, as Plastics Plus has progressed OGL has adapted their award winning software, prof.ITplus, to suit their needs allowing them to take their business to the next level and separate them from the competition. 

OGL has had a long relationship with Plastics Plus, who are celebrating their 25th year in business in 2016. Managing Director, Stuart White started the business with his father and similar to OGL, is still very much a family business focusing on loyalty, integrity and family values. We met with Stuart to discuss how prof.ITplus has helped take their business to the next level and enable Plastics Plus to become the successful business they are today.

Hi Stuart, why did you choose to invest with OGL and how did it come about?

“When we started the business back in 1991, we wanted to invest in a good software package that would give our business a head start. OGL’s software was recommended to us by a customer from my previous job. Stock management is important to us and prof.ITplus enables us to record stock and pricing accurately thereby reducing the amount of excess stock that we hold. The integrated CRM module also ensures we capture valuable information about our individual customers. By choosing OGL it allowed us to control our business in a unique way compared to a lot of companies in our industry in that we know exactly what is going on within the business at any one point. It really gave us that head start that we needed.”

How has prof.ITplus enabled you to improve your business?

“The integration between sales, purchasing and the whole nominal process has improved the efficiency of our business. It allows us to sell smarter as we’ve got good customer records. prof.ITplus allows us to build up a history of a customer so we can answer questions quickly on the phone as all the information is at our finger tips which really boosts our sales capability. The software also optimises our sales, invoicing and the purchase ledger, which ultimately allows us to produce our management accounts within just 3 days. We’re always looking to improve our business and in order to do so we need to be able to control our business which the prof.ITplus system allows us to do.”

What’s your favourite feature of prof.ITplus?

“The CRM and the sales order modules are imperative for us. When the sales staff are on the phone they need information quickly. The CRM allows them to find information about the customer, to check prices, check stock availability and allows you to enter an order all at one given time. OGL also provide us with updates every other month. In IT within 6 months after receiving the latest updates it can be superseded; technology is constantly changing. OGL offer a wealth of knowledge and experience having worked with many other customers which we see the benefits of, they can bring new ideas into our business. We haven’t actually got a wish list of what we would like to do with prof.ITplus but some of the patches that have come through make you think “That’s a good idea” or “That can benefit our business”. Having these regular updates are a great feature of prof.ITplus.”

What is your relationship like with your OGL Account Managers?

“We regularly get visits from our OGL account managers. Vijay (Vijay Khosla, OGL Technical Account Manager) was one of the first people we met back in 1991 and he is still our account manager today. One of the values of our business is partnership and long term loyalty; a value we share with OGL. Claire (Claire Jones, now Head of Software Sales) also visited us regularly. She brings a wealth of knowledge and always provides us with an interesting way of how we can improve our business by using prof.ITplus. OGL supply and support all of our IT infrastructure, plus we use their offsite data storage facility for Disaster Recovery.”

What are your future plans with OGL?

“As we are celebrating our 25th anniversary we are aiming to continue our growth with a view to taking on more staff. We are looking at further investment with OGL by taking the next step and looking at OGL’s Cloud Services, initially Hosted Office 365.”

Would you recommend prof.ITplus?

“OGL has been with us since day one and despite attempts from other companies who have come in and said we can do better they’ve not been able to match what we get from OGL. As a local business and having dealt with OGL for 25 years I’ve never had any hesitation in recommending OGL to somebody else. We’re proud to work with OGL. We get good support and as a long term customer we’ve always enjoyed great service. They work with our business. Although prof.ITplus is a standard package it’s gone from a relatively small accounting package when we started to this all-encompassing programme that covers every aspect of our business.”

You might also like to watch our video interview with Stuart: