Posted by Jason Toshack, General Manager ANZ, Oracle NetSuite

The birth of a new baby is a magical and exciting time for parents. However, sleep time can bring a variety of challenges, including difficulty settling the baby and creating a safe sleeping environment. Traditional swaddles can be time-consuming to use and ineffective, leading to frustration and lost sleep for babies and parents.

Hana Krawchuk, founder of Love To Dream in Australia, understands these challenges all too well. Krawchuk’s son would only sleep when his arms were in an upright position, but there was no product available that catered to this style of sleep. Armed with a sewing machine and the desire to create an effective sleeping solution, Hana developed the Swaddle UP – a first of its kind.

The Swaddle UP has been certified as ‘hip-healthy’ by the International Hip Dysplasia Institute and the design allows babies to keep their hands up and move their hips and legs freely.

Before Love To Dream, ‘swaddling’ products were lumped into the same category as bedding. The Swaddle UP helped create an entirely new product category, as parents now recognise the importance of using a sleepsuit like the Swaddle UP to put their babies to sleep.

Love To Dream products are now sold in more than 40 countries globally, with 19 distributors serving the demand. The growth of this new category of sleeping products has attracted investment from private equity, with Quadrant recently acquiring a majority stake in Love To Dream.

Love To Dream recognised the need to invest in upgrading their accounting software in 2016 to prepare their business for growth, rather than struggling with a system that was never going to meet their long term needs. The increased demand and further international expansion facilitated the need for an ERP solution that serves as its single source of truth during rapid growth.

“Our off-the-shelf accounting software was starting to hold us back and limiting our capabilities as the business expanded. We knew we needed a robust ERP that could keep pace with our operations and help us grow the business internationally,” said Rachel Dos Santos, financial controller at Love To Dream.

The team at Love To Dream chose NetSuite to manage its accounting and financials, inventory management and CRM. This has streamlined the process of reconciling multi-currency sales, managing three separate legal entities that fall under the one brand and managing financial consolidation and payroll.

“NetSuite really is our single source of truth for all operations, and the feature-set gives our team the level of granularity we need,” Dos Santos said. “For example, NetSuite allows me to drill down into details like a particular general ledger account when I am looking at a profit and loss statement, right down to transaction level. This gives our team complete visibility and transparency across our operations. Other ERP systems would have required me to invest in add-ons to do this.

“Saved searches are also one of our favourite features, because it allows us to get to the data we need and organise it however we need to.”

Looking ahead, the team is excited to leverage SuiteAnalytics to develop greater customer insights as the company brings the Swaddle Up product to new retailers and markets across the globe.

“Overall it’s been a great experience. I believe we have everything we need in a system and know that NetSuite ERP will support our business far into the future,” Dos Santos said.

Has your business outgrown accounting software? Cloud-based ERP provides a complete view of the business, from financials to inventory control and more. Learn about ERP by downloading your free whitepaper here.