Kokkolan Öljytukku Consolidated Its Business into One System with Refox

"We were looking for an e-commerce solution, but we found Refox"

Didrik Kinnari, the entrepreneur behind Kokkolan Öljytukku, originally set out to find a new e-commerce solution. After discovering Refox, however, he realized that the same system could handle the online store, ERP, and point-of-sale operations all at once. "Switching systems turned out to be surprisingly easy and painless," Kinnari says.

Didrik Kinnari says: "I would never go back to the old way. Refox has so much automation that many steps now happen with the click of a button."

Stock discrepancies were the single biggest problem
When Kokkolan Öljytukku's online store and sales ran on separate systems, stock levels never stayed up to date. Discrepancies caused extra work, troubleshooting, and headaches. With Refox, the online store, sales, and inventory management were brought into a single system, which reduced manual work and freed up time for serving customers and developing the business.

"Stock discrepancies were the single biggest problem. A customer might ask about a product that showed zero in stock. We'd go check the shelf and find that it was actually there. Situations like that kept coming up," Kinnari recalls.

Manual work dropped significantly with Refox
Kokkolan Öljytukku supplies oils, fuels, filters, and spare parts to businesses across Finland. In addition to its online store, the company serves customers directly from its shop and through tanker deliveries to job sites. Since most of its roughly 20,000 products are shipped straight from suppliers to customers, keeping stock levels accurate is critical to the business.

Today, Kokkolan Öljytukku runs its online store, sales orders, purchase orders, inventory management, and reporting all through Refox. When a customer places an order online, the system automatically drives the process forward. Shipping documents are generated in a few clicks, and data no longer needs to be entered multiple times across different systems.

"Package details used to be entered by hand. Now the carrier's shipping documents come with essentially one click. There are far fewer steps than before," Kinnari says.

Purchasing has also become easier to manage.

"Before, we manually went through what needed reordering. Now we get reports straight from the system and can make decisions based on real data. We can easily see what was sold in previous years during the same period, and how much," Kinnari explains.

Kokkolan Öljytukku carries around 20,000 products. A significant share of them ship directly to the customer from the supplier's own warehouse.

The system switch went more smoothly than expected
Kokkolan Öljytukku originally set out to improve its online store. The company came to know Refox through local contacts.

"The initial goal was just to improve the online store, but during the discussions it became clear that we could move our entire operation onto the same system. That felt like the sensible thing to do," Kinnari says.

Refox stood out in particular for its flexibility and its ability to be developed around the company's own needs.

"Whenever we had a request, it was listened to, and we worked out how to make it happen. That's what built the trust that the system would keep evolving to fit our needs."

The scale of switching systems raised some initial doubts, since Kokkolan Öljytukku had thousands of products and a long customer history in its old systems. The rollout, however, turned out to be considerably easier than Kinnari expected.

"All of our old data was migrated successfully, and we got to practice using the system in advance. When go-live day came, everything went surprisingly smoothly," Kinnari says.

Refox supports growth going forward, too
Kokkolan Öljytukku currently has new development projects underway with Refox as well — for example, automating fuel pricing with solutions tailored to the company's needs.

Kinnari particularly values that the system can be developed around the company's own requirements.

"If we have a development request, it gets taken up. Of course not everything can be finished right away, but what matters most is that things keep moving forward."

He recommends Refox to companies that want to cut down on manual work and bring their commerce operations together in one system.

"Refox has a lot of features that we haven't even fully tapped into yet ourselves. The more you use the system, the more new ways you find to streamline operations. It's been a great solution for us," Kinnari sums up.