About Halo

Halo Collars act as a virtual fence for dogs, not only at home but anywhere they go. Capable of connecting to GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, they allow owners to manage and track their pet’s location via a subscription-based app. 

Halo has sold over 300,000 collars and provides subscription services for their management. They recently released the Halo Collar 4, a smaller redesigned collar that opens their services to smaller dogs and their owners.

Challenges to success

Halo grew from $3 million to nearly $100 million in revenue in five years. As a result, they needed a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to support internal functions and integrate with third-party vendors and platforms: Not only for the retail side of selling their collars and other inventory – and the reverse logistics needed to process any returns – but also for subscription plans for their app service. NetSuite was implemented to provide these capabilities needed to support their fast-growing business. 

A year after their initial NetSuite implementation with another service provider, Halo was still experiencing difficulties connecting data from their third-party vendors and collaborators. Data flow processes feeding into NetSuite were imperfect, resulting in data that wasn’t unified and was not giving them the insights they needed to guide their business decisions or, critically, close their books on a timely basis.

They had found that fully utilizing the capabilities of NetSuite required additional processes around inventory, reverse logistics, and other critical functions that did not exist within the business before. 

“It wasn’t going from one ERP to the other, where you’re just mirroring the processes – you’re developing the processes,” said Ned Mavrommatis, CFO.

They had staff who were familiar with NetSuite, but not with deep enough expertise or capacity to address the issues. 

Halo enlisted CohnReznick to help optimize their existing NetSuite configuration and support them through their year-end close.

“The benefit of bringing in a third party, they had expertise in every area because they’ve seen many things from their customers, and had specific people who could bring in expertise,” Mavrommatis said.

Action taken 

Through collaborative sessions with the Halo team, CohnReznick identified gaps and areas for improvement. Leveraging their NetSuite Managed Services structured approach, the CohnReznick team began to immediately create a roadmap to address Halo’s challenges. Meeting aggressive deadlines, the team cleansed existing data to expedite the month-end closing processes, re-designed integrations with third-party systems to avoid data issues moving forward, streamlined processes, and customized new system architecture to effectively support current and future-state operations. Halo is now in a position to accelerate their year-end reporting, operate smoothly due to improved technology integrations and related processes, and access data that can help them make more informed decisions. (Continue reading for a list of specific NetSuite components optimized.)

CohnReznick’s professionals took the time to understand Halo’s processes, Mavrommatis said, and worked together with Halo’s teams to simplify them. “They looked to see why the data was not properly coming in, and they helped us resolve it.” Additionally, they worked together to clean up the data that came in previously that was inaccurate.

CohnReznick also helped redesign how Halo processed returns and returned items into their system.

Seeing results

With their third-party integrations corrected and the flaws in their existing data remediated, the Halo team was able to shift their attention from resolving errors to using their improved data to drive impactful decisions. 

“When you look at our operation, whether you’re managing product sales or subscription sales or cash flow, it’s all about real-time data, because we’re able to react accordingly,” Mavrommatis said. “I think when you look at the overall picture, having the ability to quickly have accurate data is helping us make decisions about how to spend, where to spend, where to focus our energy, and it’s making our company a lot more productive.”

In a consumer products business with a heavy volume of transactions, sales, and subscriptions, having that information now coming into the system automated and working properly has changed the value of their data. They can now access real-time data that supports operating decisions to impact growth and efficiency.

NetSuite has enhanced more than just the finance team – it’s the entire business, Mavrommatis said.

They are now able to better manage their inventory and reverse logistics, analyze their gross margin and cash flow, and ultimately make real-time decisions to be more successful. 

“That’s the reason we decided to go to a system like NetSuite,” Mavrommatis said. “It just took a little longer than we expected to get to this point, and we needed to bring in a third party like CohnReznick to help us get there.”

A key initial frustration has been resolved: They are now able to close their books within a week, compared with the three weeks to a month it took when it was being done by journal entries. 

Their new access to NetSuite’s inventory module allows them to better manage inventory and turn it into cash at a faster rate. Now they have real-time visibility that allows them to quickly determine where to run a sale, for example, or otherwise monetize the inventory. They can see in real time how many returns are coming back, when, and how they are graded.

On a personal level, that data access has also been the biggest benefit for Mavrommatis as CFO: being able to provide other members of the C-Suite – CMO, COO, CTO, CEO – the real-time data needed to make strategic decisions and continue down their path of high, profitable growth. 

“All this data is helping us make decisions to be more efficient, so not only are we continuing to grow at a very fast pace, but we are growing profitably because of the efficiencies that we’re making by having this real-time data.”

The path forward

CohnReznick continues to provide maintenance support to Halo through the firm’s NetSuite Managed Services, with an approach tailored to Halo’s needs including monitoring their NetSuite functionality and checking in bi-weekly to resolve any new issues that arise.

The company’s next project is to look at other solutions that can help them improve their operations, such as around return and warranty management. Continuing to work with the CohnReznick team will help them make sure the data from those new technologies feeds back into their NetSuite system accurately, in real time, Mavrommatis said.

They also have eyes toward B2B retail sales, and will want to make sure they have the systems that allow them to do so – continuing to use NetSuite capabilities to grow and improve operating profitability. 

Their overall goal is to continue to increase subscription revenue – each collar sale leads to a subscriber, and they have different levels of plans at different price points. The real-time data provided by NetSuite will help them make decisions on how to increase subscription revenue, get higher-paid subscribers, and, all along the way, operate more efficiently.

With the help of an optimized NetSuite platform, Halo is positioned to make decisions around their investments and savings that will allow them to expand profitably, keep growing – and, ultimately, help more people keep their pets safe. 

NetSuite support overview