Description

Deliver more goods with fewer people

Expedite Workflow management

Problem

In a competitive market place offering a procurement solution requires excellent service. Ensuring products are delivered on time

Previous situation

Account managers were expected to return to the office at 3pm every day to ensure that the current days orders had been entered in Sage Line 50 and that purchase orders had been generated to ensure next day delivery of goods ordered and any problems dealt with. This limited the amount of time committed to direct customer contact.

Solution

Orders received from the web site into the Outlook are automatically posted to Sage Line 50 using a custom application embedded in Outlook. The application goes on to automate all the downstream processing, communicating with wholesalers through EDI, updating Sales Orders, Generating Sales Invoices, also generating Purchase Orders and processing purchase invoices received via EDI. The bulk of orders are fulfilled by direct delivery by the relevant wholesaler. Where more than one wholesaler can fulfil the order a least cost calculation is done to maximise the profitability of each order. The main benefit of the solution is that the back office does not require more people as order volumes grow and account managers can spend more time talking to Customers.

Step 1

Build the processing

Step 2

Implement EDI links to those wholesalers where the volume justified the work and automate the rest via email automation.

Step 3

Replaced the original white labelled web site with a procurement site that was not tied to a particular wholesaler and left the client free to extend the product and service ranges under their own control.