Distribution Industry Case Study
/ / New Zealand Distributor Improves Productivity and Service with Integrated Environment
Overview
Country or Region:New Zealand
Industry:Distribution
Customer Profile
Brandlines imports, distributes, and markets international grocery, confectionery, and drink brands in New Zealand. It employs 160 people and has 50 desktop PCs.
Business Situation
Incompatible business systems forced employees to manually fill in information gaps, increasing sales cycles, and reducing productivity.
Solution
Brandlines gradually deployed an integrated back-end solution based on Microsoft® Windows Server System™ integrated server software and standardized its desktop on the Microsoft Office System.
Benefits
Enabled competitive advantage
Increased productivity
Increased order-picking accuracy to more than 97%
Reduced stock losses by approximately 50%
Increased access to information / “Using the same technology throughout our business, from the top to the bottom, takes away the integration issues. Microsoft software takes those worries away. It just works.”
Joy Chapman, Corporate Services Director, Brandlines
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Based in New Zealand, Brandlines is an importer and distributor of well-known confectionery and grocery products throughout New Zealand. Its disparate line-of-business systems did not communicate, forcing employees to perform redundant data entry and repetitive data reconciliation. To retain business with its global suppliers, better control the sales process, and improve visibility into its business, Brandlines needed to integrate and standardize its financial, distributing, and reporting solutions. Over time, the company built an integrated technology infrastructure based on Microsoft® Windows Server System™. It standardized the desktop on Microsoft Office Professional 2003 and added Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta® (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™). The solution seamlessly connects back-end systems with the desktop to automate workflow from order receipt to inventory management to fulfilment.
Situation
Brandlines started operations in 1972. Today, the company imports, distributes, and markets a select range of international grocery, confectionery, and drink brands in New Zealand and Australia. Employing more than 160 people and with revenues exceeding NZ$60,000,000 (US$40,900,000), Brandlines operates from 15,000 square meters of warehousing on the outskirts of the city of Palmerston North in New Zealand. This central location allows Brandlines to provide next-day delivery throughout New Zealand by using a combination of its own delivery fleet and contracted freight companies.
Originally, Brandlines was a van sale wholesaler, whereby a fleet of sales representatives drove directly to customers’ premises to sell their wares out of vans stocked with products. If an item had run out, customers could place orders with the sales representative who would return with the item later in the day. The company built its business on personal service and same-day delivery. Over the years, Brandlines grew to become an importer and marketer of international brands like Lindt chocolate, Chupa Chups lollipops and Werther’s Original candy. These corporations rely on Brandlines to build strong brand awareness for their products in New Zealandthrough the company’s relationships with more than 3,000 customers, which scale from gas station kiosks to urban supermarkets and department stores such as Kmart.
Rapid Growth
Unfortunately, Brandlines’ technological infrastructure had not kept pace with the company’s growth. It first deployed an MS-DOS®-based inventory, distribution, and warehouse system in the 1980s. “However, today the support for this solution is dwindling, and the solution has no clear future,” says Joy Chapman, Corporate Services Director, Brandlines. “We wanted integrated technology that would give our clients confidence in our future—wireless warehousing and paperless inventory management, for example. If we want to retain business with these large international corporations, we have to demonstrate that our systems are capable of generating accurate information to show that we are on top of our business.”
Isolated Systems Lead to Manual Business Processes
As the Brandlines accounting solution did not communicate with the inventory system, employees wasted time on entering data twice and culling information from different databases into Microsoft® Access 98 databases. “After we manually combined data from different systems to create reports, I was never entirely sure that the information was right,” says Philip Crawshaw, Brandlines’ Owner and Managing Director. “We struggled to transfer data from one system to another, yet we didn’t know what our previous weekly sales were. Sometimes, the only way to get information was to ask the accountant for data and hope you would get it within the month.”
Poor access to inventory data compromised Brandlines’ ability to keep track of “sell-by” dates. This recent requirement for every confectionery and grocery product sold in New Zealand formed one more reason for the company to re-evaluate the efficacy of its business systems. The company discovered that although it was rotating stock, sometimes managers were unable to unload product approaching its sell-by date, which reduced the company’s profitability.
The non-integrated business solutions at Brandlines created gaps in the flow of business information that required manual intervention from employees and reduced productivity throughout the sales cycle. Even though the sales force were happy with their Pocket PCs running Microsoft Windows® CE operating system version 3.0, they didn’t have access to inventory data. They were so busy during the day they often waited until the end of the day before uploading their orders to the inventory system. This caused bottlenecks at the warehouse. Overall, Brandlines’ high volume of daily transactions was more than the company’s inefficient business solutions could process. Orders weren’t handled as soon as they arrived at the warehouse; instead they were printed off and picked in batches, reducing efficiency.
“Brandlines is first and foremost a seller,” says Crawshaw. “We wanted our business systems to work together so that we could spend more time selling and less time filling out forms and reentering data. Frustrations about inadequate access to good business information threatened staff morale.”
Chapman continues: “Our legacy solutions’ stability issues also put a strain on our IT department of one. We needed to standardize on reliable solutions and find a technology partner that we could rely on for the long term.”
Solution
Over time, Brandlines addressed its business pains—incompatible solutions; poor access to consolidated, accurate information; reduced visibility into the business; and manual workflows—by standardizing its technology on Microsoft software, on both the server and the desktop. For a mid-sized enterprise like Brandlines, replacing core information systems is a daunting prospect. Chapman chose Microsoft technology to allay her fears about business disruptions and reduced cash flow. “Clearly, integration was key to the success of our business. Because Microsoft software works together without requiring modification, deployment is easier. The software is stable and requires minimal support—so it’s perfect for a company like ours with only one IT employee.”
Brandlines now uses the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000—all part of the Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. Brandlines also standardized its desktop computers on the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system and Microsoft Office Professional 2003.
With a stable, reliable back-end and desktop infrastructure in place, Brandlines began to look for an enterprise resource planning solution to replace its accounting and inventory systems. “We identified six products, including SAP, and invited solution providers in to evaluate each solution in light of our business needs,” says Chapman. “A question that we asked a number of them—‘Who is your biggest competitor?’—often yielded the same answer: ‘Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta®.”
After interviewing the six suppliers, Brandlines decided to evaluate Microsoft Axapta software and looked for a Microsoft reseller partner with an established reputation. “Following our meeting with Solution Partners, we chose to work with this partner to implement Microsoft Axapta,” recalls Chapman. “SAP was far too complex and expensive. Microsoft Axapta requires minimal support and integrates seamlessly with our environment. Given all the research and development behind the product, I’m reassured that the solution will grow with us.”
Microsoft Axapta includes applications for financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, human resource management, project management, and analytics. These modules can be deployed as needed. And because Microsoft Axapta integrates with Windows Server System software and the Microsoft Office System, Brandlines is freed from the integration issues that it experienced in the past.
“What Brandlines got when it chose to standardize on the full Microsoft stack is a reliable foundation that gives them the ability to scale as the business grows,” says Debbie Altham, Managing Director, Solution Partners. “This standard approach will reduce their total cost of ownership.”
Sales representatives and merchandisers in the field carry Pocket PCs running a customized application that uses BizTalk Server2004 to communicate sales orders and retrieves customer information from Microsoft Axapta. Sales representatives have docking stations mounted in their cars to handle the communication.
Brandlines installed a wireless networking system at the warehouse where workers receive orders from the sales representatives on Tablet PCs running Microsoft Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition. Forklift drivers are taking advantage of the mobility of the lightweight Tablet PC, which combines the power of a regular desktop computer with the ease of use of a clipboard and a pen. With the Tablet PC mounted on each forklift, drivers can quickly interact with the computer using a pen to tap the customized Microsoft Axapta interface. It only takes a few taps to retrieve directions for picking lists, product locations, and sell-by dates for each order, minimizing the time required to complete these tasks. No longer requiring paper forms of any kind, workers in the warehouse can now scan products’ bar codes and locations, ensuring the order is ready for dispatch within 24 hours. Similarly, when inventory arrives at the warehouse, workers scan the information directly into Microsoft Axapta as the container is unloaded.
Microsoft SQL Server2000 Reporting Services automatically delivers targeted business reports from Microsoft Axapta to Brandlines employees in the format that suits them best and through the delivery mechanism of their choice. Employees can receive information on their mobile phones or portable computers, or by accessing their e-mail messages. Reporting Services, Microsoft Axapta, and Office programs are integrated for end-to-end information management.
Benefits
Working with the full Microsoft stack from Windows Server 2003, to Microsoft Axapta, to Office Professional 2003, Brandlines has completely automated the company’s business processes, thereby driving efficiency and productivity while giving employees control over the information they need to make better decisions.
Increased Integration for Greater Productivity and Stronger Relationships
“Using the same technology throughout our business, from the top to the bottom, takes away the integration issues,” says Chapman, “Microsoft software takes those worries away. It just works.”
The result is that everyone—from Brandlines’ 160 sales representatives and merchandisers to the warehouse staff—is working more productively to streamline the sales and distribution process and increase cash flow. From order receipt to fulfillment, the company’s seamless new workflow is generating positive reviews and increasing staff morale. Using Pocket PCs and Tablet PCs, employees can be productive while they’re driving to meet clients or maneuvering a forklift to pick orders.
“We realized the benefits within three months of putting the system in place,” says Crawshaw. “Our sales team says they can now respond to customer queries much more quickly than before because they have access to much more accurate information and an improved reporting system. Better customer relationships are being forged as a direct result of improved efficiencies and accuracies,” enthuses Crawshaw
With no integration issues and a more reliable back-end infrastructure running on Windows Server 2003, the company’s sole IT professional is no longer wasting time reconstituting valuable data or pulling reports. In fact, everyone at Brandlines is thinking less about IT and focusing more on the business. “I’m not an IT specialist, but I know that we use a lot of Microsoft software,” says Chapman. “I’m not hearing about problems with the server. In this business it’s nice to know that you don’t have to worry about these things.”
Improved Warehouse Efficiency
Now that warehouse workers are using Tablet PCs and Microsoft Axapta to automate the order-receiving and order-picking processes, they have eliminated paperwork and reduced stock counting, two major impediments to their efficiency. “Microsoft Axapta has introduced both quantity and location logic to the Brandlines’ warehouse system. When it comes time to pick orders, Microsoft Axapta tells our warehouse staff the location and sell-by date of every product on the list,” says Chapman. “There is also a failsafe element put in place that stops the wrong product being sent out via an error message appearing on the system, preventing the order being shipped. The efficiencies in inventory management and picking mean that warehouse workers can go home one to two hours earlier.”
Having access to current information from Microsoft Axapta helps the warehouse staff maintain inventory at world-class levels. “Warehouse workers are achieving more than 97 percent in pick accuracy,” reports Chapman. “Brandlines is also improving stock rotation and reducing stock losses attributable to expiry dates by approximately 50 percent.”
Better Access to Information
Now employees throughout the company are able to access business information when and where they need it. With newly gained insight into the business, Brandlines managers are making better decisions, and the whole company has become more responsive and agile. “A great thing about our integrated Microsoft solution is the ease with which we can get reporting information out,” says Chapman. “Instead of waiting for a month to get the data we need, we just bring up a report, press a button, and drop the information into Office Excel 2003, which is a great tool for us.”
“Having Microsoft Axapta integrated into our everyday desktop tools has unlocked our business data. Our employees are empowered to get the information they need with little or no extra training,” says Crawshaw. “Using familiar tools, employees can look at sales by brand, by year, or any other configuration they choose. More and more people can extract the information they need to make better decisions. As a result, we are a more productive organization.”
Future Plans
When Brandlines was planning its new business management solution, a key criterion was the ability for it to grow with the company. Crawshaw has numerous plans for the company’s integrated solution, which points to his confidence in further exploiting the benefits of Microsoft software working together. “Now that we are getting accurate reports and can drill down the way we want to a single database, I’d like to improve our performance at our customers’ premises,” he says. “Merchandisers could use their Pocket PCs to access data about our customers’ stores, product placement, and sales. If we could coach our merchandisers to maximize shelf space for our products, we would have a very powerful strategy for securing premium shelf positions. For our global suppliers, this would enhance the value of a partnership with Brandlines. Ultimately, it would grow our business.”
Meanwhile, now the company can return to its roots—but also provide significantly greater customer service. “From the beginning, we delivered product to customers when they wanted it, as opposed to when it suited us,” says Crawshaw. “With integrated Microsoft software, we’re providing old-fashioned service. Our wireless warehouse gives us a competitive edge in marketing brands for global suppliers. It’s the best of both worlds.”
Microsoft Solutions
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to: