Managing Automation - March 2008 - (Page 43)

on their preferences and other factors. The system has streamlined what English calls the triangular relationship among the customer, Haworth, and the servicing dealer. “Today, our customer can go online and select items from our catalog. The system then allows their procurement office to electronically send that order file to our supporting dealer, who can assist with design, installation, or order-related services. The order is electronically pushed to Haworth to be priced, acknowledged, filled, delivered, and installed. The system reduces cycle time and lowers costs. It clearly reduces quality errors and the chance for order entry errors, and it has obvious business value for the customer,” English says. Haworth’s customers have cut their order processing times by up to 50% and their ordering costs by 30%, according to English. Furthermore, Haworth’s internal time needed to create customer-specific catalogs was reduced from 40 hours to eight hours. “We believe we have increased customer service and satisfaction while decreasing the overall cycle time to process orders from days to minutes. Additionally, we have avoided waste/rework by having higher-quality orders and fewer order changes,” English says. The reduction of errors and rework has benefited Haworth’s customers, English says. “In the past, customers were ordering non-standard product or the wrong product for the wrong facility, or they were receiving incorrect pricing information. Sterling’s system improved the speed of processing orders and the quality of the customer’s ordering process.” NO EXCESS BAGGAGE Improving customer satisfaction was also a major motivation for Gino Giombetti, vice president of operations and IT for Badanco Luggage, when he decided to automate his company’s order management system. Badanco, the third-largest manufacturer of luggage in the United States, was acquired in December 2007 by Randa Luggage. The company manufactures, markets, and distributes such well-known brands as CHAPS, Pierre Cardin, Liz Claiborne, and Tommy Bahama. Badanco does all of its manufacturing in the Far East and had been sharing order information with its contractors’ factories via e-mail and spreadsheets. The company suffered from a misalignment between external customer demands and internal business processes, applications, and enterprise data. “Thousands of e-mails and hundreds of spreadsheets were being sent back and forth between us and the factory on a weekly basis,” Giombetti says. “We were drowning in paper and spreadsheets.” Giombetti selected Extol’s Business Integrator (EBI) to automate the company’s order management. “EBI provided us with the ability to STRIVING FOR PERFECTION create a template for those documents so our To execute perfect orders, people could look at orders using Microsoft Exmanufacturers must get cel,” he says. “Doing so enabled us to capture the following things right: that information directly into our legacy mid● Quantity range AS/400 Vormatag 2000 VMI ERP system.” Information that previously was hidden and ● Product or service buried in discrete spreadsheets is now fed via ● Configuration EBI to Badanco’s ERP system and deployed to ● Quality levels meet the needs of the operational managers and ● Source the business. This visibility gives the compa● Condition and packaging ny’s sales force a tool for ensuring customer satisfaction. ● Documentation According to Giombetti, the new order man● Timing agement system has improved visibility into every ● Cost component in the supply chain. A salesperson, ● Frequency for example, can now find details about specific containers carrying a customer’s order by looking Source: Forrester Research into the ERP system. Salespeople can also use the system to alert customers to products that are becoming available, a capability that has helped the company double its business volumes in the past two years, Giombetti says. “All of these very discrete pieces of information that, again, at one time were buried in thousands of pieces of paper are now organized electronically and can be reported in a systematic manner,” Giombetti says. According to Giombetti, Badanco has been able to grow over the past two years while adding only a handful of people, none of whom are involved in processing order information. By automating their order management processes, manufacturers such as Haworth and Badanco are coming closer to achieving the elusive perfect order. In the final analysis, achieving the perfect order boils down to being able to keep promises to customers and suppliers, according to managingautomation.com Sterling’s Ramoutar. “Promising is a very diffiRELATED ARTICLES: E-Commerce: Taming the Beast cult thing for a lot of people,” www.managingautomation.com/ecommerce Ramoutar says, “but it’s a very Reformulating CRM’s Value important aspect of buying. www.managingautomation.com/crmvalue Enabling manufacturers to The Great Migration from Legacy Systems make promises in real time www.managingautomation.com/migration during the buying cycle is one of things that order manageCOMPANIES MENTIONED: ment systems like ours do Extol very well. This is very imporwww.managingautomation.com/extol tant since much of the buySterling Commerce ing decision is based on availwww.managingautomation.com/sterlingcommerce ability and shipping time.” s list check maonline 43 March 2008 http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com/ecommerce http://www.managingautomation.com/crmvalue http://www.managingautomation.com/migration http://www.managingautomation.com/extol http://www.managingautomation.com/sterlingcommerce

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - March 2008

Managing Automation - March 2008 Contents Take 1 Mailbox Mitsubishi, IBM, and ILS Team Up to Make Integration Easy for Automakers Former Agile Exec Takes the Reins at Arena Solutions The Next Phase for 2006’s PM Award Winner Integration Firm Boomi Redesigns for On-Demand Ex-Wonderware Chief Takes Helm at Apprion Notes Cover Story: A Rare Breed Special Report: Where are Control Architectures Heading? Transformation: Back to Reality Integration: Getting Standards Under One Roof Industries: The Quest for the Perfect Order Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - March 2008

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