SUPPLY
the deployment of the Voxware system will alleviate some of the pressure on the warehouse pickers.” The key supply chain issues faced by wholesalers
are similar, if not worse to those of the retailers they serve as the market moves increasingly towards online sales. “We offer a same day dispatch and we now see people wanting to place their orders later and later in the day,” explained Johnson. “The amount of time you have for processing orders gets shorter, so we were looking for a system that will give us increased speed and that’s’ what we are expecting to get from the voice solution. “From a supply chain perspective, both retailers
and e-retailers are looking to hold minimal amounts of stock and rely on us to be their warehouse, which means we need to respond to their customer orders,” added Johnson. “It translates itself into people’s orders becoming smaller and more frequent.” Carte Blanche is another
international supplier that is adapting to the increasingly complex demands of its retail customers. Best known for its
‘Tatty Teddy’ and
‘Me to You’ brands, the company has grown from selling 12 greeting cards to a product portfolio that includes toys, gifts, homeware, apparel, food and even pet products. Carte Blanche invested in the Transform information management solution from Bottomline Technologies to help streamline its supply chain and minimise manual intervention. It has reportedly saved an impressive £100,000 every year using Transform, especially through the ability to made modifications to dispatch notes, labels and other documents in-house. Initially adopted over a decade ago to enable
Carte Blanche’s Tatty Teddy
the printing of barcodes directly onto labels, Carte Blanche’s use of Transform now touches every aspect of the business, from the provision of labels to suppliers to streamlined warehouse processes and a shift towards electronic invoices and remittance advice slips. The use of Transform also underpins Carte Blanche’s warehouse process, creating not only picking lists but also the re-order tickets required by customers. “Transform produces all the stuff that our ERP
[enterprise resource planning] system cannot,” commented Brian Bennet, Carte Blanche IT manager. “Our UK and international customer base ranges represent the whole spectrum of retailing. The headache for a supplier like us is that each of those retailers will have their own shipping requirements. “My ERP system handles the orders and Transform
handles all that graphical or electronic paperwork or media that the customers’ logistical systems require. A lot of it is about specific types of barcodes and their contents. But the biggest challenge we find, as a supplier, is that there is no standard supply chain process or technology in retail industry,” added Bennet. “All retailers have their own documentation, distribution and delivery process. Retailers have the luxury to put demands on people like us, handing us the cost and the problem to solve. A product like Transform enables me to keep the problem and costs down to a minimum.” Bennet feels successful retailers are those that get
their back-office IT technology integrated so that the supply chain runs smoothly behind the scenes, away from the eyes of the customer, just in time and at low cost. “That’s the dream for all supply chain managers. People like John Lewis, who replaced their whole system with an integrated system that manages online orders alongside their shops and back-office supply chain, have the real edge on their competitors right now. A lot of retailers are behind on that as they have enormous technology challenges.”
38 Autumn 2014
www.retailtechnology.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60