Case Study: |
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Situation
Bi-Lo, a beauty supplies distributor based in Melville,
New York, has been in business for 25 years. Over that time,
the company has had to keep up with the increasing number of
products required by its retail store customers. It now
supplies products to retailers throughout the northeastern
United States.
In addition to handling a growing range of products, Bi-Lo
has faced increasing competition in the market for servicing
independently owned retailers. Bi-Lo has responded to this
competition by maintaining high levels of customer service.
Bi-Lo has been challenged to contain costs without
sacrificing the high level of service expected by its
customers. Order fulfillment is one of the key areas
where Bi-Lo sought to contain costs. Its previous system—Macola—crashed
repeatedly during postings, and required up to 15 minutes to
restart each time,
seriously affecting productivity. The system required three
salespeople to input orders into the system and another
three people in accounts payable to manage invoices.
Reports were created outside of Macola in a report writer,
because the solution could not handle detailed reports. Even
with the separate report writer, some reports took hours to
produce, and a
server crash could require hours to rebuild corrupted data
and indexes. IT professionals
could spend up to four hours per day to support the system
and produce reports for executives.
Beyond the costs of report creation, the solution did not
provide accurate forecasts
and effective management of inventory that Bi-Lo needed to
maximize its competitive advantage.
In addition to these costs, the solution did not support
electronic data interchange (EDI), a retail compliance
technology that automates the process of receiving and
processing orders. Instead,
Bi-Lo had been receiving orders exclusively by mail and fax.
Customers were asking about EDI, and some potential
customers—such as large retail chains—required it as a
condition of doing business with the company. Bi-Lo needed
an EDI solution.
“Our solution was doing what it was designed to do, but
we needed something better to support our growth and bring
us to the next level as a company,” says Michael Lowe, Vice
President, Bi-Lo Distributors.
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