FOR ANY organisation distributing goods directly to customers, speed, accuracy and a high level of service are crucial factors in the success of its operations. The IT infrastructure of a company plays an important role in achieving and maintaining these factors in today’s competitive business environment.
Fermanagh Food Distribution is a family-run organisation involved in the preparation and distribution of convenience foods to supermarkets, corner shops, and also directly to customers’ front doors, in chilled vans throughout the whole of Ireland.
The business is rapidly expanding with the introduction of new ranges to the product portfolio such as cheese and other dairy products. With the business expanding and customer orders increasing in size and number, the firm’s outdated paper-based system for recording stock levels, customer receipts and invoices was starting to creak. It became clear that an electronic system was needed to eliminate issues such as lost dockets and missing invoices, all of which had to be manually updated on the computer system – a time consuming, high error process, which in turn led to costly customer service issues.
The firm’s MD, Michael Flynn, explains: “As the business grew, it became an increasingly time-consuming exercise to enter customer order, invoice, stock and all other paper-based information manually into our computer system, especially as we receive up to 900 orders a week. Orders were going missing and information was being entered incorrectly, which had a negative effect on our level of customer service.”
Flynn subsequently contacted another distribution company which had recently migrated from a manual paper-based system to one which used mobile computers to digitally record all invoicing and stock information. Flynn told Irish Computer: “The speed at which it was able to record information was fantastic; it could even bring up 18 month old invoices at the touch of a button.”
The system had been supplied by Eastern Data Group, a specialist in FMCG route accounting, with over 10,000 mobile solutions in the field. With offices in Ireland and the UK, it was well-placed to advise Fermanagh Food Distribution with the implementation of a new electronic system.
After an initial trial, Fermanagh Food purchased Eastern Data Group’s Mobilise Van solution designed for van delivery operations. The software was installed onto Itronix rugged Q200 handheld computers which were integrated with O’Neil MF4t thermal belt printers, communicating via Bluetooth.
The handheld devices are used to store customer, product and pricing information. The touch screen or the key pad is used to select the option required, such as the customer list, bringing up the list of customers for a particular day. The appropriate customer and order option is then selected, bringing up a list of products required by that customer, and the quantities to be delivered or sold is then entered. Products are located by using the pre-installed product categories or by searching for the product code or the name. When all product quantity entries have been completed, the order is confirmed and printed. A copy of the order is given to the customer. Some customers use the bar code scanner to find the products on the product list. The barcode is scanned, and the relevant product is highlighted on the list.
All of the information is stored in the handheld device which, at the end of the day, is placed into one of the depot’s cradles to upload the information directly to the Sage computer system via Mobilise Server, a communications gateway solution product, also designed by Eastern Data Group. Mobilise Server can also be used to produce management reports for sales, distribution and route scheduling.
Mobilise Van and Mobilise Server can handle any type of customer, product, price or currency – a crucial consideration for Fermanagh Food, since it deals in both sterling and euro.
The new system has “dramatically improved” Fermanagh Food’s productivity levels and the speed of operations, with stock control being tightened and the level of customer service also improved, says Flynn. “The issues we had with lost orders and invoices have now been completely eliminated. The time taken to download all of the information from the new handheld devices for invoicing and ordering now takes just minutes.” He added that Eastern Data’s level of technical support had been faultless. “Whatever the problem, big or small, it was sorted out quickly, patiently and accurately. I have already added to my initial order by 50% and plan to introduce more handhelds as our business grows in the future.”
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers