The Warehouse Ltd Web Portal is free, easy and has improved our accuracy.

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1 The Warehouse Ltd Web Portal is free, easy and has improved our accuracy. Andrew Bielby, GM Neutech (supplier to The Warehouse Ltd.) At a Glance Business Objective The Warehouse Ltd. had two ordering systems (EDI and paper) and this limited their supply chain efficiencies and savings. They needed 100% of their 500 plus local suppliers who were not on EDI, to suddenly do EDI. Solution The B2BE Supplier Web Portal. The Warehouse Ltd. electronically sends POs, to the B2BE Supplier Web Portal. Suppliers see their POs which they can flip back as an ASN and an Invoice. The translated documents are EDI ready for The Warehouse Ltd. to import into their ERP. Result 100% of The Warehouse Ltd. suppliers are now able to do EDI with The Warehouse Ltd. This produces efficiencies and savings for both The Warehouse Ltd. and for their suppliers. The Warehouse Group voted B2BE as their Business Partner of the Year.

2 The Company The Warehouse Ltd. (TWL) is one of New Zealand s largest retailers, known and loved by New Zealanders for its wide range of products from clothing, entertainment, technology and music to sporting, gardening, grocery and many others. The Warehouse Ltd. have been providing Kiwis with a bargain since New Zealand (NZ) owned and operated, The Warehouse Ltd. have 92 NZ stores and over 9,000 employees. The Warehouse Ltd. is part of The Warehouse Group (TWG) which includes: The Warehouse Stationery (64 stores); Noel Leeming (77 electrical appliance stores) and many other retail brands. The Challenge The Warehouse Ltd. has a core mantra of Better, Simpler, Cheaper. The Warehouse Ltd. already knew that automated electronic documentation (EDI) in their supply chain would be critical to continually delivering this goal. Working with B2BE, The Warehouse Ltd. had over 40 of its NZ based suppliers sending and receiving EDI documents (Purchase Orders (PO), Advance Shipping Notices (ASNs) and Invoices. This group of suppliers on EDI accounted for 40% to 50% of The Warehouse Ltd. s volume of Orders but only 10% of their suppliers. Ray Renner, The Warehouse Ltd. Merchandise Support Manager, says a practical example of how EDI creates these efficiencies is that it allowed us to simplify our replenishment ordering (auto reorder) by removing the request to supply step from the process. This, combined with the elimination of the need for EDI suppliers to rekey orders into their systems, has resulted in significant reductions in delivery lead times in many cases. Ray adds Also, EDI suppliers provide an ASN with all deliveries. This ASN updates the order with the quantity despatched, which significantly improves workflow in our DC [distribution centre] and store receiving areas, by reducing the number of receipting variances DCs and stores have to deal with. However, The Warehouse Ltd. had another 500 NZ based suppliers that were not on EDI and (for various reasons, mostly cost and technical complexity) the majority of those suppliers would never be able to do EDI with The Warehouse Ltd. Ray says Without a way of getting all our Orders, Invoices and ASNs electronically, TWL would always have two systems (EDI and paper), and this would limit our supply chain efficiencies and savings. So the catch 22 was that to get the maximum benefits from EDI, we needed all TWL suppliers to do EDI but 90% of our suppliers could never do EDI. 1

3 Supplier Impacts For the 500 The Warehouse Ltd. suppliers still using a paper based ordering system, there were also some negative impacts of staying paper based. Some of The Warehouse Ltd. suppliers said: Andrew Bielby, GM Neutech, When our documentation was all done by paper, TWL wasn t that bad to deal with, but occasionally there would be a lost Invoice or someone would make a data entry mistake or there was a price issue. It was all small stuff but each one was a little job for someone. Anna Twena, GM Topline Clothing, Before our TWL Orders were automated, sometimes an Invoice might get missed, either because we didn t send it or because TWL might not have put it into their system. Craig McKenna, IT and Accounts Payable Manager Dish TV, The TWL Purchase Orders used to come to us via fax and sometimes there was an issue with the PO s details. When that was the case, because it just arrived via fax, it was a problem for us finding out who at TWL to call to resolve that particular PO s issue. The Solution Ray Renner said B2BE had done an outstanding job on the TWL EDI implementation with 40 of TWL s largest suppliers, so it was a natural choice to ask them for a solution to get all local suppliers to trade electronically with TWL. The solution was the B2BE Supplier Web Portal. The B2BE Supplier Web Portal provides businesses with a single point of access to processes, applications and information. For The Warehouse Ltd. this means they electronically send Orders, from their ERP system to the Web Portal. The Warehouse Ltd. supplier logs into the same Supplier Portal and they see their Purchase Orders. The supplier can then flip the Order and send back an ASN and / or an Invoice from the Supplier Portal. The ASNs and the Invoices the suppliers send are translated by the Supplier Portal ready for The Warehouse Ltd. to import to their ERP as EDI documents. The Warehouse Ltd., Chief Logistics Officer, Jon Adams signed off the project. He explains, TWL wanted all its documents (POs, ASNs and Invoices) to be via EDI to and from all of our suppliers. But we wanted to make it easy and free for our non-edi suppliers. With B2BE s Web Portal, we saw that TWL would get what it needed, which is everything in EDI, but also, the non-edi suppliers would just use a website, which would be very easy for them. Customisation Every B2BE Web Portal is fully customisable, which meant The Warehouse Ltd. could have whatever features they wanted. Some of the The Warehouse Ltd. Web Portal features include: 2

4 Priority stores The Warehouse Ltd. has some stores that must get orders first. E.g. if a supplier only has enough to stock 70% of the stores, the Web Portal identifies priority stores which should receive preference of delivery. Three Types of Orders - To make the restocking of stores work as efficiently as possible, The Warehouse Ltd. has three types of Orders. These are: direct to store Orders, direct to distribution centre Orders and the most complex are the Orders The Warehouse Ltd. calls pick and pack (some other retailers call these cross-dock ). In pick and pack Orders, suppliers send The Warehouse Ltd. one shipment with goods pre-packed by store. The Warehouse Ltd. consolidates the goods in a consignment with other suppliers goods that are going to the same individual The Warehouse Ltd. stores. The Web Portal distinguishes between these types of Orders and provides the functionality needed to support the three different Order types. Generate Pick Lists The Warehouse Ltd. Web Portal allows the suppliers to either organize their picking from within the portal or, if they have their own system, to export the Order to their system and do the picking from there. Print Carton Labels The Web Portal allows suppliers to print their carton labels in the format and to the standard that The Warehouse Ltd. wants. Supports Approved Variant Substitutes This allows the supplier to substitute barcodes/supplier codes to previously approved substitute values. Print / Export Packing Slips - Suppliers can print/export PDF packing slips, once the ASN has been sent. Suppliers can Import & Export Data - All POs, ASNs and Invoices can be exported in CSV and PDF. Suppliers have the option of importing them into their system, allowing the supplier to apply discounts and update values. Suppliers can also import Invoices from their systems via a CSV upload to the portal. 3

5 Onboarding Engagement The project was run with a process of: engagement, pilot and onboarding. During the Pilot, The Warehouse Ltd. introduced the Web Portal to pilot users, explained the process and then referred the supplier to B2BE who fulfilled the onboarding as a managed service to The Warehouse Ltd. All the costs of the Web Portal are met by The Warehouse Ltd., at no charge to their suppliers. Results Ray says The first users of the Web Portal have shown that the time to process Orders and overall Order lead time has been reduced, and for the suppliers they have reduced other Order processing costs. The Warehouse Ltd. has improved Order accuracy through the elimination of keying errors. The Web Portal has reduced costs creating and processing Invoices, both for TWL and for our suppliers. Ray added And there has been a reduction in Invoicing queries, credit claims and so on, which may potentially have an impact on payment time frames and definitely will reduce administration costs for both The Warehouse Ltd. and our suppliers. Possibly the best indication of how well the Web Portal was received by The Warehouse Ltd. was that B2BE won the prestigious Annual The Warehouse Group Business Service Partner of the Year Award. The nomination for B2BE, was written by Jon Adams, The Warehouse Ltd. Chief Logistics Officer. Jon wrote: The Web Portal is a very cost effective means for suitable suppliers to trade electronically with the Warehouse. It generally requires little, if any, up-front investment from the supplier and there are no [supplier] transaction charges. In most cases, suppliers can be up and running with the Portal within days with minimal disruption to their existing processes and systems. For the supplier, the Portal offers the advantage of receiving Orders electronically which speeds up order processing and accuracy. The Portal enables suppliers to electronically submit Invoices based on the Order delivery advice (ASN) which enables more Invoices to be processed on time, with fewer queries and credits. 4 What the Pilot Suppliers said about the Onboarding Process Andrew Bielby, GM Neutech, Any IT project like this, you expect it to be a project but in reality it was nothing. I spent ten minutes having a play on the test website and I was ready. Craig McKenna IT and Accounts Payable Manager Dish TV, The set up was fairly straightforward. There was almost nothing to it. Anna Twena (GM) from Topline Clothing: Learning how to use the Supplier Portal was a very straightforward process because we were given a couple of test Orders to learn from.

6 What The Warehouse Ltd. suppliers said about the Web Portal s Results Andrew Bielby, GM Neutech The Web Portal changes the visibility of the Order. When I open the Web Portal I can see the status of every Order. If the [TWL] buyer makes a mistake I can see it immediately and this makes it massively more efficient. Andrew added We have been using the TWL Supplier Web Portal, every day, for four months now and the number of errors associated with processing Orders is zero. So the system reduces the risk of an error enormously. Andrew summed up the results by saying The TWL Supplier Web Portal is FREE, EASY and has improved our accuracy. Simon Williams, Sales and Marketing Manager Rainbow Confectionery Our staff are finding the portal really good to use. Because all the Orders are in one place you have all that history to look at. Last week this helped us avoid a possible double up of an Order that had already been submitted. Staff also like that they can track the progress of an Order, so once the packing slip is generated, its progress is updated and this means better visibility of the supply chain for us. Craig McKenna, IT and Accounts Payable Manager Dish TV Now there are no issues with details missing or indeed knowing who to respond to. Also the biggest benefit has been a much quicker turnaround on any issues we do have. Previously we had to print and post Invoices to TWL every week. As well as taking time to do this, if there were any issues with an Invoice, we would not find out about it for a week or so. So while our terms are the same, in practice, we are getting paid faster and with fewer issues. Anna Twena, GM Topline Clothing: While for us it adds a new step in the process, the rest of our processes remain the same and now we never have any Invoices go missing. So as well as doing this to help TWL, it also helps us. Ray added Pure EDI is still by far the best option for those suppliers with larger Order volumes with TWL or those suppliers who have more complex Orders to process, but the Web Portal is a fast and easy alternative for others. And for TWL it does not matter which way suppliers choose to go, because it all comes to TWL as EDI and that is exactly what TWL wanted. Where to From Here for the Project The project has gone so well that The Warehouse Group will roll the Supplier Web Portal out to the next two largest companies in The Warehouse Group Warehouse Stationery (64 stores) and Noel Leeming (77 appliance stores). This will provide one Supplier Web Portal for suppliers, so that suppliers who do business with more than one company within The Warehouse Group, see all their Orders with The Warehouse Group, in one place. Since, for historical reasons, the three companies have somewhat different order management practices, the processes each Order follows in the ordering process, will be relevant to the company they are supplying. For example, only The Warehouse Ltd. uses ASNs, so they will not appear in the Noel Leeming Group and Warehouse Stationery Ltd Order workflow. Suppliers of The Warehouse Ltd. who want more information about the system should The Warehouse Ltd or suppliers can also Contact B2BE for more information. Or to find out more about B2BE and how they can help your organisation to reduce manual document processing and distribution, please visit or nz.info@b2be.com 5