How we turned a billion dollar customer service operation into a lean mean product delivery machine. Copyright 2011, a division of QAD inc.
Case Study Snapshot In October 2009, successfully implemented our PRECISION Transportation Management System (TMS) for a worldwide home electronics manufacturer, featuring enterprise design, a globally scalable implementation, and deployment for over 100 users. Precision s customer is a high-volume consumer electronics shipper whose initial rollout required managing a minimum of 8,750 packages per hour over 70,000 packages per day (at peak periods) across U.S. locations, and 15,000 more packages per day in Europe. Precision s TMS solution had a direct impact on the client s customer satisfaction and number of repeat buyers, while lowering their bottom line logistics costs, including carrier costs and the amount of dedicated shipping personnel and IT resources. The Customer Tackling logistics for a home electronics manufacturer with customers around the world and an ever-growing product line isn t a trivial undertaking. In a typical week, the company processes millions of worldwide customer service shipments containing repairs, replacements, and return material authorizations (RMA) for its products. As such, they sought out a transportation management system to implement and prove out in five pilot distribution centers with the plan to ramp up global coverage. In addition, they required a TMS that offered a service oriented architecture or black box integration to their existing SAP ERP system, multi-carrier support, integrated export management, and the ability to incorporate workflows for three different 3PL s. The company also had a large stakeholder group for the TMS project, including a team of 50 crossfunctional representatives. Precision s TMS solution had a direct impact on the client s customer satisfaction. 1 Due to contractual obligations, cannot disclose the client name..02 Copyright 2011, a division of QAD inc.
Challenges No project is without challenges, and this one was no exception. But it was the quality of Precision s product, backed by its stellar execution team that overcame even the most unexpected hurdles. Geography - One challenge faced was integrating separate IT systems across multiple geographies. Several of the pilot distribution centers in Europe and the U.S. were still using standalone systems and manual shipping processes. This created inefficiencies and errors in shipment processing, which left customers dissatisfied, and made internal visibility and communication between systems difficult. Scalability - Every year the client releases additional sought-after products in their industry, thereby increasing the number of customer service shipments to manage. With an increasing flow of items being shipped around the world every week, the company looked for ways to not only keep up with the existing volume, but also scale to support future company growth. Murphy s Law No case-study worthy project would be complete without at least one gotcha. Mid-implementation, the project ran head long into an unexpected challenge: the customer s primary carrier, DHL, discontinued U.S. operations just prior to the busiest shipping time of the year. This forced the electronics manufacturer and Precision into a situation of having to switch carrier strategies and still implement the TMS shipping solution in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas shipping periods. Solutions & Results One Company, One System Precision implemented an integrated system with our client s ERP platform, giving all stakeholders on the team access to the new PRECISION TMS functionality through the existing SAP platform. This minimized the customer training burden because employees were already familiar with SAP. In addition, the centralized TMS database now offered global visibility to the customer care operation between facilities and geographies. This added coordination allows tighter inventory controls and improved utilization. Finally, the PRECISION TMS implementation increased information flow for end-customer package shipments, improving customer service delivery, reducing customer shipping questions and complaints, and boosting overall customer satisfaction..03 Copyright 2011, a division of QAD inc.
Growth for the Future With the customer s ongoing product expansion, the PRECISION system will be able to handle worldwide growth in customer service logistics as new products are launched. As the company grows and ships to new geographic locations with local carriers, Precision s system will also give our client the flexibility to easily add additional carriers to automated workflows and routing guides. The PRECISION TMS distributed server architecture even allows this customer to manage to future hardware scaling when needed. Hitting a Curve Ball Out of the Park With the unexpected news from DHL, Precision was presented an opportunity to show its commitment as a dedicated partner. In crafting a responsive solution, we partnered with FedEx to fill the DHL gap in the U.S. and with UPS and local carriers in Europe. Precision worked in lock step with the carriers to identify routing solutions and rate optimization for all the serviced geographies and export complexities. Precision also accelerated the implementation to deploy the system successfully prior to the Thanksgiving/Christmas electronics buying season. PRECISION TMS has enabled our customer to save time, streamline processes and save costs. The new TMS allows the team to print carrier-approved 2-in-1 parcel labels for outbound and return shipments in one pass, to save time and reduce matching errors. This was a major requirement for our customer. A printing system was added in-line with production speeding shipping logistics while eliminating workflow inefficiencies. A built-in routing guide allows the customer to optimize shipping costs, meaning they could ship out using one or more carriers and return with a different carrier based on the lowest cost. Line operations are also optimized with the new system. As a package comes down the queue line, carrier waybill numbers and item serial numbers are scanned into the PRECISION/SAP system, so the carrier(s) can immediately load their delivery trucks. The technology streamlines customs processing and optimizes zone skipping from the U.S. into Canada to save on freight costs. PRECISION end-of-day processing automatically transfers shipping information to the appropriate customs broker for increased visibility and faster customs processing..04 Copyright 2011, a division of QAD inc.
Results Where they Count Within three days after the new PRECISION TMS system went live, the pilot distribution center in Europe reached an all-time record volume of shipments more than 33,000 in a single week. With a global system implementation of this scale, one might expect some hiccups in output the week after going live. However, the smooth TMS startup made the client s shipping process robust and stable, resulting in an immediate pay off. With this impressive success, the customer decided to extend the solution worldwide. The client has also experienced a quantifiable drop in customer service calls related to shipping because the PRECISION TMS system ensures end-buyers receive on-time delivery of their packages. End-buyer satisfaction rates have also increased for our client due in part to an in-box packing slip allowing them to verify package contents on arrival, a feature previously unavailable. Finally, employee productivity has shown quantifiable improvement and warehouse error rates have dropped measurably for our client both directly traceable to PRECISION TMS use. Greater automation of manual processes has allowed our client to transport products more quickly and more accurately. Fewer manual steps and workarounds have allowed employees to work faster, with fewer human errors, and increase productivity across the customer care operation. Contact to learn more about this customer success story and ways we can help you improve your transportation management and shipping processes today. Finally, employee productivity has shown quantifiable improvement and warehouse error rates have dropped measurably..05 Copyright 2011, a division of QAD inc.