‘Intelligent’ B2B platform drives customer service improvement
COVENTRY 24th June 2010 – Atchison Topeka, a logistics services company specialising in the food sector, needed to improve efficiencies in its customer order processes. The company’s aim was to remove errors resulting from the manual entry of orders, while also achieving real-time supply chain visibility. The solution was to move to an ‘intelligent’ electronic trading platform.
Established over 20 years ago, Atchison Topeka is a leading third party logistics (3PL) company specialising in food ingredients. The company provides innovative logistics solutions to customers requiring the delivery of food ingredients into UK manufacturing centres.
Atchison Topeka has a strong customer base which includes some of the most recognisable names in the industry. Typical products handled include chocolate, bagged powdered ingredients, jams, fruit mixes and sugars. Bulk ingredients include liquid chocolates, sugars and milk.
With a large number of key trading partners, Atchison Topeka was experiencing problems with their existing manual order entry process. The time-consuming process involved dealing with large quantities of paperwork and incoming fax orders, resulting in a considerable number of errors.
For a company like Atchison Topeka, punctuality is imperative if crucial customer delivery dates are to be met. The company could not afford for order processing errors to impact on their levels of customer service.
After careful consideration Atchison Topeka made the decision to outsource their B2B electronic trading to Wesupply, allowing connectivity to their customer base via a single platform. This enabled greater control of the customer ordering process and ensured 100 per cent inventory record matching. Errors are now eliminated before they impact upon performance; costs associated with the previous manual procedure have been reduced, and Atchison Topeka has significantly improved the quality of service their customers receive. The fully managed service also enables Atchison Topeka to be more efficient through the quick and easy addition of new trading partners, as and when required.
“Our existing B2B processes were hugely inefficient and the situation was worsening with each additional trading partner,” says Darren Cronshaw, Operations Director at Atchison Topeka. “The order processing solution in place lacked resilience to the changing demands of our customers and it was decided that a more robust and scaleable electronic trading solution was required”.
Atchison Topeka implemented OneTime, Wesupply’s fully managed B2B electronic trading solution to rapidly integrate its business processes with those of its customers. The solution was rolled-out over a six month period to the company’s major customers, and orders, invoices and acknowledgements are now exchanged easily and efficiently with zero errors.
“We have customers linked via the OneTime solution, with varying levels of complexity, from simple order transfers to full SAP integration across multiple operating sites throughout Europe,” says Cronshaw. “It’s our plan to roll out the solution to our entire customer base to further improve our supply chain”.
Jerry Quinn, Industry Director at Wesupply says, “OneTime has enabled Atchison Topeka to streamline its incoming order and invoicing processes, whilst providing full visibility into the order cycle, thus reducing errors, improving stock management and increasing inventory record matching.”
“We’d been looking for a solution for some time, which would improve our visibility and that of our customers on the status of orders. Wesupply demonstrated an understanding of our requirements and provided numerous customers references. This proven track record, along with the flexibility of the OneTime solution, were important factors in our decision making process,” says Cronshaw.
The Wesupply solution has given Atchison Topeka the increased supply chain visibility they required and enabled them to eliminate costly order processing errors. “The implementation of the OneTime solution has enabled efficiencies across our customer-facing supply chain which was previously unattainable,” states Cronshaw. “We can now exchange real-time supply data with our customers, enabling increased efficiency and improved customer service.”
Key business benefits realised so far include: Elimination of order processing errors, automated stock reconciliation daily, reduced overheads, reduced working capital, reduced lead times, and improved customer service.
“We not only needed a solution that would resolve the order entry issues we were experiencing, it also needed to be simple to use, thereby allowing us to focus on our core business without worrying about IT,” explains Cronshaw.
About Wesupply
Wesupply provides a fully managed and outsourced electronic business-to-business integration service, using a unique approach that maximises supply chain collaboration between independent organisations. This approach has consistently helped our customers secure tangible operational cost savings along with improved customer service, since the business was founded in 1999. Companies across all industries, including Retail, CPG, Energy and Manufacturing rely on Wesupply to manage business-critical information flows for their extended supply chain processes.
Visit Wesupply’s website at www.wesupply.com
Press contact:
Nick Allen, Arkill Matthews Allen
Email: nick.allen@amapr.com / Tel:+44 (0)1444 467307
Company contact:
Claire Taylor, Marketing Communications Manager, Wesupply
Email: ctaylor@wesupply.com / Tel: +44 (0)2476 856336
