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PORTALINK CASE STUDY​

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CNP BRANDS

the BACKGROUND

CNP Brands is an Australian-owned company established in 1899, which strives to be the leading Australian manufacturer, importer and distributor of a broad range of nursery products.

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CNP Brands provides customers with access to a diverse portfolio of brands and distribution lines, including 4moms, Brica, Cybex, Evenflo, Good Baby, Lascal, MacLaren, Motorola and Munchkin. In addition, CNP Brands has launched a range of company-owned brands, including Childcare and bebe care which demonstrates its ongoing commitment to quality and continuing investment in product development.

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The fundamental principle behind CNP Brands is to deliver quality service and support to its customers. To support this goal, CNP Brands is continuously exploring new initiatives which deliver the right mix of efficiency gains, cost reduction and enhanced customer service. The benefits promised by the Portalink™C-Suite solution aligned perfectly with these strategic objectives.

the CHALLENGE

  • CNP Brands is a major supplier to the nursery products industry.

  • Commitment to quality and continued investment in product development are the key elements of CNP Brands’ Customer Value Proposition.

  • In an environment of rising costs, CNP Brands is constantly looking for efficiency gains, so that it can deliver quality customer service, through faster fulfilment of customer orders, as well as continue to invest in business development initiatives.

  • CNP Brands has a diverse customer base, with only a small number of its retail partners trading on EDI platforms. As a result, CNP Brands receives large volumes of ‘paper’ purchase orders in pdf, excel and csv format.

  • Prior to the implementation of Portalink™C-Suite, many of the ‘paper’ purchase orders received by CNP Brands needed a lot of cutting and pasting before entering manually into their ERP system. This was a very time consuming exercise which carried a high risk of human error.

  • The challenge for CNP Brands was to streamline the purchase order process and generate similar efficiencies for the excelformatted purchase orders, to those of the EDI orders that they were already handling

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the SOLUTION

  • Portalink™C-Suite provides CNP Brands with an interface which automatically captures ‘paper’ purchase orders emailed by customers in pdf, excel and/or csv format and converts them into electronic data.

  • Portalink™C-Suite exports the data to CNP Brands’ ERP system with ‘one click’ per order, rather than manual data entry for each line in each order.

  • Portalink™C-Suite checks for accuracy and identifies any data that does not reconcile.

  • Portalink™C-Suite provides CNP Brands with visual alerts to help rectify any data discrepancies and ensures that the data is ‘cleansed’ before it is processed.

  • Portalink™C-Suite notifies the customer of any corrections it makes, to ensure transparency and remove the potential for misunderstanding and disputes.

  • Portalink™C-Suite is straight-forward to implement and simple for operators to learn.

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the OUTCOME

  • Since going live with the system, CNP Brands has experienced more than a 50% reduction in processing time and data entry errors.

  • The reduction in errors has created down-stream improvement in distribution efficiency, where more accurate capture of customer address information, has resulted in a reduction in re-delivery charges.

  • CNP Brands is now able to respond to customer orders far more expediently. In particular, orders generated over a weekend period, can now be processed on Monday within minutes, rather than an entire day, as was previously the case.

  • CNP Brands has been able to deliver enhanced customer service and has experienced a significant drop in the number of customer complaints.

  • CNP Brands has been able to redirect capacity from time-consuming, backoffice, manual data entry, to direct sales and service activities, with at least one new role being created to handle customer sales enquiries, as a consequence.

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the PORTALINK™ EFFECT

 

CNP Brands collaborated with Portalink to develop an interface which enabled automatic processing of ‘paper’ purchase orders, not just in pdf format, but those orders imported from its eCommerce system in excel and csv format.

Implementation of Portalink™C-Suite was straight-forward and the system has proved to be intuitive and simple to use. CNP Brands has acknowledged a very high level of ongoing communication and support provided by Portalink.

Portalink™C-Suite has enabled CNP Brands to streamline its order process which now has the ability to: automatically capture purchase orders emailed by its customers, in pdf, excel and/or csv format, accurately convert them into electronic data, check and cleanse the customer data, electronically map and import the information into CNP Brands’ proprietary ERP system, enabling each order to be processed with ‘one click’.

Thanks to Portalink™C-Suite, we have experienced a huge reduction in time spent correcting mistakes, adjusting addresses and taking phone calls from our logistics department, as well as the costs associated with re-delivery charges.

Cristian Ambrozie

Logistics and Operations Manager

CNP Brands

IMPROVED DISTRIBUTION EFFICIENCY

 

Improvement in the accuracy of data capture has created downstream benefits for CNP Brands’ distribution efficiency, such as more accurate address data capture which has resulted in a reduction in re-delivery charges resulting from incorrect addressing.

IMPROVED CUSTOMER FOCUS

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Brands can now automatically process the bulk of their purchase orders in a fraction of the time it took to manually enter this data. As a result, capacity has been liberated and redirected from back-office data entry, to direct customer sales and service activities, with one new role created to handle customer sales enquiries as a consequence.

IMPROVED RESPONSIVENESS/RELIABILITY
 

The new, streamlined process has accelerated order-to-shipment cycles for CNP Brands, and improved accuracy and reliability.

This is of particular benefit at the start of each week, where online orders created over each weekend can now be processed in minutes, rather than an entire day as was the case previously.

REDUCED OPERATING COSTS

 

The automated order process delivered by Portalink™C-Suite has reduced, by more than 50%, CNP Brands’ dependency on human capital to process orders and resolve discrepancy issues.

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