PORTALINK CAST STUDY
KINCROME
THE CHALLENGE
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Kincrome is a warehouse and distribution business that has been supplying to Automative, Industrial and Hardware markets for 30 years.
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Kincrome has four warehouse/distribution centres, which are strategically located throughout Australia, to deliver responsive and accurate order dispatches to all target markets.
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Fast and accurate order-to-shipment cycles are an imperative component of Kincrome’s customer value proposition.
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Kincrome invests in technology solutions that can enhance its order accuracy and improve the speed of its turnaround time.
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Finding a solution to meet Kincrome’s needs that was robust, accurate, quick and cost-effective proved challenging.
1
PORTALINK CAST STUDY
KINCROME
THE CHALLENGE
-
Kincrome is a warehouse and distribution business that has been supplying to Automative, Industrial and Hardware markets for 30 years.
-
Kincrome has four warehouse/distribution centres, which are strategically located throughout Australia, to deliver responsive and accurate order dispatches to all target markets.
-
Fast and accurate order-to-shipment cycles are an imperative component of Kincrome’s customer value proposition.
-
Kincrome invests in technology solutions that can enhance its order accuracy and improve the speed of its turnaround time.
-
Finding a solution to meet Kincrome’s needs that was robust, accurate, quick and cost-effective proved challenging.
1
Client: CNP Brands
Company location: Australia
Industry: Retail - Nursery
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. 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. 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
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.
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.
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’.
