Bristan

Pushing customer service to new levels of excellence.

Following its implementation of IFS Applications business management software, Bristan, the kitchens, bathroom and shower accessories group, has streamlined its despatch operations to meet growing volume of EDI transactions.

The Bristan Group is one of Britain’s premier league suppliers of taps and accessories for kitchens, bathrooms and showers. Products are designed, developed and distributed from the company’s headquarters in Tamworth, Staffs. Sales to end-user customers are normally through builders’ merchants, hardware chains and independent specialist retail outlets.

It is a dynamic business driven on by huge demand for home improvements and designer accessories. The range of products is updated every year and marketed through high quality catalogues and focussed trade campaigns. All of the production is outsourced to contract manufacturers in Europe and the Far East.

Bristan prides itself as being the best supplier by far in this industry and has led the way on sales order performance. In action if a customer places an order between 8.00am and 6.00pm, the company will despatch it the same day. The warehouse stays open until 10.00pm. Management of stock and having it in the right place is vital to this operation. So is speed of transaction – recording the order and getting it through to the warehouse.

With lead times for new stock of up to two months and delivery commitments to customers of an hour or so, then stock control and purchasing are critical processes.

The challenge – increasing volume of transactions

"Putting this commitment into action is hugely challenging," says Bristan’s financial director Roger Williams. "As the business has grown, facilities and systems that have previously operated reliably start to reach a point where shear volume of transactions and operational complexity outstrip their capacity."

Taking advantage of more powerful processors and database technology, new generation systems are easier to use and can provide more scope with Internet connectivity. As well as more convenience they offer better efficiency at all levels of the business.

Says Roger Williams: "Key criteria in the selection process for Bristan are longevity and total cost of ownership. It’s a long term relationship so picking the right partner was very important to us."

The upgrade for Bristan involved moving away from a text based order processing system which had supported the company successfully over ten years, during which time sales turnover increased from £3 million to £70 million.

The system was used in conjunction with a dedicated accounts package and a variety of bespoke solutions based on Lotus Notes databases. "Whilst this met our needs, operating three different systems meant we had lots of interfaces which were becoming hard to manage."

"Management information was limited and to be fair, we were processing a far higher volume than the system was ever designed to handle. After reviewing our future requirements we decided to replace our IT with a single unified system, to make it easier to manage."

The search for a new system started in early 2003 with the assistance of an independent advisor. Questionnaires and invitations to tender were sent out to about twenty potential suppliers and from the replies, a shortlist of five was selected, including IFS.

The implementation

In due course IFS was selected as the preferred supplier and a contract, covering 205 users was signed in December 2003.

Whilst most of the Bristan procedures were able to drop into the generic IFS modules, some modifications were required to suit areas which were specific to the business. The main one was the collections and returns function. This required a much more detailed structure, allowing a consignment to be allocated to various status reports from the time it was created to when it is received.

Control of returns is very important to Bristan: "If you haven’t got it right it can be very costly. So that was a fairly big issue.We didn’t have this facility on our previous system and it was one of the things we were doing on Lotus Notes," explains Roger Williams.

Another important area was the use of bar code scanning for verifying customer orders on despatch. This facility had been developed under the previous system and Bristan wanted to carry this over to the new system with some further improvements.

In operation - benefits

The first phase of the system, the core IFS Applications went live during July 2004. One of the most immediate changes was the move to a paperless system within the head office building. Everything was now on screen and users are able to check status and track the progress of orders from any terminal in the network.

Orders can be verified at final despatch and a packing note is printed to accompany each consignment.

"Although some means of measuring payback was considered, it was never really a high priority. For Bristan the main objective was to ensure continuity of its operations and high standards of customer service."

"Essentially it was something the company needed to do to keep expanding and achieve our targets," says Roger Williams. "A key characteristic of our business is a high level of transactions for relatively small values. We despatch about two thousand orders a day, so to us speed is vital," explains Roger Williams."

Although Bristan has been dealing with several major customers previously through EDI (electronic data interchange), the previous IT system could only run once a day.

This facility is now running continuously providing a major competitive advantage in enabling Bristan to offer same day despatch. Bristan is building on this by encouraging customers to use EDI ordering.

"Paperless order processing is fundamental to improving convenience and efficiency. The payback is in eliminating errors and speeding up the process which is important to us," says Roger Williams.

Future developments

Having consolidated the first phase implementation Bristan is now looking at ways in which the implementation can be extended into other areas of functionality. A project has been started for CRM customer relations management. Other areas under consideration include improved information services for suppliers such as web based delivery schedules.

Roger Williams concludes: "Certainly we are not using IFS to its greatest potential yet. Effectively this investment has provided infrastructure to support our future growth. We are also more than satisfied with the support provided by the IFS team. It was a challenging implementation, but as a software vendor IFS was able to deliver the right expertise and response which we tested to the extreme."

For additional information, contact:

Christine Murphy, Marketing Manager
Telephone: +44 (0)1494 428900
Fax: +44 (0)1494 428907
E-mail: christine.murphy@ifs.co.uk