Opportunity & Challenge
To establish the company’s rapidly evolving and extensive product line to retailers throughout Europe.
The opportunity to sell to new customers in new markets is always exciting. However, when selling and delivering products across many countries in Europe, there are a host of product planning, inventory management, regulatory, logistics and product fulfillment challenges.
In this client’s case, many of the products are manufactured by and shipped from many different suppliers in various parts of the world. Taking and fulfilling orders for timely delivery to many different retailers located in multiple countries throughout Europe can be a difficult challenge. The challenge is far more difficult when considering the many different global locations the products are sourced from. Doing all this without having a pre-existing sales and fulfillment infrastructure in Europe can be inefficient, costly and unprofitable ―unless you have the right enterprise product management solution.
The Solution
Superior Enterprise Solutions (SES) > SuperviSES® Product Management Solution
By implementing the SuperviSES® Product Management Solution, Superior Technology Solutions enabled this client to quickly, efficiently and profitably penetrate the European market. SuperviSES® is an innovative, web-based solution which our client utilized to expertly manage the entire product lifecycle, from order planning through delivery and inventory optimization down to the retail level.
With the real-time view of incoming orders from retailers, existing inventory and orders en route from suppliers, SuperviSES® makes it possible to optimize the product supply chain so that the time from order receipt to fulfillment is extremely short, while maintaining an optimum level of inventory. This was critically important for this client for the following reasons:
- Retailers have time-sensitive selling cycles, with advertisements and in-store promotions scheduled for specific date ranges
- Many of their products were impacted by seasonal selling cycles
- Many of the products sold are perishable and have short product lifecycles in terms of their optimal quality
With SuperviSES®, orders can be placed using a variety of technology solutions that include electronic order forms, directly from our customer’s web sites, E.D.I., and system-generated orders from our client’s customers’ applications. All orders are filled immediately and products are promptly shipped. The ordering process also generates and sends an electronic invoice which is timed to coincide with the delivery of products to retailer locations throughout Europe. This helps ensure timely payment and enhances the efficiency of the entire accounting process.
SuperviSES® also enabled the company to overcome the many challenges of delivering products across multiple borders in Europe. The specific shipping and clearance documents necessary for cross-border transport are generated automatically by the system. In addition, transportation costs and delivery instructions are generated automatically based on the destinations for specific shipments. The solution also enables the company to track the location of shipments at any time.
The SuperviSES® solution also includes a very flexible pricing module. This allows the client to promote zone-based, volume-based, and customer-based pricing models, with different retailers. This capability enabled our client to achieve flexibility and to react quickly to market changes.
The client’s customers, which include major retailers throughout Europe, have had an extremely high level of satisfaction. The retailers feel empowered because they know exactly when they will receive their orders. They are also immediately informed when a specific product is not available and are quickly presented with alternative product options. In this way, SuperviSES® converts a potential issue into a new sales opportunity.
Another major benefit is the ability for the client to generate user friendly, easy-to-complete electronic order forms, customized for different customers. These order forms enable the retailers to easily choose from and order the client’s many different promotional product kits (which can represent up to 6000 individual SKUs for some customers).
A critically important feature of SuperviSES® is its reporting capabilities, which enable the client to plan ahead for upcoming sales cycles based on real-time and historical sales reports. This allows for more accurate and efficient planning and pre-ordering of inventory with a high level of confidence. Because reports can be automatically generated and presented in familiar desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel, the end users find SuperviSES® very easy to use.
SuperviSES® is a completely web-based solution. This made it extremely cost effective to implement. The user-friendly, web-based interface has a high level of functionality and eases the visualization of key phases of the product lifecycle. Thus, a major advantage of the SuperviSES® Product Management Solution is its very short integration time frame. For our client, SuperviSES® was fully implemented as a service. As a result, our client did not need to invest in any information technology hardware, software or resources.
Since utilizing SuperviSES® for optimal product management, this client continues to provide their customers with superior service and are well positioned for continued international growth.
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