Page 7 - Buzz Magazine

Working with customers
smoothes the route to market
IT and physical logistical support are the focus of the Route to Market (RTM) Support collaboration platform.
Having identi ed a cost bene t of R35 million in improving logistics e ciencies and reducing
the complexity of how Saint-Gobain delivers stock to the market, the RTM Support Collaboration platform has gone into battle.
Their enemy? Decentralised transport planning, poor service delivery, ineffective load building and high inventory holding. These bugbears are under attack from all sides, thanks to four projects in which the RTM Support collaboration platform is involved.
Centralising TOPS
A start has been made to centralised transport planning for Saint-Gobain, so that planning for the ve Saint-Gobain companies serving the same customers will no longer be performed in isolation. Shared loads have become a reality because of this.
Electronic PoD
Another project is at proof of concept stage: Electronic proof of deliveries (E-POD).
Heinrich Pretorius, Business Process Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa
said: “Enabling customers to sign for deliveries electronically will reduce the turnaround time for proof of delivery from about 45 days, on average, to less than two days.”
Electronic data interchange
The E-POD system feeds into the system that is the focus of another project – electronic data interchange (EDI), which was launched in early October.
“We are implementing direct integration into key customers’ ordering systems,” Heinrich explained. “We started with Chamberlains and will soon be moving on to Cashbuild,
With the EDI system, orders are placed, executed and veri ed automatically, without human intervention.
COllABORATIOn
The Route to Market collaboration platform team: Corné Rinaldi, Doné Britz, Marcella Mathews, Heinrich Pretorius, Waldo Viljoen, Tertia du Plooy and Mandy van der Merwe.
Massbuild and CPW.”
With the EDI system, orders
are placed, executed and veri ed automatically, without human intervention.
“Our pilot was with Chamberlains, and it went well. It was exciting to receive our rst orders generated simply by our customer pressing ‘submit’, via an electronic handshake into the Saint-Gobain system. These orders were processed in milliseconds!”
The invoicing component of EDI will go live in November with Chamberlains. With customers responding immediately, invoices are loaded the same day to be paid, reducing risk and the accounts receivable book.
“Customers also prefer settling accounts faster,” Heinrich pointed out.
“That way, they don’t hit a credit limit ceiling and have to delay placing new orders.”
Optimal location
Saint-Gobain is also investigating the optimal locations from which to serve customers.
“It’s all a big learning curve for us and customers, but it’s been a long time coming and customers are keen to come on board,” said Heinrich.
“A lot of what we are doing is just the rst phase of moving into a digital world with our customers. We are looking
to have a portal like Amazon.com or Takealot.com in future – something much more realtime and customer focused than we have now. Our customers will feel part of the business!” w
SUMMER 2016 | BUZZ | 7