On the retail side of its business, Bluerock supplies the country’s two large supermarket groups: Foodstuffs (NZ) Ltd (owner of the New World and Pak’nSave supermarket chains) and Woolworths New Zealand (formerly Progressive Enterprises), which owns Countdown, FreshChoice and SuperValue.
“At the time we were dealing with 100 to 200 orders a day, so the manual processing workload was pretty high.”
Flow Software’s task was to implement an EDI solution for Bluerock that would automate order processing, order acknowledgment, dispatch information, invoicing and credit notes between the company and Foodstuffs’ and Woolworths’ stores and distribution centres.
An additional factor was that the project involved three roll-out stages: covering integration with the Progressive system first, followed by Foodstuffs’ South Island operation, and then Foodstuffs’ North Island business.
Catherine says the value of the EDI implementation is greater today than it was when the project got underway. Initially the company was processing between 100 and 200 supermarket orders per day, but the volume has since increased to between about 200 and 250 per day.
Bluerock’s Commercial Manager, Tim Lewis, says the successful EDI implementation has had additional business benefits above and beyond the efficiencies of removing a layer of data entry.
“Before EDI, the workload associated with the volume of business we were doing with Foodstuffs and Woolworths meant we were under pressure in terms of our own service standards,” Tim says.
EDI has provided real-time visibility into the business that Bluerock previously didn’t have.
“Now, with EDI, one thing we’ve been able to do is cut down our order acceptance time each day, because of our ability to key the orders as they come through.”
Tim says he was also impressed that as the project progressed, Flow Software was able to master the challenge associated with dealing with two NAV providers.
“The great thing that Flow Software was able to do for us was to bring those other two providers together to make the project work. Flow were a really good conduit during the project and we always used them as the central point to make things happen,” he says.
“They were co-ordinating the project overall which is fantastic from my perspective. That’s a real positive and that’s the sort of thing I look for in a business partner – a company that’s very solution focused.
“Flow are clearly experts in what they do. They are experienced in it and they understand it well. They have dealt with these big supermarket groups multiple times and that experience shows through.
“I’d previously worked with Flow Software when I was at two other businesses. During all three experiences working with them I’ve never been disappointed.”
With the business benefits of Flow Software’s Foodstuffs and Woolworths EDI solution now firmly established, Bluerock has been discussing future projects with Flow to utilise the power of its middleware to enable further process automation efficiencies.
The options Bluerock is considering include expanding its use of EDI to integrate with its freight carrier partners. It is also interested in exploring data integration between its core systems and the CRM solution used by its sales reps.
“Following the success of this EDI implementation, we’ll definitely be looking to Flow when it’s time to explore future projects,” says Catherine.
“We’ve already discussed some processes we’d like to improve through automation down
the track.”
