Elemica Blog

Real Value through Customer Management Solutions

In our face-to-face User Council meetings we started a project to document eBusiness value for Customer Management.  To date we have held two virtual meetings involving nine chemical manufacturers and distributors, and have documented our initial qualitative findings.  Our efforts include creating quantitative values measures, which can be defended. This topic continues to be an agenda item for our upcoming face-to-face meetings in Amsterdam and Philadelphia.   

Identify Best Customer Candidates

At Elemica, we are excited about how successful our QuickLink Email and QuickLink Print solutions are getting deployed across a large number of our clients. And by “success” we do not just mean a project getting live. The definition also includes completing the implementation on time, on-boarding all customers initially planned, and receiving orders via the solution without having to put in a lot of effort into on-going maintenance.

The Basics of Vendor Managed Inventory

I have written before in this blog about “true VMI”, “fake VMI”, and even “VMI disaster”. But some readers have asked, “What is VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) anyway, and how can it help me and my customers?” It seems there is a need to review the fundamentals of VMI and its benefits.

Measuring Viability of a New Approach

2011 was a banner year for connecting customers with our QuickLink Email application. With a fixed resource base Elemica tripled production and cut the average time to connect customers by more than half. Functions were deployed that give CSR tools to speed up order processing. For example, if the system detects a new delivery address the CSR is notified in real-time and can quickly solve the issue in a matter of minutes.

In Q1 our Delivery Forecast solution is being updated to support detection of rush orders and provided instant alerting. Our Repeat Order Entry solution is also being updated to support just-in-time (JIT) replenishment.   

The Secret to Quickly Automate Sales Orders Received Via Email or Fax

Since Elemica introduced QuickLink Email and QuickLink Print capabilities to support sales order management two years ago, many of our clients are in full-blown roll-outs to all of their customers who send them orders via Email or fax.  As a result, we’ve been able to gather a lot of operational information about how to best implement the solution while avoiding obstacles.And that’s the main theme of this article – getting superior sales order management results through fast implementation of this powerful solution.

Targeting a Level for Electronic Orders

These are the questions we often get from our customers; “What’s the industry average for electronic orders?  How high should I shoot with my plans for getting my customers on board with automated purchase orders, shipment notices, and invoices?”

The answer, as I’m sure you have already guessed, is “it depends”.  We see a huge variability in the percentage level of automated orders our clients have been able to achieve over their 10+ years on the Elemica network.

We did a survey recently of some of our largest and longest-standing clients, and we came up with the following table of automated order percentages.   Shown in the table are estimates of the percentage of total orders captured through an electronic channel (EDI, Storefront or Elemica), that is, all electronic orders. 

Up to Triple Digit Growth in QuickLink Print and QuickLink Email

QuickLink Print and QuickLink Email growth continues to accelerate in all dimensions of adoption - comparing Q3 2011 to Q1 2011 - We see a 75% increase in the number of sellers using the solution and a 141% increase in the number of buyers.  

As we increase the number of suppliers and buyers using the system we are identifying additional opportunities to let us further increase thru-put.  Here are some changes we plan to roll out to increase rates of production and quality:

Two Secrets of Successful VMI Deployment

Vendor-managed inventory, or VMI, is an increasingly popular option for dealing with customers these days.  Many customers insist on doing business that way, and will simply seek out a different (more flexible) vendor if their current supplier can’t work with them in this manner. 

And yet, Elemica and our clients have seen several examples of failed VMI, or “fake VMI” where there is a system and business process in place, but it’s not really used at all.  The supplier makes up for the lack of a true VMI approach by simply throwing more inventory at the problem – which is inefficient, expensive, and flies in the face of using VMI in the first place.

But how can VMI disaster be avoided? 

Repeat Order Replenishment Solves Very Common Problem

Elemica’s Repeat Order Replenishment solution solves a very common problem faced by many of our clients. It may be able to help you as well, if you face a similar situation.

The situation is anytime your CSRs need to place more or less the same standing order, or orders, on a fixed or variable schedule. You may have a commitment with your customer to deliver five railcars or four truckloads of the same product every day, or every Tuesday and Friday. The problem is, when a CSR has to type the same repetitive order into SAP every day, for weeks and months, mistakes tend to creep into the process. This can result in the customer receiving too much product, too little product, or even the wrong product.

Channel Your Inner Colin Firth

As an Englishman, one tries to channel your inner Colin Firth when you are working in the USA. For some reason there is a belief that an English accent ups our IQ level by a good 20 points. Which is why when I was in the USA recently I almost lost that inner calm.

“The lady said 86%”, was what I was thinking. OMG ….. 86%?

The lady in question was a very charming and very intelligent VP of Customer Services for a tyre company. She was saying that 86% of her inbound orders from her customers are automated. The best I hear in the chemical industry is about 60% (from Shell Chemicals). Typically chemical companies are in the range of 30 to 40%. Later, when I was sitting staring at my glass of White Zinfandel, thinking of what she had said, I started making excuses for the Chemical companies. Our supply chain is different, the customers are different, the products are different and so on.

Elemica’s Rail Car Fulfillment Solution

What is this solution all about, and how can it help me?

This Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution, which has been available from Elemica for a number of years, is meant to solve a very specific fulfillment scenario that many of our clients face.These clients are in a replenishment relationship with specific clients whereby they are obligated, sometimes even contractually, to keep a certain number of rail cars full of product on the customer’s premises at all times.Such a relationship would typically be associated with a just-in-time or Kanban-type manufacturing environment.

Evolving Customer Management Solutions

Recently I was thinking back to the early days (we are talking 2001) when our Vendor Managed Inventory solution was first conceived.  Initial thinking was to have it pre-process demand data to feed SAP APO.   Knowing what was involved in making APO work and challenges with demand data I was skeptical that this would really solve any market problems.  Thankfully, we were able to nudge the solution strategy to rationalize various data streams into discrete orders that can be processed by an ERP system.  This allowed suppliers to leverage their existing 'traditional order management' connection to buyers not generating discrete purchase orders or releases.    

Elemica's Customer Management solutions have evolved further and now solve a wide variety of market needs to solve customer variability and complexity:

One word can cause a surge of adrenaline for most people, while for some others it sparks excitement: CHANGE. 

Adapting to something new is uncomfortable, and in the work environment, change can be perceived as potentially threatening.  One of the most significant changes this decade is the adoption of social networking.   There are more than 750 million active users of Facebook, and its adoption rate skyrocketed beyond that of the telephone, television, or even the personal computer.  Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US.  Humans are social creatures, so why not capitalize on our social impulses and leverage social media for business?  When you get right down to it, it’s all about connecting.

On a personal level, I fought the whole social networking frenzy for a long time.

It’s a "Good News"/ "Bad News" Situation

It’s definitely the good problem to have. You are receiving orders from your customers; the alternative is much worse. The bad news is that you have to manually enter these into your system. Your team may be converting customer units of measure and product identifiers into your system values. The potential for keystroke error exists. Plus this takes time. Your other Elemica orders automatically flow into your ERP system. Why not have your email and fax orders flow in the same way?

With Elemica QuickLink™ Email and QuickLink™ Print they can!

Questions we hear from prospective customers include: How do I get started? Should I use email versus print? How much customer involvement is needed? Is this an OCR solution?

Below are some answers based on our customer experience...

Creating Products with a Broader Vision

Henry Ford famously said, 'If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses'. One thing that sets apart product innovators like Henry Ford is that he exhibited an artful reasoning ability. He understood customers and delivered what they wanted. What Henry Ford knew was that people were really asking for the ability to travel further and faster. It wasn't the horse that was important.

Is it the Hottest Trend since SAP?

It's called collaboration - and most executives have been clobbered with the term found in every vendor's PowerPoint presentation. But what does it really mean?

For some leading process manufacturing companies, it means investments and hype around Y2K technology promises are finally a reality. New technology makes it easier and less expensive to procure product via Web 2.0, providing a path to a real competitive advantage.