NEWS
Nestlé Improves Supply Chain Efficiency with OmPrompt EDI Services
One of the world's largest food manufacturers, Nestlé, is using the latest cloud computing technology from Oxford based company OmPrompt to enable them to trade as efficiently with its supply chain tail of small customers as it does with major supermarket groups.
The importance of placing orders electronically in the retail supply chain cannot be overestimated. Major players, both manufacturers and retailers, have made significant investments in order to create an electronic trading community between themselves. However, this digital revolution has not extended to smaller players - and there are still considerable problems with the 80% of companies who represent 20% of volume.
OmPrompt has solved this problem for Nestlé. The manufacturer has deployed OmPrompt's Intelligent Message Management service to enable them to receive orders from smaller retailers in the same format and with the same degree of accuracy as they do from the UK's largest supermarkets.
Chris Tyas, Nestlé Supply Chain and Systems Director, said: "OmPrompt enable our IT resources to focus on core business activities. We view OmPrompt as extremely agile, satisfying our immediate, external facing, integration and connectivity requirements. I have come to the conclusion that whatever the integration problem, the answer is OmPrompt."
OmPrompt CEO, John Wakeman, explained that small retailers cannot afford the sophisticated electronic exchange systems used by large companies. "This causes delays, errors and unnecessary costs for all partners. The problem of how to make electronic ordering and trading possible for all supply chain partners has been an issue since the introduction of EDI in the eighties".
"We offer a wide range of EDI based services, including an outsourcing service where major companies outsource their EDI to OmPrompt because we can meet their needs more cost effectively and quicker."
The result is that trading partners are no longer constrained by inefficiencies imposed on them by their systems. OmPrompt's intelligent message management technology automates a message translation process. Retailers send Nestlé whatever format they are using; OmPrompt converts to the format Nestlé requires.
The results of OmPrompt's automated business transaction solutions continues to exceed Nestlé's expectations, according to David Walker, UKI-NBS (Nestlé Business Services) Customer Services Manager, who explains: "During this implementation, we ran a comprehensive series of parallel acceptance tests and compared the results against existing manual order entry processes. The output from OmPrompt was highly accurate and error free, identifying manual data entry errors we didn't even know we had. As a result, Nestlé has vastly improved the accuracy of outbound order fulfillment process, increased customer satisfaction and consequently reduced the cost of reverse logistics.”
“The customer who sends in his own format does not even know what is happening," Mr. Wakeman said, "because this is a Software as a Service application, using the latest cloud computing technology, the order is automatically forwarded to OmPrompt and within 15 minutes is received by Nestlé in the same way an order from the biggest supermarkets would be."
The OmPrompt service can be applied by any organisation, large or small, that wants to trade efficiently electronically. This includes suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, wholesalers and logistics providers, in fact everyone involved in the supply chain. The service is non-invasive and it does not affect any other technology which companies already have in place and data is secure when passing from customer to manufacturer.
"OmPrompt is much cheaper than manual systems, and can enable reductions in headcount; improvements in data quality; and elimination or reduction of errors," Mr. Wakeman said. "It allows orders to be sent and received up to the end of day, giving increased service levels."
Because of the high level of errors caused by manual systems and the need for re-keying, some companies impose an administration charge for orders sent as paperwork. This problem is eliminated by the use of the OmPrompt service. "We are allowing staff to move away from manual processes to value enhancing ones," Mr. Wakeman said.
About OmPrompt
OmPrompt, an award-winning business-to-business connectivity platform, enables all members of a supply chain community to exchange business transactions in whatever format suits their individual needs. Customers simply send what they have and receive what they need. OmPrompt provides the necessary infrastructure, message transformation and delivery services to achieve 100% inter-connectivity amongst trading communities, efficiently automating the exchange of transactional data between respective information systems and processes. For more information visit www.omprompt.com
For more information contact:
+44 (0) 1235 436000
