Wermland Papers Sales Order Portal nominated for CIO Awards
Wermland Paper (WP), the Swedish manufacturer of Kraft, Sack and Technical Specialty paper is currently deploying an Internet portal for sales orders, delivery and warehouse management that has been nominated for the 2007 ”Project of the Year Award”. This award is established by the magazine CIO, issued by the Swedish franchise of International Data Group (IDG).
Read the article in Computer Sweden by clicking on this text.
”The objective of the portal is to take Wermland Paper, our sales agents and end customers to the next level in accessibility, efficiency and user-friendliness”, says Marko Arola, Vice President Logistics, IT and Procurement. The portal, also used by in-house sales staff, will gradually replace old, plant-specific, paper-based processes for entering sales orders. Up to now, orders have arrived to the two plants by letters, fax, phone and e-mail attachments, and then manually entered into the old ERP system (Movex / Lawson). In total more than 16.000 sales orders are processed per year.
The pre-study and Business Requirement phase, led by the management consultancy Advince, yielded the following key requirements for a new order process and the corresponding portal:
- Simpler, more streamlined flow througout the entire supply chain End Customer – Sales Affiliate – WP Sales staff – Production – Delivery
- Stronger relations with affiliates and end customer by reducing mutual transaction costs
- Ability to react and answer customer’s requests faster, more self-service when asking for order & delivery status
- Better information and control regarding WP:information on ordering and deliveries
- Refined, better based pricing through more accurate and faster information on what happens at different customers and markets
Wermland Papers agents and end customers were very much involved during the entire requirement phase, ensuring that the solution implemented also corresponded to the user needs. ”Our consulting is always founded on finding the correct balance between Functionality, Cost and Usability, says Filip Ekstrand, Advince1 Partner and Project Manager.
With the requirement phase completed, the IT solution was purchased from the Swedish IT vendor ComActivity, known for its radical, fast and cost-effective business software solutions. To some extent, the solution re-uses platform components & systems already in use, resulting in a comparatively low total cost. WP has, and aims to keep having, for the Pulp & pPaper industry quite low IT costs.
What about the results? For starters, dramatically higher quality of work, much less errors and less work being done twice for starters. Plus the fact that all the measurable business goals for the project have been achieved.