Geographers' A-Z Maps Reduce Order Processing Time From 5 Days to 1 Hour

Geographers' A-Z Maps was founded in 1936 and today still remains one of the few privately owned UK publishing houses. A-Z currently publishes 343 titles covering street maps and atlases in printed and electronic media format.
A range of Pocket A-Z maps covering many towns and cities throughout Great Britain and designed to run on Pocket PC's was launched in 2001. Its comprehensive range is distributed throughout the UK via its field sales operation to over 15,000 customers. Regular visits are made to retail sales outlets where replenishment of stock is made.

Towards the end of the 90s, A-Z realised that with orders taking up to 5 days to be processed, due to the inherent delays associated with manual data processing and mail delivery, improvements in customer service needed to be made. Each Sales representative would fill in daily order sheets from the customers they visited and post them back to Head Office for processing. Once the orders were received, they would be manually input into the system and then invoiced. This system process was susceptible to inputting errors. Customer satisfaction was, and still is a key objective within the company so A-Z Maps decided to automate its processes.

-We realised that installing an updated and more robust solution would ultimately allow us to provide a better level of service to our customers", comments Stephen Barbor, Sales Director.

Initial research looked at laptops, hybrids, modems etc. but it was felt that none of these options could fulfil the company's needs. It was decided to source a single unit which could scan the bar codes and download directly to Head Office. The unit would be required to be rugged, easy to use and in appearance, was not likely to become the target of "opportunist' thieves - a problem they had previously encountered when trialling consumer grade PDA hardware. Due to specific customer needs, such as requiring individual bar codes, A-Z required a software package that was bespoke to them. A-Z selected Asyst to develop the required new sales focussed software.

Already a client, A-Z considered Asyst to be a trusted software supplier with a proven track record over the years, having previously supplied its core accounts system, Access Dimensions.
The solution needed to provide the sales team with rugged Mobile Computer's to increase efficiency and product delivery schedules. A-Z felt that this would significantly improve its customer relationships, and speed up office procedures. The new system has currently been deployed to 28 members of the national sales team.

The new software solution enables sales representatives to provide real time information to their clients regarding current and past orders, stock and delivery advice. As well as having a complete customer inventory with them at all times, sales representatives can organise appointments improving their time management. The information feeds directly into the core accounts system and Greenbean CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Suite providing A-Z Management with real-time visibility of the business at any point in time.

The diagram below illustrates how each component interacts which each other and how the Sales Team receive and send information to and from Head Office. Sandpiper was selected to provide the mobile computing hardware that would interface the 28 remote field sales representatives back to A-Z central sales order processing computer system.

Using the Intermec 760 Mobile Computer, equipped with an integrated barcode scanner, colour touch display and GPRS/GSM in conjunction with in-cab mounted A4 printers; replenishment stock is scanned out of van stock and into the customer stock record at the point of delivery.
Upon completion a hard copy delivery note is produced from the rugged Intermec 6820 in-cab A4 dot-matrix printer and passed to the customer for their records. In this way, the system accommodates changes and amendments to customer requirements such as spontaneous purchases eliminating retrospective back office order administration tasks.

Working with Asyst and A-Z, Sandpiper provided development equipment, sample products, managed the installation services for the in-cab hardware and played an active role in determining the optimum hardware configurations, accessories and considerations encountered with a point of sale application.

-User consideration has played a significant role in this project in order to achieve the buy-in acceptance from the sales force for what has been a radical change in work practices", stated Stephen Barbor.
-A key reason for selecting the 760 was ease of use and how compatible it was withthe software application that Asyst had written", continued Stephen Barbor.
The unit is also robust and weather proof which was a pre requisite.
The system allows the company to capture all calls logged and send the relevant information, such as which customers are on hold or where ad-hoc calls were made to head office, to the representatives via the Mobile Computer. The Intermec 760's are also used for stockcontrol and save the sales representatives significant time in managing their van inventory through improvements in accuracy.

The system is typically synchronised three times a day and every evening the sales representatives run audits on the Mobile Computer and can see at a glance how many orders and to what value they had logged that day. Each Mobile Computer is designated to individual representatives, whichis vital when it comes to stock control, and uses passwords and data encryption to ensure that data is not misused in the event of loss/theft. The system allows reminders to be sent to representatives so that customers don't get forgotten and allows head office to see where each representative is so that incoming customer callers can gain an idea of when they may expect a visit.

A-Z is keen to embrace new technology but equally ensure that it mirrors its current procedures so that if required it can revert back to hard copy systems at any time. By computerising the order processing system, A - Z has reduced its order processing from five days to just one hour and totally eradicated inputting errors associated with manual data entry processes.

-This has allowed us to release two office staff from the tedium of data entry for more effective re-deployment elsewhere in the company",stated Stephen Barbor.

The project has been extremely successful and was fully implemented during 2004. This solution has provided a platform for future demands and during 2005, Sandpiper and Asyst will be workingon phase two of the project - interactive warehouse and production stock control.

-We selected Sandpiper as they were the only company that could provide answers to all our questions and provide the best equipment for the job", commented Stephen Barbor.

-At Sandpiper our focus on customer service and project support is paramount in ensuring that long term business partnerships with our customers are established and maintained", stated Simon Hagenbuch, Sandpiper's Managing Director.

-We are looking forward to working on phase two, interactive warehouse and production stockcontrol, during2005".