Michelin Tyre Company South Africa has centralised and automated its sales order function at its Jet Park headquarters following the implementation of customised software from Easirun.
The new system, which went live on 1 June 2000 and involved the establishment of a toll-free 086 telephone number, has already achieved major monthly savings for Michelin and improved every aspect of the company`s sales order process.
Easirun, is a subsidiary of the JSE-listed UCS Group Limited, an investment holding company for a group of information technology (IT) businesses focussed on the provision of software, software development and turnkey IT-enabled business solutions. Easirun is also the largest distributor of Cobol products in Africa and is focussed on the provision of Cobol development tools, runtime systems, training and ongoing maintenance and support. Michelin`s customised solution was developed by Easirun`s software division which has established itself as the leading software house for customised add-ons - both Cobol and Visual Basic - for use with the Impact enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite from Syspro.
Michelin, with its worldwide headquarters in Paris, imports passenger, truck and earth moving vehicle tyres from France, the United States and Asia. The tyres, which vary in price from three hundred Rands to a quarter of a million Rands, are distributed throughout Southern Africa using an extensive network of more than 1 500 distributors.
Christophe Pasquet, information technology manager, Michelin, said: "Traditionally, Michelin captured and processed all of its orders at its branches in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. This was a time-consuming task and complications often set in that made the process a little cumbersome.
"Today, all orders are placed at our Johannesburg Call Centre and this has resulted in an increased level of service to our clients. We have also succeeded in reducing our transport costs significantly."
Charlene Thompsett, project manager, Easirun, said: "In order to make the tyre delivery process quicker and to keep Michelin`s transport costs down, a rules based system was developed to determine the sequence of the warehouses from which stock would be supplied for all geographical areas. For example, based on stock availability, a customer in Natal will first be supplied from the Durban warehouse, followed by the Jet Park warehouse, and finally from the Cape Town warehouse."
EasiRun leveraged its Impact expertise when changing the standard Impact Encore Order Entry program to automatically determine which warehouse would fulfil each order depending on the geographical location of Michelin`s customers. A manual option was also incorporated into the system to cover the eventuality that stock has to be supplied from a specified warehouse.
"Invoices are automatically printed at the warehouses from which the stock is supplied and multiple invoices are printed if an order is filled from more than one warehouse," said Thompsett.
Pasquet added that the Call Centre provided a tremendous challenge for Michelin and the professionalism with which Easirun approached the task made the implementation and transition to the new system easy to manage.
Caption:
Christophe Pasquet, information technology, manager, Michelin is pictured at the company`s Jet Park headquarters with, from left, Linda Latsky, project co-ordinator, Michelin, Karlien van Niekerk, senior programmer, Easirun and Charlene Thompsett, project manager, Easirun.
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