The company's operations are based on four major business processes including:

• Hampers Design
• Stock Control & Products Sourcing
• Hampers Assembly (production)
• Sales Orders Processing & Dispatch

To support these processes, the staff developed a lot of very complex spreadsheets. Data duplication was a norm, it was rarely up-to-date and very often out of sync. Stock control was the one of the major issues and challenges.

The Operations Team and Senior Management lacked reliable, up-to-date information in relation to current stock levels, production output and sales orders - to verify the numbers the staff had to perform regular stock takes, which were extremely time-consuming. 

The Senior Management estimated the company was spending additional 12 thousand person-hours due to administration workload, complex procedures, and unnecessary activities and repetitive manual data entry & validation.

Hampers & Co developed quite unique internal business processes around creating hamper designs, managing the stock of raw products and assembled hampers, including limitations related to perishable products as well as orders dispatch allowing them to keep their guaranteed delivery date promise.

Our first task was to understand how the business operates, document current business processes and, when needed, streamline them to ensure we build the software around optimised processes & workflows.

Once this first phase of the project was completed we could proceed with design of the software focusing on processes automation, removal of multiple data entry points and critical business data reporting.

The final result - dedicated software application - allowed Hampers to reduce the overall administration work by almost 85%, saving the company 15,300 person hours per year.

This was possible by:

• elimination of all spreadsheets used before to run the business;
• eradication of data duplication;
• real-time stock control of raw products & assembled hampers (no need for continuous stock validation);
• automation of administration work related to hamper assembly  & disassembly processes;
• integration with web e-commerce (web orders);
• automation of sales orders processing;
• elimination of complex, paper-based filing systems;

Thanks to the software designed and developed by GRIP, Hampers & Co have reliable, real-time access to critical business information - this allows the Management to quickly react to ever-changing circumstances, for example a sudden and unexpected spike in Sales Orders. 

The software eliminated a huge number of unnecessary activities, spreadsheets and paperwork and resulted in 85% reduction in administration workload saving the business over €150,000.

The investment was paid back within six months.