The workload required to support internal business operations was tremendous. The sales & distribution planning team developed several ad-hoc tools helping them to deal with the level of work. There were many separate spreadsheets created, rarely synchronised, each dedicated to a specific part of the process.

Real-time reporting on work in progress was non-existent. Due to the sheer volume of work, all done manually, the Management and Customers always received reports with significant delays. Creating reports on key performance indicators, including profit and loss reporting, was an extremely time-consuming and challenging process as the team had to collate data and information from multiple information sources.

The Management Team estimated the staff was wasting around 40 person-hours per week, manually processing Customer Orders and planning the distribution work using ineffective tools. Furthermore, the Operations Team was spending 16 person-hours preparing work-in-progress reports to Customers and further 12 person-hours per week, creating business performance reports that used data from multiple sources.

Overall, the business was wasting on average 3,500 person-hours every year on work and effort that could be completely automated. Assuming the value of an hour at €20, the cost of additional and unnecessary work accumulated to over €70,000 per year.

Working closely with the Customer, GRIP Software Solutions designed and developed a custom software solution that automated core business processes and allowed a significant reduction in administration workload.

Data centralisation improved access to critical business data and eliminated data duplication. Consequently, it helped to significantly reduce the time required to record a new customer order, plan and schedule distribution activities for that order, set up proper pricing and select appropriate distribution team.

The new software eliminated all administration work related to collating data from separate sources and automated the process of creating reports. The system notifies customers automatically after generating work-in-progress and completion reports. Reports are sent by email to Customers who may also access them in the Customer Portal.

Senior Management can instantly access reports on key performance indicators (KPIs), including a detailed overview of orders profitability and distribution costs.

The software provides a comprehensive Dashboard informing the Operations and Management Teams about the current workload levels including the number of active orders distribution activities and their status, and informing the team about any potential problems which could negatively affect order commitments.

The software solution designed and developed by GRIP reduced weekly administration workload by 43 person-hours per week, down to 25 person-hours - workload reduction by over 63%. On an annual scale, it means the Company is saving over €44,000 every year.

Introduction of an appropriate system supporting internal business processes allowed the Company to improve its communication with existing customers and increase the level of repeating orders by 25% in 2019.

The investment was paid back within nine months.