MORE THAN CONTENT MANAGEMENT - THE BENEFITS OF END TO END SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

By Clinton Porter, Commercial Director of NVisage

Associated information

Content management systems
Ecommerce

When retailers first moved online it became obvious they needed a method of managing their websites' content. The first generation of content management systems were certainly useful, but nothing earth shattering.

However, all that has changed. The content management systems now being developed have far wider business applications. In fact, for a multi-channel retailer, they are more akin to business management systems. By choosing the right management system today, you can save costs, reduce staff, and provide a better and more tailored service to your customers.

Tristan Williams, Managing Director of multi-channel retailer Earthworks, first set up the e-commerce side of the business in 2002. However, the functionality and management of the ecommerce system has evolved substantially since then. All elements of the operation, from ordering new stock, warehousing, point of sale, the website and the 5,000-ft retail space in Sussex, are now fully integrated in real-time, which has created a huge efficiency saving.

"When we first started looking at this with NVisage I knew I wanted a system that would help me reduce costs. A key issue was the time and cost of duplicate data entry – it's a task that has no benefit for the customer and adds no value to the business.

"NVisage have created for us a system that allows staff to use a customised interface to enter data once and populate all elements of our business processes. We've managed to reduce the staff spent on this task by two – that's a big saving in a team of eight."

Earthworks also use the CMS to create new catalogues - so far requested by 5,000 customers - and mailing lists matching specific requests with customers. "We can use the system to search for products and create our catalogue using content from the site," Tristan explains. Likewise the site can also be redrawn very quickly and efficiently around product groupings such as gifts for women. "That's something that can take ages on older systems," he adds.

A state of the art CMS should support management systems in order to minimise costs and maximise business efficiency. As Earthworks has found, integrating with financial systems, such as accounting software, reduces the need for double entry of the same data in to more than one system. An advanced CMS should direct only the required information to your accounting system, thus saving accountancy time and costs.

A robust system will also show how long it takes and how much it costs to dispatch an item. The system can assign all associated costs to the transaction such as staff time to pick, pack and ship, postage costs and materials costs. This allows a true insight into actual profits on each shipment and the efficiency of individual staff members.

So what else does this new generation of solutions offer? Number one is much better stock control. An integrated solution records where all stock is allocated, whether it is on the web, in a particular store or in the warehouse. Such tight integration of inventory information is a huge benefit to inventory control and allocation.

Steve Hudson, Managing Director of www.brastop.com, says this real time online stock control management is a huge benefit. "Before, our biggest problems was selling something on line and finding it wasn't there in the stock room. Now we've been able to integrate our Harrow store with the web stock room and link till sales in real time to the CMS. Rather than having two separate lots of stock, this now means we can offer even more stock to our web customers with confidence of being able to meet orders," he says.

He is also looking to integrate other retail stores into the system, which will identify where any item of stock is and whether it is available for sale through other outlets. If an item is not found in the central warehouse, the system will see if it is in stock elsewhere. If it is found in a shop, then it can be sold online and a message automatically sent to store staff to remove it from sale.

An advanced CMS will also integrate to the company's dispatch systems, allowing automated label printing for starters. Earthworks' system can also automatically print the Securicor barcode for the parcel. At the same time customers are sent an automatic email with a link to Securicor, which allows them to track deliveries online. This is a further efficiency saving, as customers don't have to ring a call centre to check the status of their order.

Any company choosing a new CMS system is faced with a bewildering array of options. However, while it can be tempting to go for a cheap system, more advanced products have additional functionality that can save even small businesses an awful lot of money, while giving them the sort of solutions big player,s such as Amazon, have spent a fortune on accumulating.

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