"In just over 18 months we have been able to move the company from operating on half a dozen PCs and green screens to employing a sophisticated IBM e-business solution."Mr Steve Langford, Canterbury International System Administrator

The company best known for the football jerseys sported by many high profile teams including the rivalling State of Origin Rugby League teams, Canterbury International, is responsible for clothing millions of rugby players and sporting enthusiasts throughout New Zealand and Australia.

With more than 600 retail stores selling its merchandise, Canterbury's sales force has a huge task in ensuring that each of the stores are stocked with the latest sports fashion.

An IBM e-business solution, which was implemented by IBM Business Partner, Sundata, in late 1997 has enabled Canterbury to streamline its sales process by providing its mobile sales representatives with the technology to access customer information and order stock online from the customer's location.

Mr Steve Langford, Canterbury International's System Administrator said: "In just over 18 months we have been able to move the company from operating on half a dozen PCs and green screens to employing a sophisticated IBM e-business solution."

Canterbury has operated an IBM RS/6000 for many years to run its major business applications. With the introduction of the IBM e-business solution, Canterbury has extended the use of its RS/6000 to operate a sophisticated client contact application.

Canterbury has also introduced an IBM Netfinity server where customer sales history and stock information are stored. This information is then replicated onto the Lotus Notes database and can be pulled up by the sales reps on their IBM ThinkPads, regardless of their physical location.

"Now we have about 50 IBM PC's, IBM ThinkPads for our mobile sales reps as well as an RS/6000 and Netfinity server," said Mr Langford.

The new technology has given Canterbury a competitive advantage in the way it deals with its customers. Mobile sales reps now have access to a leading edge supply chain management and order fulfilment system which provides them with access to accurate information when, and where, they need it.

Canterbury has also implemented company wide email and Lotus Notes for all employees.

David Thodey, General Manager Commercial Business IBM Australia said: "A streamlined supply chain is vital for companies that want to grow and compete, particularly within a global framework." "IBM and its business partners offer customers a range and diversity of e-business solutions to develop better, more efficient business processes through improved connectivity between businesses and their suppliers, distributors and customers," Mr Thodey said.

Prior to the introduction of the new IBM solution, Canterbury's sales force - the 'bread and butter' of the organisation - was placing orders for their customers without the ability to check stock availability, or whether the customer was up to date with their accounts.

"We used to generate a stock report each week detailing all the available stock," said Mr Langford. "Each of the reps would then receive a 200 page report which, by the time they received it, was generally out of date."

Grant Parker, Canterbury International's State Manager for NSW said the new technology has greatly improved the level of professionalism sales reps present to their customers.

"If we visited a customer who wanted to order 1,000 jerseys for a golf day, we could look up on our ThinkPad the inventory we have at any given moment and provide the customer with costings on the product, and when they could expect to receive it, immediately," said Mr Parker.

"Previously we would have had to wade through a huge printed report which could be a week out of date or, alternatively, place calls to the warehouse to check the number of garments we had in stock.

"Many of our customers also use email, which means that they can send orders, request quotes or communicate with us at all times. This has greatly improved our communication with our customers and cut down on the time we used to spend faxing off this information."

Canterbury and Sundata rolled the technology out across Australia in November 1997. At this time extensive training sessions were undertaken with Canterbury's staff to ensure they were equipped with the necessary skills to operate the technology and maximise its benefits.

"The response from the sales representatives has been excellent and all of them comment on just how much it has improved the sales process," said Mr Langford. "With information at their fingertips, it has cut down on the amount of time taken for the reps to respond to customer queries and has freed them up for other duties such as maintaining marketing activities in the stores.

"It also gives the reps the ability to look at the customer's sales history over the past two years to see which products have been popular and provide the customer with new fashions in these lines.

"The new technology not only makes it easier for our sales reps to do their jobs, but means that our customers receive better service. This is an integral part of our pursuit for best practice in customer service for which we have recently been successful in receiving a grant from the Textile Clothing and Footware branch of the Department of Industry, Science and Tourism."

Mr Langford said that retailers have also been very positive about the system and are interested to see how it develops in the future.

Canterbury is already considering ways in which it can extend its existing system to improve business processes internally and take advantage of the Internet.

"Of the 600 retail stores in Australia that sell our clothing, 28 of these are Canterbury's specialty stores. We are currently looking at linking these stores to the rest of the organisation via email, which we anticipate will reduce running costs and improve communication between the stores and head office. The roll out of this technology is probably about twelve months away.

"We are also looking at bringing our clothing to life on the Internet by setting up an online order facility for our customers. We already have the technology infrastructure in place to achieve this with our IBM Netfinity server and Lotus Domino software. This will give us the opportunity to implement this at a later date," he said.