Brandlines imports, distributes and markets a select range of international grocery, confectionery and drink brands in New Zealand. With over 160 staff and revenues exceeding $50 million, Brandlines is a leading player in the fast moving consumer goods market in New Zealand.

Brandlines has had great success marketing key international grocery, confectionery and drink brands including Sakata Rice Crackers, Asian Home Gourmet, Walkers Shortbread, Baxters, Maille Mustard, Casa Fiesta, Always Fresh, Chupa Chups, Mentos, Werther's Original, Smint, K-fee and Lindt Chocolate to name just a few.

Brandlines covers all channels in New Zealand and offers Brand Owners a one-stop-shop to handle all distribution, sales, marketing and merchandising of their brand in New Zealand.

Brandlines is the exclusive confectionery supplier to Shell NZ and Kmart.

Business Problem
Joy Chapman Corporate Service Director explains that the company’s main challenges related to lack of good business information due to disparate dated legacy systems and lack of expiry date information relating to stock on hand. Improved stock rotation was required to ensure the oldest stock was dispatched first, along with knowing where to locate stock and what quantity was housed at each location. 

Previously, stock in the warehouse was rotated manually, relying upon the team in the warehouse to ensure an efficient flow of goods from the warehouse to the customer, making sure the ‘oldest’ stock was dispatched first. Brandlines estimated that they had lost up to $150,000 in each of the previous three years due to poor stock rotation.

“With our existing systems, we would regularly write-off stock because it was not easily located and dispatched before it went out of date. It was also difficult to guarantee the integrity of data used to forecast sales, which resulted in excess stock holdings,” explained Joy.

Brandlines had been going through a period of growth, with the company doubling in size over the past few years, but they had multiple legacy systems which were not capable of handling the growth and diversity of the FMCG sector. The systems didn’t interface with the new tools the company was putting in place like Tablet PCs, and wireless and mobile technologies. Meanwhile, Brandlines also knew they didn’t have a warehouse management system or accessible business information which could support their plans for expansion.

Solution Delivered
Solution Partners based the solution around the Microsoft Dynamics Software. Specifically the Financial, Distribution and Warehousing modules were deployed. Particular effort was put into the flow of product through the warehouse, including its location(s) as Brandlines deploy a “free store”. Expiry date control with effective stock rotation was critical in ensuring that the oldest stock was always picked.

Brandlines decided to move from reliance on paper based systems to a paperless warehouse making use of Tablet PCs with scanning devices. This portable technology directs the operator form all putaway, replenishment and picking activities. The “directive picking” of product was a critical requirement to enforce stock rotation ensuring optimum expiry date control. The Paperless system also minimised the number of keystrokes needed, further reducing the potential for human error. 

Brandlines wanted to implement systems to ensure an improved customer experience by providing reduced order lead-times and greater delivery accuracy. Brandlines have 40 sales reps in the field using PDTs for order capture and “on processing” into the Dynamics AX system. These orders are updated into the system using Microsoft BizTalk. BizTalk is also used as a means of receiving orders (E-commerce) from major customers. These technologies mean that orders are received into the Dynamics AX system and are available for picking very efficiently.

Benefits Received
The stability of the system was also a concern to Brandlines, since it would crash three or four times a year. They often processed up to 400 orders a day, which can equal as many as 4,500 individual order lines. You can imagine the impact a crash has when the system isn’t backed up and that order line information ‘leaks’ or disappears. Their staff would have to manually re-process all that information, which doubled the workload for four or five people. The implemnation of Axpata addressed these key “stability” issues..

Previously, stock in the warehouse was rotated manually, relying upon the team in the warehouse to ensure an efficient flow of goods from the warehouse to the customer, making sure the ‘oldest’ stock was dispatched first. This addresses the issue of stock “write offs” due to product expiry. (Brandlines had dumped some $150,000 of stock over 3 years due to poor stock rotation.)

Brandlines now have a stable and reliable ERP system that has significantly improved the “order to pick” process. Having ‘real time’ information available via Dynamics AX means staff can see how stock is moving around and they can tackle problems like clearing short dated stock, improving freight efficiencies and late or inaccurate deliveries. Dynamics AX manages, proactively, the picking of stock to ensure an appropriate stock rotation.

Other improvements include fewer picking errors – where previously customers would sometimes receive the wrong flavour of product in their order, due to loose validation of products being picked, each item of stock now has a detailed bar code which means validation is much more strictly enforced. Previously there was also a risk of delay in fulfilling orders because records of stock did not always accurately match what was in the warehouse. Picking speed has significantly improved as a result of rationalising the picking process together with access to improved information to enable more efficient warehouse layout. 

“We realised the benefits within three months of putting the system in place. Our sales team says they can now respond to customer queries much more quickly than before because they have access to much more accurate information and an improved reporting system. Better customer relationships are being forged as a direct result of improved efficiencies and accuracies,” adds Joy Chapman.

“We knew we had too many people doing duplicated tasks because we didn’t have a robust, integrated system in place, and by streamlining our approach and introducing Dynamics AX, we were able to redeploy three people who were carrying out administrative tasks and place them in areas where their skills could be put to more effective use; analysing information as opposed to processing data.”

The Brandlines executive team were one of only two complies in the world to be invited to meet the Microsoft Executive (Steve Balmer) in Redmond for an award for their implementation of Dynamics AX.

For more information

Microsoft
Anne Frith
09 362 5865
askdynnz@microsoft.com
Microsoft New Zealand
PO Box 8070, Symonds Street, Auckland

Solution Partners
Roger Clearwater
09 366-3920
roger.clearwater@solutionpartners.co.nz
www.solutionpartners.co.nz

July 2005

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