In the fast-changing retail world, the art of being in control of the products core data is a major challenge. This becomes evident in the resale where you constantly have to deal with changes in product descriptions, prices, etc. based on supplier information. The value of sharing and immediately coordinate information together is large when in the boundary between different businesses.
One of Olivetrees customers had exactly this problem. A major supplier provided a large and varied amount of articles that exceeded 10 000. All these were constantly changing with replacement items, price changes, and more.
The potential for improvement
Olivetrees customer was facing a number of challenges based on these circumstances.
The former semi-automated routines for importing parts data into their own ERP systems resulted in many quality deficiencies and required a lot of manual work from many different roles within the company. The fact is that in some cases lost money due to incorrect pricing. The most worrying effect was the reduction in customer service regarding invoices wich contained errors.
A solution for simplifying and automation
Together with the customer we discussed different options for the best way to avoid errors and as far as possible automate the process. The point was also that it would be able to handle the entire process, only those exceptions that are not handled automatically would need manual intervention. Business Logics to handle all the possible scenarios was reviewed and the rationale was based on a filter so that the exceptions could be easily identified and corrected.
