STANDARDIZATION

Ulmart is a participant of one of the country’s most competitive markets — consumer electronics retail market (of courses until our government makes all mountain of efforts and creates another state corporation, say "Roselectrontorg", for the good of the people).
On a comparatively small, on a nation scale, patch of the market (total sales $10bl a year) you can find all nations: federal chains, regional chains, local shops, computer assemblers, online stores and various in-betweens. Price wars in million — plus cities (primarily Moscow and St.Peterburg) are run on a cents scale for the margin is prettily forced down.
Shortly, a perfectly competitive market a kind of almost bookish.

Amid almost equal prices (surely we are talking of the competition in certain market segments nonprice determinants competition becomes the key factor.

The level of service comes out on top. Each of the factors listed below can play a critical role in choosing where to buy: site convenience and informativity, service quality and speed both at selling and processing guarantee claims and just likes(e.g it was all about likes with Web 2.0).

One fine day the company’s management decided that 15-20 minutes spent by its clients awaiting the order dispatch were far too much ant it needed speeding up either zero-cost or least-cost (the market is highly competitive thus economic profit is zero so there is no money to spare and none is expected).

Having decided to begin at the beginning, started with reengineering of the business processes of the warehouse.

Diagnosis: absence of any personal responsibility of the warehouse staff for the processing speed of one certain order or the whole order flow and absence of work performance motivation both for operators and the Department management.

Prescription: to create such a motivation based on ILD (Index of Labor Distribution).

Decision: а) standardize each and all business processes of the order dispatching; b) log all the actions taken by employees at every stage of the invoice life circle.
It was done easily and cost almost nothing with the existing warehouse PDA barcodes scanners by introducing barcode badges for the warehouse operators and the principle of recording the chain of responsibility for the order processing at every stage via scanning barcodes on the invoice and the operator’s badge.

Results? The queues have almost gone though the number of orders have increased; clients‘ dissatisfaction with delays at the dispatch has dwindled to nothing; the labor productivity of the warehouse operators have shown growth of 30% and the last but not the least, that the warehouse management have finally ceased moaning in bad need of more and more staff.
It’s characteristic, that warehouse operators are spending much less time smoking outside and consequently have become much healthier.

That’s how Ultima ERP helps our clients’ staff break bad habits.
If the situation described above doesn´t remind you anything from your own practice it isn´t worth while calling and inquiring about Ultima ERP and related reengineering. You´ll cope yourself.