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When, in 2001, Cliff Fox was put in charge of IT at the logistics specialist, Elite Group, he was given a
clear remit – create a professional IT capability that will support the growing sophistication of the
business and give demanding customers the standard of service they require. Cliff had to move fast when,
soon after his appointment Elite secured the contract to manage inbound logistics for Per Una at Marks
and Spencer (M&S). Like a growing number of leading retailers, M&S is paying close attention to the IT
capabilities of its suppliers so development had to be accelerated.
High on Cliff’s shopping list was a comprehensive freight management system. “We have over 400 staff at
Elite constantly involved in the management of freight transportation for our customers”, he says. “It
was essential, particularly with the new Per Una business, that these staff had best tools for the job”.
After reviewing a number of options, he chose FCL’s ForwardOffice product. “We have had the system for
two and a half years now and it was a good choice”, Cliff says, adding, “ForwardOffice has worked well and
has proved to be reliable and resilient. We have also found FCL to be a responsive company and ready to
listen to our ideas for enhancements”.
For Cliff Fox, systems resilience is a must. “Our customers expect 100% visibility of their goods in
transit”, he explains. “System downtime is absolutely unacceptable. A consignment can arrive at one of
our distribution centres, be cross-docked and on its way inside 4 hours. That activity has to be recorded
in the system in real time”. Cliff’s background in Point of Sale (POS) systems has given him plenty of
experience in creating very resilient systems. The infrastructure he has put in at Elite includes optical
fibre networks with Cisco network technology running on HP servers. Triple level redundancy and re-routing
capability (between as well as within sites) ensures that the network and the systems on it are available
all the time.
Elite specialises in the movement and processing of garments and a look at its customer base instantly
tells you why quality is imperative. As well as Per Una, it includes Allders, Asda, Cotton Traders,
Debenhams, and Next – a list that most logistics companies would give their right arm for. These retail
majors are very demanding and Elite has organised itself to ensure that high standards of service are
maintained. Each customer has a dedicated account team that works for it and it alone. This dedication
leads to a good understanding of precisely what the customer needs and commitment to giving it to them.
Supply chain visibility has become an increasingly important issue for retailers in recent years. Recent
research has revealed two aspects of this issue: the first is that customers want to extend supply chain
visibility and are looking for a single source of end-to-end supply chain visibility; the second is the
need to link many more players into the system. Ideally, customers want to see manufacturers, service
providers and stores all linked up. This means that the logistics provider’s systems need to interface
with many different supply chain players.
FCL has been watching this trend. “The pressure is on forwarders to re-shape themselves as supply chain
managers”, says Graham Donnelly, a founding Director of FCL. “For the forwarder, one of the keys to
adapting to these new challenges is the use of new technology to support both the business process and to
meet the information needs of the customer. Improving supply chain visibility is a key part of this”. The
result is ForwardVision, a new product offering which was launched in August 2002. ForwardVision enables
users to record and monitor the progress of customers’ Sales or Purchase Orders, down to Line Item detail.
Orders, which can be created and maintained through a variety of interfaces, are monitored and managed
through by user-defined milestones and events.
One of the major challenges for Elite was to present the customer with relevant data in a way that they
can use it. “Each of our customers uses its own critical path to manage the flow of goods”, says Cliff.
“Some customers track only 5 events, others track 105”. ForwardVision deals with this complexity by
handling a large variety of supply events and also allows the user to configure a different critical
path for each customer. It also allows the user to configure the look and feel.
ForwardVision can be accessed as a Web application that allows users to review the status of particular
purchase orders, as well as their full details, and to monitor their progress against its critical path.
A traffic light system (green for complete, amber for imminent, red for overdue) helps the user to see
immediately whether an Order is on schedule or not and both the variance against planned milestones and
the individual user responsible. Most of the data to drive the milestone management comes directly from
the Operations area of FCL but ForwardVision also allows the user (provided they have the required access
level) to input new data or make amendments.
“Elite’s customers can receive the data in the way that suits them”, says Cliff. “Some customers, such as
Cotton Traders, access ForwardVision through the Elite website (where it is presented under Elite
branding). Others prefer that we send the data direct to their own tracking systems. For example, we are
sending this data to Asda by EDI”. This flexibility means that Elite can provide supply chain visibility
to its customers whatever their stage of systems development. Customers can use the web application as a
start and migrate to EDI if and when they decide to adopt comprehensive enterprise systems that include
supply chain management modules.
Elite has deployed ForwardVision for Per Una, Asda, Cotton Traders, Berwin and Berwin, Panache and Hart
Brothers and more are now being set up. Cliff believes that ForwardVision has the flexibility to cope
with all sorts of customers in all sorts of markets; there should be plenty more to come.
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