Stephen Morris – Joint Managing Director

Growth and Efficiency through E-Commerce

Liscombe

• 130 yr old, 4th generation family company

• Manufacturing and distributing PPE to major UK companies

• Employing 80

• Turnover £15m

• Based Newport, South Wales

Product Range

The Market Challenge

• Customer base is ‘Blue Chip’

• Competition are large companies

• How do we compete and grow?

The Admin Challenge

• Efficiency of administration

• Cost of employment

• Value added employment rather than ‘Donkey work’

• Accuracy of information – too much human input

Technology Solution

• We saw e-commerce as ………..Computerisation #2

• Technology could help us grow without increasing costs

• Smart use of technology could level the competition playing field and even tilt it in our direction

What happened?

• Approached our ERP systems supplier with our ideas

• Impaq Business Solutions (a Microsoft Certified Partner) developed xDE toolset

• Found a willing customer partner (major UK car plant).

• Established ‘e’-connection – via XML links

• Integrated back office operations• Now have totally paperless trading

ability

The Science Bit

• Standard Microsoft tools (BizTalk Server, .Net Framework etc)

• Industry standard catalogue format (CIF3)

• Industry standard messaging formats (cXML, eBIS-XML etc)

Traditional Business Flow

Lisc

ombe

Cu

sto

mer

Paper Product Catalogue

Paper/Fax Order

Acknowledgement

Goods & Despatch Note

Paper Invoice

Payment & Remittance

Sales Order Purchase Order

G.R.N.

Customer Manually Matches to GRN

E-Commerce Business FlowLiscombe Customer

Electronic Catalogue cif

Order cXML

Acknowledgement

Paper Despatch Note

Self Bill Invoice

Payment & Remittance

Automatic load Automatic raising

G.R.N.

Data Fields populatedBuild e-catalogue

Automatic send Automatic update

Automatic Invoice matching Automatic send

Automatic sendTransaction Complete

Pick Goods

• Six manual tasks and six pieces of paper replaced by 5 automated processes and one piece of paper

• Human error taken out of order process

• Liscombe staff can focus on customers’ needs instead of processing paperwork

• Proven improved response times

• Cost savings through improved administration

Process Efficiency

System Flexibility

• Not all customers work the same way

• Marketplaces

• Ariba

• Point to Point

• Amazon-style web buying

The Results

• Paperless trading capability

• Growth of 20% in 2004-5 without extra staffing

• Greater customer focus through freed-up time

• Able to market our IT capabilities

The Present & Future

• Rolling out to more customers

• Rolling out to suppliers – Supplier Portal

• Integrating Web site ordering to enable a low cost sign up for customers