Software & Services

IT Gets Distributors On The Right Road

Avnet depends on a new price-quote system, while Corporate Express plots routes with RoadNet app.

September 16, 2005

8 Min Read

InformationWeek 500 - Distribution When you're in the business of distributing products, speed and accuracy are tantamount to successful customer relationships. Distributors at the top of their game recognize that technology separates them from the pack by squeezing out inefficiency and making it easier to provide good service.

Avnet Inc., an $11.1 billion-a-year distributor of electronic components and computers, is developing a new process for delivering price quotes that's part of an overall company strategy to automate more business processes. "I think we're going to create a competitive advantage for ourselves," CIO Ed Kamins says. "IT for us is the R&D of the distribution business. It's our competitive weapon."

The crucial first step to an improved quotes process was put in place last November when Avnet finished development of a business-rules application layer that it added to its quoting system. The application layer simplifies the process of verifying that prices being quoted match with a customer's order, an important step in a business that distributes thousands of often costly products. In the past, an employee matched up each line item ordered with the appropriate specialist. Now that line item is automatically routed to the appropriate specialist for price verification.

Avnet is now implementing a system that reconciles discrepancies between part numbers taken at the time of ordering and part numbers in its product database. The system includes data-integration software from Silver Creek Systems Inc. that matches part numbers with business rules to find and resolve discrepancies. Wrong part numbers are a frequent problem, Kamins says, and can result from suppliers changing their part numbers or clerks typing in the wrong figures during data entry.

Avnet plans to eventually automate every step in its complex, interconnected price-quote process, Kamins says. But it won't be an easy job. "Every time we solve one problem, it's like speeding up one part of a highway," he says. "You still have bottlenecks in other places."

At office-products distributor Corporate Express Inc., process optimization has focused squarely on deliveries. The Burhmann NV subsidiary is trying to maximize the number of deliveries each of its 1,400 vehicles makes a day and provide customers with more information on the status of their deliveries.

Last August, the company completed its "proof-of-delivery" system to keep track of deliveries and record who signs for them. The system includes wireless handheld devices that drivers use to capture electronic signatures, scan items when they're delivered, and transmit data about deliveries to customers over the Web.

The company also uses UPS Logistics Technologies' RoadNet application to plot delivery routes to eliminate as many stops as possible. The company previously let drivers load their vehicles and organize their routes. But automating route planning and having warehouse workers load vehicles based on those plans is slashing miles and time from routes and freeing drivers to do more deliveries, senior VP of distribution operations Tim Beauchamp says. Between the proof-of-delivery system and the automated route planning, Beauchamp says, Corporate Express has slashed the amount of outstanding receivables on its books by more than 25% in the last three years.