The Challenge

The corporate headquarters served as the operational hub for the organization—providing the retail stores, catalog and e-commerce operations with administrative, shipping and receiving, records management, product sourcing and distribution services.

As the e-commerce side of the business began to grow rapidly, the inefficiency of these activities caused a serious bottleneck. Improvements were called for in the productivity of selling space, inventory control, document and records management, overhead expenses and gross margins. Océ Business Services looked at the following:

• Optimizing the shipping and receiving hub so that every one of the 11,500 packages per day could be accurately documented— the data then fed into the supply chain management system for timely customer service and order processing
• Reengineering the corporate mail center to reduce labor, postage and courier expenses, as well as automating the capture of documentation
• Managing warehouse containing 50,000 boxes of official company records
• Turning the corporate switchboard operation into a customer service center
• Restyling the corporate reception to better welcome visiting merchants and expedite community events

The Solution

Océ relied on more than technology to solve these business challenges. Instead, the solutions were developed by first addressing business process needs, as well as management and staffing requirements. Only then were the appropriate new technologies considered.

• In the shipping and receiving hub, Océ automated package tracking and data capture, replacing 200 hours of manual data entry per month with bar code technology
• In the mail center, Océ re-designed the workflow and installed new preparation and in-motion postage metering machines, eliminating manual weighing and sorting
• Oce supplied staffing expertise to the day-to-day record-keeping processes, coordinating with storage vendors and executing client records standards
• Corporate reception and telephone switchboard operations were merged into one operation. Océ took responsibility for both training and budget

The Result

The results from Océ's innovative approach to solving operational problems are significant and can be accurately measured in terms of cost savings, productivity gains and improved customer satisfaction levels.

• The cost of shipping and couriers from the home office hub dropped by 24%
• In the mail center, implementing best practices saved $200,000 per year in postage expenses and process reengineering saved another $1.5 million in indirect labor costs
• The mail center now also serves as a customer service center, providing fulfillment for the catalog and advertising department at a rate of 16,000 items per day. This eliminated the need to expand the fulfillment facility at a cost of millions of dollars
• The reception and switchboard costs were reduced by 17 %, becoming a coordinated reception and corporate contact center that answers 3,000 calls per day