Overview
Distribution of consumer electronics is a complex business, and this client is responsible for a significant part of the supply chain that distributes televisions to some of the largest retailers in the United States of America. However, they faced an issue with the returns process that was significantly impacting their financials, their customer satisfaction and overall supply chain logistics.
Problems
In an effort to meet the needs of each retailer, the returns process had evolved into a custom process that varied for each retailer. The result was a manually intensive process that required significant dedicated manpower but was still time consuming and prone to errors that resulted in above average financial loss from inventory mismanagement. None of the involved parties ranging from consumer, retailer or distributor were satisfied with the experience or the results.
By combining our understanding of the customer experience with our digital innovation capabilities, we help clients deliver sustainable business growth with better products, services, and business processes.
Solution
Emergys, who was already engaged in this client’s SAP implementation identified this issue during their business process discovery efforts and pro-actively proposed an innovative digital application approach to transform this inefficient business process. They envisioned a self-service portal driven design that would also be integrated with the core enterprise systems for a seamless solution with the compliance and financial controls that addressed everybody’s needs. Additionally, the solution would be provided as a Software-as-a-Service platform ensuring the client’s technology and operations groups did not have to support or maintain it.
The resulting application was extremely successful in addressing all of the business and operational issues that had been identified. The HTML5 based self-service portal allowed any consumer or retailer to access a standardized returns process with real-time status updates that not only transformed the user experience, but it eliminated the errors and mistakes of a manual process.
The integration with the core ERP systems ensured that financial loss was significantly reduced, and the overall logistics process was streamlined. In the end, Emergys’s ability to synthesize their business process, enterprise systems and digital application development expertise was critical in helping their client solve a significant business issue.