Growing Order Volumes? Can You Handle Them?
By Craig Lewis, Corporate & Indirect Sales, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe
All businesses strive for success but what happens when the ability to manage increased demand is constrained by existing infrastructure that can’t keep up?
That is the challenge a global household name recently faced.
The card and gift retailer was struggling to process and distribute hundreds of thousands of orders per month placed at its hundreds of branded retail stores, tens of thousands of third party retail vendors, direct-from-consumer online orders, and a handful of subsidiaries.
Its output needs quickly became immense, varied, and complex.
Every shipment involved numerous pieces of printed material including shipping labels, packing slips, and box content, produced on multiple printing systems.
While these varied print needs may not be unusual, at this scale, any demands placed on suitable replacement solutions were significant.
Additionally, every single item printed for shipping needed to be automatically archived into a customer portal and be available to customer service teams.
The global retailer wanted to bring together a complex network of disparate systems, handle both print output and output management, and a single solution to serve as a system of record for distribution, among other functions.
It also identified a gap between the distribution and warehouse management systems.
It had already invested significantly in robotics and automation for picking and packing and a warehouse management system offering complete automation for some products and lines.
However, it lacked knowledge of the print side of distribution. In short, the company needed to:
- Cut through this complexity.
- Eliminate process steps.
- A single solution to serve as a system of record.
- Be flexible and adaptable to various formats and workflows.
- Bridge the gap between distribution and warehouse management systems.
It needed an enterprise software solution that would easily integrate into the brand’s existing systems to manage the complex requirements in one central platform. This included automated picking lines, shipping labels, packing slips and plan-o-grams (for retail store shipments).
The solution was to incorporate RICOH ProcessDirector. It now serves as the one system of record for all print related output and easily automates several customer service activities, including the archiving of all shipping labels and box content, routing that information directly into the company’s customer portal.
For all pick orders ProcessDirector bridges the gap between automated machine handling and those products and orders that must be handpicked. Now all label files are automatically converted to PDF for output.
The company is also able to centralise all print operations, not just for outputs at their core operations, but also for distributed operations (such as for acquired brands operating in separate physical locations). It can also enjoy more precise document management where every store in the business can access past print jobs and essential documents and print or customise them as needed.
Ricoh’s Enterprise Output Management software (EOM) is enabling the retailer to effectively manage its complex print workflow needs. Discover more about how Ricoh can help solve your production challenges.
For further information, please visit www.ricoh-europe.com
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