Background
Autofulfil is a fulfilment house in Galway, Ireland, dealing with a wide range of ecommerce customers.
In addition to having ecommerce customers, Autofulfil is also one of the main suppliers of school books in Ireland (Autofulfil’s own business), offering book-covering as a value-added service.
Why did Autofulfil need an Optima WMS?
- Autofulfil had an in-house WMS system built by a staff member that met their needs, but it would soon be unsupported
- They needed the ability to have development work done, and that was being taken away from their existing system
Whilst their in-house system previously had met their WMS needs, they identified that they needed a better WMS to help them with their current and future needs, and also with process management too.
Although there were issues with their existing WMS, it was designed to work how Autofulfil work, and so there were naturally concerns that an off-the-shelf WMS would not meet their exact needs.
What did Optima do?
Thanks to the flexibility of Optima and the fact that Optimiser can be customised to meet individual customer needs, such as specific features, functionality and bespoke reports, Autofulfil can now manage their stock and orders much more efficiently.
This is because as part of this project, we:
- Implemented more detailed and fine-grained courier charges (for invoicing their customers) for the very wide range of courier services they use and countries they ship to
- Developed custom functionality to maintain this complex matrix of charges
- Automated their An Post labels and pre-sorting declarations, a process which saves them money as they just give the courier pre-sorted bags of mail
What happened next?
After their WMS went live, Autofulfil went through a process of implementing and changing their charging structure.
We helped them with this to ensure they could continue to operate, and to ensure that correct charges applied retrospectively.
Results
Autofulfil have seen many improvements and benefits thanks to their Optimiser WMS.
Here are just some of them.
- Packing and courier booking
The simplified packing and courier booking system means they can now check an order, pack it, and print and apply a label, all on the same packing bench.
This has obviously saved a lot of time in terms of order-checking and consolidation of each order.
These sorts of improvements to efficiency mean that Autofulfil can now send more orders out, without having to work harder.
- Stock accuracy
Autofulfil immediately saw an improvement in stock accuracy thanks to proper receiving and despatching processes.
Previously they were manually adjusting stock figures.
- Reports
They can now run any number of reports to see exactly what’s in stock and where.
Reports for all aspects and elements mean that information can be found quickly and easily, meaning that information is available quickly and easily to whoever needs it.
- Imports
Autofulfil used to have to do a lot of manual work in importing orders from various customer sites.
Thanks to Optimiser’s marketplace integration and csv order import functionality, they don’t need to, so we’ve helped them save a lot of time and manual work too.
Feedback
The overall feedback from Autofulfil is that their new Optima WMS is much better than their previous in-house one.
This is because:
- Order import emails now immediately show when and why an order hasn’t imported
- Optimiser WMS has also speeded up their warehouse productivity and the reports are now much better and more useful
- Orders can be sorted prior to printing, so that orders of the same product can be printed and shipped in bulk
The improvements they liked the most include: the fact that Optima support staff can:
- Identify and resolve any problems using remote login, which can then be addressed instantly
- Address any updates and improvements quickly, instead of waiting for the member of staff to have time to make the required changes
What’s next?
Autofulfil are settling into a period of stability now, and getting to know their new WMS better.
They are also potentially looking to implement wireless scanning in the future which will further improve accuracy and efficiency in picking and putting away. This will help them save even more time and be even more productive.
Optima Comment
“We’ve enjoyed working closely with the Zuza and the team to deliver solutions that work well for them. Putting in the extra time and effort to get things right has really paid off. The client dedicating time to understanding their own processes and being committed to the project makes for success.
“We look forward to working with Autofulfil to set up barcode scanning and improve their processes even further.”
Autofulfil Comments
We’ve had a number of positive comments from the Autofulfil team too.
“The reports available are very helpful and do make a lot of tasks easier. As far as improving my own work, the support team are extremely helpful, resourceful and not only do they provide support, they also provide multiple solutions to the any given problem.”
“Almost everything is adjustable- if we need something to be changed or arranged in particular it is ‘easy’ to do so [we] just ask the team.”
“Stock counts are easier as Optimiser blocks the slots.”
“It’s a lot better than our previous system. Overall I’m happy with the decision to move to Optima.”