Lighting products manufacturer selects EPM solution to manage forecasting, sales and operational performance
Westmont, IL — January 29, 2004 — Quoizel Inc., announced today that it has licensed the Silvon Stratum suite of enterprise performance management (EPM) applications. Headquartered in Goose Creek, S.C., Quoizel is a 70-year-old designer and manufacturer of lighting products and home accessories sold through more than 1,500 home lighting retailers, furniture stores, and home centers nationwide.
Since Quoizel's manufacturing facilities are located in China, a four-month lead-time is required by the company to order and have products shipped to the United States for its retailers.
"We required a solution that would allow us to create and adjust our forecasts faster and more accurately to ensure that the items we order from China are the right ones, in the right quantities," said Russell Read, purchasing manager for Quoizel. "We believe Stratum will greatly assist us in the demand forecasting area and in garnering a clearer picture of our customers' actual demand patterns by leveraging the analytics it offers."
In addition to the product suite's forecasting applications, Quoizel said it would be using Stratum to analyze and manage key metrics relative to sales, customer purchasing trends and the actual profitability of its products and customers, the results of which can be used for new product introductions and other sales and marketing initiatives.
In addition, the company said it would employ the operational planning and analysis applications offered by Stratum to plan, build, procure and manage its inventory and to assess the performance of its suppliers relative to on-time deliveries, fill rates and other performance benchmarks.
Stratum's exception management functionality will be used by the lighting products manufacturer to generate automatic e-mail alerts to sales reps, inventory planners, operational staff and others so they can address potentially critical issues before they arise in the fulfillment of customer orders.
"I'm very impressed with how Stratum allows us to better manage our forecasting process and how it extends forecasting and performance visibility to managers throughout the company so we can collaboratively plan and monitor what we are doing as an enterprise to ensure that we meet our customers' expectations," added Eddie Clark, Quoizel's vice president of Operations. "I believe our company is taking a courageous step in its commitment to more efficient management of its inventory and the performance of its business as a whole, and see great things ahead."
Quoizel said it would run the Stratum forecasting and performance management analytic applications on top of a data repository consisting of sales, open order, inventory and other operational information extracted from the company's Baan (SSA Global) transaction system.
Down the road, Read said the company plans to use Stratum to bring in point-of-sale data for its forecasts and to build stronger supply chain relationships with its retailers through collaboration and sharing of key product performance information.
"As more companies like Quoizel continue to expand their sales channels and product penetration within larger retailing organizations, it will become more critical for them to keep pace with the increased business velocity and retailer reporting demands that will result by having powerful forecasting and performance analysis applications behind them," said Michael Hennel, president and CEO of Silvon Software Inc. "Silvon looks forward to working with Quoizel as they implement our solution not only to manage their own performance in the areas of forecasting, sales, procurement and inventory, but the performance of their supply network, as well."
