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Maclean's Highland Bakery Grows Sales with Tesco after Automating Key Business Processes
Family-owned bakery ups on-shelf availability, gains demand visibility after implementing Web forms solution from GXS to trade electronically with top customer via EDI
Gaithersburg, MD — Bakery supplier Maclean's Highland Bakery has adopted solution provider GXS's Intelligent Web Forms (IWF) to help drive increased business with retail customers by automating key business processes including order receipt and processing and electronic invoice generation.
Maclean's is a family-owned business that previously managed all its orders and invoices via manual, paper-based processes, which limited the company's insights into product levels at stores and also limited its ability to grow sales at existing stores or add new ones.
The baker recently completed its deployment of IWF and has already seen increased sales, greater efficiencies and fewer out-of-stocks for Maclean's bakery products at stores, according to the solution provider.
Maclean's supplies Tesco with "premium morning goods" such as rolls, biscuits and scones. The orders for these products were previously managed manually and involved regular, frequent car journeys by a member of Maclean's staff to the local Tesco stores to check on stock levels and pick up paper purchase orders in person.
Now the local Tesco stores send their orders to Maclean's electronically using electronic data interchange (EDI). This has improved the on-shelf availability of Maclean's' products, leading to a steady increase in sales since Maclean's started using IWF earlier this year. The efficiency gains have meant the company has also been able to increase the number of Tesco stores it supplies by 66 percent, with hopes for further expansion in the coming months.
"Using GXS IWF has brought us distinct benefits: payments are made more quickly and we save a lot of time and effort when compared to our old manual processes. The thing I really like is the demand visibility we have gained," said Lewis Maclean, the company's managing director. "Now everyone knows where they stand, and we know when an item needs to be restocked, which gives us reassurance and peace of mind."
As part of GXS' on-demand, B2B integration services platform, GXS Trading Grid, IWF enables a company to trade electronically without the need to purchase, install and manage additional software. It is designed for businesses with small or even no IT department and enables them to participate in EDI and other initiatives introduced by larger trading partners.
Maclean's is a family-owned business that previously managed all its orders and invoices via manual, paper-based processes, which limited the company's insights into product levels at stores and also limited its ability to grow sales at existing stores or add new ones.
The baker recently completed its deployment of IWF and has already seen increased sales, greater efficiencies and fewer out-of-stocks for Maclean's bakery products at stores, according to the solution provider.
Maclean's supplies Tesco with "premium morning goods" such as rolls, biscuits and scones. The orders for these products were previously managed manually and involved regular, frequent car journeys by a member of Maclean's staff to the local Tesco stores to check on stock levels and pick up paper purchase orders in person.
Now the local Tesco stores send their orders to Maclean's electronically using electronic data interchange (EDI). This has improved the on-shelf availability of Maclean's' products, leading to a steady increase in sales since Maclean's started using IWF earlier this year. The efficiency gains have meant the company has also been able to increase the number of Tesco stores it supplies by 66 percent, with hopes for further expansion in the coming months.
"Using GXS IWF has brought us distinct benefits: payments are made more quickly and we save a lot of time and effort when compared to our old manual processes. The thing I really like is the demand visibility we have gained," said Lewis Maclean, the company's managing director. "Now everyone knows where they stand, and we know when an item needs to be restocked, which gives us reassurance and peace of mind."
As part of GXS' on-demand, B2B integration services platform, GXS Trading Grid, IWF enables a company to trade electronically without the need to purchase, install and manage additional software. It is designed for businesses with small or even no IT department and enables them to participate in EDI and other initiatives introduced by larger trading partners.
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