The seamless integration of EDI technology with ACCO USA's order processing system has generated tremendous bottom-line results for the office products manufacturer.

By Richard Currier

In every industry sector, manufacturers and distributors of all sizes are faced with competitive pressures that drive demand for faster order turnaround and improved service levels while simultaneously reducing business costs. As early as 1990, ACCO USA began defining and designing a long-term information technology strategy that would enable it to meet all of these challenges by the year 2000. The order processing software at the core of the technology solution has been up and running in production long enough for ACCO USA to know that its strategy has positioned the firm for continued success in the new millennia.

Headquartered in Wheeling, Ill., ACCO USA is the largest firm in the U.S. office supplies industry. A division of ACCO World Corporation -- the number one office products manufacturer in the world -- ACCO USA manufactures products sold under ACCO, Swingline, Wilson Jones, Perma and Daytimer brands at five manufacturing sites. The supplies go out through three major distribution centers to more than 4,000 firms nationwide.


Major strategy components
The large size of the ACCO USA organization, combined with the distribution and growing complexity and demands of its customer base, led to some key requirements that formed the basis of the long-term strategy that was first formulated in 1990. The primary objective was to improve overall customer service capabilities while significantly reducing order handling time and costs. "New entrants in the channel like the retail superstores and mass merchandisers require 24-hour turnaround and complete line fill," says Bill Dooley, customer operations manager. "These channel entrants also demand store and shelf service capabilities through electronic links along with streamlined processes."

Recognizing the fact that improving customer service and responsiveness was critical to maintaining its leadership in the office supplies industry, ACCO USA identified what had to be done to reach that goal:

• Transition from an aging, centralized, largely isolated information technology structure to one that would support distributed information access and exchange with other ACCO USA locations.
• Implement and deploy sophisticated electronic data interchange (EDI) capabilities that would closely integrate with the order processing system and support a close, responsive relationship with electronic trading partners.
• Provide customer service representatives (CSRs) with easy access to the latest information on order status and location on as close to a 24-hour basis as possible.
• Substantially improve productivity by eliminating manual processes whenever possible.

After evaluating an array of order processing solutions in depth, ACCO USA opted to become the first beta user of CONTROL II, a package from Cambar Software of Charleston, S.C., that offered the sophisticated functionality needed in the company's high-volume, high-demand order processing environment. The system also provided the relational information architecture that fit ACCO USA's information technology strategy. "There was a certain element of risk tied to choosing a brand new software system," says Dooley. "But we felt the risk was worth it since success would put us way ahead of where we were from a business and technology perspective and we were very confident in Cambar and its personnel."

In addition, the commitment to being a first user meant that ACCO USA provided extensive input on specifications for what would be included in the base system. This was especially critical in the area of EDI, where the company had some very specific requirements. For example, in addition to supporting functionality for order, invoice and advance shipping notice (ASN) generation -- all of which was provided by the old, in-house standalone EDI system -- ACCO USA specified that the vendor develop interfaces between order management processing and EDI for every transaction related to an order. As a result, EDI is closely integrated with order processing in the current production system. EDI integration was a key requirement, according to Sherry Hermann, director of customer response. "To get orders out in the tight time frames necessary to compete now and in the future, we have to be able to answer customer inquiries, find out about shipment status, and work with electronic trading partners on a real-time basis," she explains. That can only be done when EDI functions are closely integrated with overall order processing.

To meet the needs of EDI trading partners whose transactions add up to more than 80 percent of the ACCO USA total order line volume, the company also required that the system enable customers to transmit one EDI transaction set that would cover multiple locations. In effect, the order processing system decomposes the compound transaction (called an "EDI spreadsheet") and fills, ships, tracks and confirms the separate orders for hundreds or thousands of locations. "Virtually all of the enhancements we asked for ended up being part of the base system," notes Tom Murray, vice president of information systems.


Putting the Business Users in Charge
The new system was implemented by a team that included the internal ACCO USA information technology (IT) staff, business specialists and CSRs who access and update order data on a daily basis and Cambar technical specialists. "From the beginning, we wanted to put control in the hands of the users so IT resources can be used most effectively," says Murray. "In addition to cleaning up outdated processes and procedures, nontechnical system users had to take on the responsibility of driving the business side of the system. The approach we used included developing detailed flowcharts of processes such as order entry, merchandise return and pricing," he explains. "The people responsible for the project's success needed to get a good understanding of what they wanted the system to do � so we forced an exercise of defining process flow and business requirements." The detailed documentation made it possible to communicate very effectively with Cambar personnel about system requirements. The result of this working partnership was that no major changes were required after the system went live in the last quarter of 1994. "Because our customer service personnel were part of the entire implementation process, they're very familiar with the system and able to fully leverage its capabilities," says Dooley.


A New Level of Customer Service
After a three-day process that involved converting more than 3,000 orders from the legacy system to the new one, the ACCO USA order management system began running in production mode. The software runs on an IBM mainframe with hundreds of users accessing the database through PCs and terminals. In just a few weeks, the benefits of the changeover became apparent.

The time span from initial order receipt to shipment planning, for example, has been cut from 24 hours to less than one hour, says Hermann.

Additionally, many manual operations have been completely eliminated, resulting in dramatic productivity increases. "When an order comes in via EDI, the first person to become involved now is the order picker in the warehouse who actually pulls the item."

Customers also directly benefit from the close integration of EDI within the system. Today, CSRs can quickly determine exactly when a purchase order is received, when it is sent to a distribution center for shipment, when it is shipped and when it actually reaches the customer's receiving dock. The ability to provide quick response to customer inquiries with concrete data not only eliminates arguments about shipment status but helps CSRs pinpoint potential problems in the customer's receiving process.

The software's integrated design also significantly cuts CSR training time. It is only necessary to learn a single set of screens rather than learning separate screens for EDI and order processing. On-line help utilities also contribute to decreasing the time and cost investment in CSR training. This increased productivity means that CSRs are now able to focus more effectively and proactively on meeting fast-changing customer needs. "CSRs used to wait for a phone to ring and basically just answer questions," says Dooley. "Today, they function more in a business management capacity. They understand logistics and distribution and, when a problem presents itself, they now have the tools and business sense to resolve it quickly."

The new order processing system also supports enhanced modeling of customer profiles, product pricing, assortments, kitting and item setup for a high degree of flexibility in adapting to unique customer configurations.

All of this adds up to the fact that ACCO USA is doing a better job of responding to customer needs than ever before. "Operational excellence is key to establishing customer intimacy," notes Dooley. "And large customers prefer to deal with one vendor whenever possible � there's only one set of people with whom they have to interact, and it's just more cost-effective. With this system," he continues, "we've made it more convenient for customers to consider ACCO USA to be that one vendor."


A Technology Platform for the Future
The legacy system that had been in use, designed in house at ACCO, was built within a technical architecture requiring that database management chores be completed while the system was offline. The relational database design of the new system minimizes this requirement and greatly expands order management system availability, creating an opportunity for round-the-clock service to customers. "The relational technology also makes it easier for end-users to extract information and create ad hoc reports, based on specific customer requests," according to Hermann.

That flexibility is expected to prove valuable as ACCO USA moves forward with its long-term plan. One future objective involves providing an electronic mail link between the customer service operation and the ACCO USA national sales force. "By providing the CSRs with access to our sales force automation system, they'll be up-to-date on the latest customer comments recorded by the salesperson.

"That can be helpful when dealing with customer inquiries," says Dooley. The company also plans to provide the distributed sales staff with a way to check on order status by dialing into the order management system directly. Other plans call for adding returns management processing and developing links between the order processing software and the ACCO USA manufacturing systems.

Copyright © 1998 by APICS — The Educational Society for Resource Management. All rights reserved.

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