BPCS HiVolume

Customer satisfaction relies on an excellent order fulfillment experience. The ability to capture and fulfill customer orders quickly and accurately continues to be a core competency for organizations.

BPCS HiVolume is a robust and proven platform for high volume order fulfillment. Starting from order capture, it allows users to rapidly execute the picking, confirmation and billing processes in offline and online modes. It also supports operational continuity that is especially relevant for sites sharing an IBM i (System i, iSeries or AS/400) platform, or in areas having a poor telecommunications infrastructure where downtime can affect the business. An original design objective for BPCS HiVolume, operational continuity continues to be its key strength (the initial design scope addressed an order entry requirement to capture over 100,000 order lines in a 5-hour window, with over 15,000 sale items offered).

Going beyond order capture and fulfillment, BPCS HiVolume also contains functionality supporting TeleSales operations, Transportation Load Building, and Van/Route Reconciliation.

BPCS HiVolume is developed by Leading Edge Solutions, a South African based company with years of experience in BPCS and providing Supply Chain Solutions to its customer base.

Benefits:

Speed and accuracy
Users achieve significant speed improvement over BPCS order fulfillment using PC Client/Server technology. By making available buying pattern information, users can ensure that customers have not missed items from their orders, and comprehensive checking means that error-free orders are posted. This has lead to significant improvements of the productivity of order capture clerks.

Offline capability
Order fulfillment processes, mission critical and revenue generating business processes, can continue in a controlled manner, even when the IBM i becomes unavailable due to communications or hardware problems. Data synchronization resumes automatically when the IBM i comes online.

Transactional reduction
A thorough understanding of the business processes surrounding high volume order fulfillment has led to a feature set that minimizes re-entry of data, and allows the user to manage by exception. The result is a reduction in keystrokes with no compromise on transactional accuracy.

Processor load reduction
BPCS order fulfillment processes are CPU intensive. BPCS HiVolume can improve all processing performance on the IBM i by offloading the interactive validation tasks, and by managing the data synchronization using background jobs.

24/7 Availability – All order processing occurs on PC servers, which remain accessible when the IBM i requires maintenance.

Cost Reduction with high levels of customer service levels
– the ease-of-use and speed and accuracy of the product improves the productivity of staff resources on order taking, while service levels to customers are retained at a high level.

BPCS HiVolume Solution Set:

The BPCS HiVolume Solution Set consists of a series of products delivering increased productivity in the order fulfillment operation. At the core is the BPCS HiVolume server that can reliably transact order data from the Microsoft Windows based user interface and provides APIs to external order entry systems.

Members of the solution set are:

High Volume Order Entry
High Volume Order Entry is designed for rapid order capture. Keystrokes and panel changes are minimised. The PC Server provides fast responses, but not at the expense of iSeries performance. Features such as order cards and standing orders allow for quick processing of standard orders. History checks enable the order taker to have visibility on the buying patterns of the customers and promote up-selling.

Order-to-Invoice
This is the core of BPCS HiVolume, and is designed for rapid order fulfilment. The GUI front end is simplified and functionally enriched to better streamline the order fulfilment cycle. Features include pick confirm by pick number, undo pick release, reprint pick slip, pro-active picking and automatic fair share of stock. The whole Order Processing Cycle can function independent of the IBM i, therefore significantly reducing the load on the IBM i and providing speedy responses.

TeleSales
This option enhances Order-to-Invoice by providing call list and scheduling functionality prompting the teleseller to contact customers. Customer contact and personal details are directly available to the teleseller, while access to customers’ buying patterns can assist in up- and cross-selling.

Load Building
This option fulfils the need for flexible and quick load building and re-building. This supports business environments where loads need to be optimised in a rapidly changing delivery situation. Load Build is an enhanced version of BPCS’ OLM.

External Order Interface
The external order interface can interface orders from any order entry system into BPCS. By using the replication engines fast and accurate updates of the order files in BPCS is ensured.

Van/Route Reconciliation
This offers full van (out of truck) selling capabilities with route reconciliation functionality. Van/Route Reconciliation enables inventory sales off the vehicle with either manual or automated (via interface capabilities PDA systems) reconciliation. Returnable products such as crates and pallets can be tracked and accounted for through Van Reconciliation.

Technical Information:

• BPCS HiVolume uses established PC Server and IBM i technologies to provide the responsiveness and robustness that clients require.
• BPCS HiVolume significantly reduces the processing load from the IBM i, as it replaces the order processing workload.
• BPCS HiVolume supports the use of Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase SQL Anywhere and DB2 database technologies.
• Offline capability enables order processing to continue even when the IBM i is unavailable.
• Uses LANSA technologies for rapid product development and product enhancements.

For more information visit: http://les.co.za/hivolume/