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Beaulieu Carpet - Improving Order Processing

 Overview

Beaulieu Carpet has field sales reps across the country selling their products. Due to an inefficient order and pricing system, Sales Account Executives (SAEs) were spending 20-30% of their time entering orders, managing price changes and ordering product samples. This slow order and pricing process allowed many opportunities for mistakes and amounted to SAEs losing one day in the field selling every week. They needed a way to get these sales reps immediate access to product data and pricing, as well as allow them to enter orders while at remote locations.

Optimus Solutions created an Order Entry and Customer Service application for use on wireless mobile devices. The wireless mobile devices access legacy applications to provide order entry and customer service functions. The existing IBM iSeries legacy applications are preserved, and the new mobile application interfaces with the existing applications--allowing SAEs immediate access to product info and pricing, as well as the ability to enter orders directly into their wireless device.

Results

Allowing reps to immediately input orders on their handheld devices reduced order processing time from over two weeks to 5 minutes. This enhanced customer service by providing SAEs with immediate and accurate access to customer data while in the field and also put SAEs back in the field selling one extra day per week. Due to increased efficiencies, Beaulieu Carpet realized a less than 6 month return on investment on this project.

Technologies Deployed

• IBM iSeries eServer
• WebSphere on iSeries
• IBM Host Integration Solutions - HATS
• Java J2EE Application
• DB2
• Mobile Wireless Devices