Ruwag Case Study

Customer

Ruwag Powertool Accessories is a South African market leader for premium tools accessories for use in the Artisan & DIY industries with approximately 2000 customers nation-wide and more than 3000 different product line items. Their traditional standards of innovation, quality, customer orientation and service are embodied into their principle of "Quality versus Price Ratio".

Pre-mobile Process

Ruwag’s Field Sales representatives, whilst observing what other in-store activities were underway, took orders from the customer and sent them to Ruwag head office for processing. Some customers order directly from Ruwag head office via fax or telephone.

Challenge

In order for Ruwag to arm its sales force with effective, efficient, accurate and on-time every-time sales details, Ruwag Sales Management turned to a cellular mobile solution. Requirements of the solution were focused mainly at enabling field sales to capture order details electronically wherever they are in the country and transmit them over the cellular networks to head office for processing. It was foreseen that further efficiencies embracing financial and non-financial benefits could be derived from such a cellular mobility approach.

Solution

charm (Channel Activity, Order Taking & Resource Monitoring) is Bhyve’s advanced mobile data communications’ solution for supporting the retail sales and marketing teams as they visit their customers’ sales outlets. Designed to be cellular network, device and operating system agnostic, charm will execute ultra-efficiently and securely on most current cell phones providing its powerful information services anytime, anywhere. charm allows the user to electronically capture (off-line) sales call details including orders, point of sale requests, competitor activity and red flag details on the cell phone and transmit them to the processing area or to management for action (e.g. Ruwag Head Office) in mere minutes.

The Study

Bhyve was authorised to work with Ruwag personnel over a number of weeks to conduct a business process study after the mobile solution was implemented. The study involved periodic suspension of the mobile environment so as to accurately assess the manual processes with the primary aim being to determine these following objectives:

• Automation benefits
• Issues associated with automation
• Enhancement possibilities

Automation Benefits

Major Initial Benefits

• Order invoicing time reduction from 15-20 minutes to 1 minute/order
• Process steps reduced from 20 steps to just 9 steps
• Invoicing process improvements increased order processing capacity from 32 to 480 orders/person/day
• Order processing paper completely eliminated
• Sales field force has an order e-form readily available on their cell phone, offering these benefits;
  • Customers can be quoted from anywhere in the country without Ruwag head office involvement
  • Customers immediately receive net order amount at order time
  • The auto calculation on the order form enables customers to view and comply with the minimum order amount
  • Sales force has access to
    • the latest stock on hand at the warehouse
    • customer specific order history information (master quantity)
    • latest list of company products (including newly added)
  • Ensures that all product locations are attended to without missing out on any product in the outlet

Reporting Benefits

Sales management now access on-time information about their field sales force activities as compared to receiving a report a week or so later. Examples of these reports with detailed drill-through capabilities are summarised as follows:

• Point of Sales Quantity Requests
• Red Flags
• Orders
• Competitor Activity
• Sales Calls

Other Observed Benefits

• Credit returns process turn-around time halved
• Internal sales personnel no longer faced with evaluation of order legibility, lost paperwork, account validation, back orders or stock availability steps when orders come through
• charm provides Ruwag Management with a competitive advantage by allowing the sales reps to capture and submit competitor activities directly from the cell phone, e.g. take photo’s and add comments
• Communication between sales reps as well as with management has been simplified and cost reduced through a text and image chatroom function provided by the solution
• Issues of concern requiring immediate attention at customer sites are directly routed to the relevant personnel using a red flag function in the solution
• Non “value add” tasks such as verifying hand writing, waiting for a refax when required and capturing of part numbers into the system are eliminated in transactional processes
• Orders are automatically received and exported directly to the transactional system, eliminating the manual conversion of orders from part description to part numbers using parts catalogue (part number list file)
• Orders can be created offline and synchronized when a network is available and also
  • Eliminating recapturing information from a physical order at head office.
  • The human error factor is eliminated with the information flow at the head office side, which in turn cuts the stock returns and associated costs
• Synchronized details are automatically stored on the server, thus reducing loss of information to the company if phone lost or stolen

Issues Associated with Automation

Cautionary Notes

• Network unavailability or network peak time may cause delays for synchronising of processing
• Field Sales may have to revert back to the manual process if the phone is stolen, broken or battery is dead until the issue is resolved.

Challenges

• Change Management is a crucial component to the success of any automation solution – what users perceive as system issues might not be issues related to the automated solution.
• Any automated system needs to be flexible with an inherent ability for rapid change demands as organisations are likely to undergo such process changes.

Enhancement Possibilities

This case study also identified other areas of improvement that could be of benefit to Ruwag and their own customer base such as:

• Mobilise other Ruwag departments with CHARM technology
• Automate the customer order process for customers who wish to order themselves using charm
• Order tracking processes automation
• Seamlessly integrate with the Ruwag Line of Business systems
• Credit control

Table 1 – Statistics: Manual versus Automation Process

Company Profiles:

Ruwag - a family owned business started in 1992 by Mr. Wolfgang Von Ey Senior due to increased demand for high-quality drills. Since its foundation Ruwag has been synonymous with developing innovative and technologically ambitious products. Ruwag are focused on power tool accessories and believe that the drill is only as good as the drill bit used. Key to success is based on research and development, with constant exchange of experiences with the ultimate user to seek improved optimization and advancement of existing products. Alongside, the natural ongoing development of new and revolutionary items forms a strong part of daily commercial activities. Another key to success is Ruwag’s national presence, with branches located in major towns such as Cape Town and KwaZulu Natal, with the Head Office in Johannesburg and representation in all 9 provinces. Ruwag has been at the forefront of progressive innovations and have the sole right to import & distribute their offerings from Germany. A powerful financing ability and stable ownership structure coupled to their motivated workforce provides a sound foundation for the dynamic growth of the Group.

Born out of a strongly-focused internet content management and software development background since 1997, during 2003 the decision was taken to enter the wireless software development market. These interests were housed in an operating entity that was to become Bhyve, headed up by a Technical Director with extensive software development experiences in cellular phone software. Supporting his in-depth personal experiences, substantial technology, then still under development, was brought into the company. Through applying and combining large-scale internet software deployment and system integration experiences with the advanced wireless software expertise, world-class cellular wireless software technology has been created which is subject to continuous development with the first-fruits now released. Whilst the primary function of Bhyve is the building of cellular development tools' software, it can also accept the challenges of building custom-specific business and content management solutions when appropriate. Highly secure, hugely scalable, managed hosting capabilities are also offered.

Bhyve is a mobile applications solutions partner of MTN. In October 2008 MTN announced that their subscriber base exceeded 80,000,000 over their 21 operations throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Johannesburg, South Africa

October 2008