Online Distribution Limited (ODL) distributes confectionery, grocery, snack foods, drinks, automotive consumables and cleaning products to nearly every service station in New Zealand – including Z Energy, BP, Caltex, Mobil, Night and Day and a few independents. As you’d expect, that adds up to a lot of orders to process.
ODL General Manager Phil Huddleston points out that before Upstock many of those orders went sideways, wasting time and money.
“We service around 700 customers per week, with around 1,000 lines they could order from. Prior to Upstock, around half of these customers had to have their orders manually keyed by my team, which was hugely time consuming and also generated keying errors.”
That combination of so many customers, ordering so many different products every week, caused costly coding mistakes when it was all done manually, before it was automated with Upstock.
“Whenever you key an order, you're going to get a 20-30% error rate. Now with Upstock, error wise we have very few credits due to incorrect ordering and have reduced our return freight bill.”
Phil was initially hesitant to give Upstock a try. He assumed his customers weren't likely to be keen on any new tech. But he was pleasantly surprised when he saw them take to it so quickly, eagerly and easily.
“Our customers had been telling us for a while they wanted to see our pricing, something we couldn't do easily before Upstock. Now customers love the visibility of pricing, using Upstock. They’ve been really good adopters. We've now transitioned around 80% of customers to Upstock and that has hugely freed up my team. Customers can now see when items are out of stock. And it’s so easy to communicate with customers, a simple message saves so many unnecessary phone calls and emails.”
Now with customers keying in their own orders on Upstock mistakes are rare and he’s saving huge amounts of time.
More importantly, he’s massively cut his return freight bill.
“Before Upstock, each week we had 20-30 orders keyed wrong that needed to be returned. That doesn't sound like much, but the freight and time costs used to really add up. Couriers are really expensive when you’re paying reverse logistics to get the product back. Then there’s the process of going through phone calls to actually organise the courier.”
More from our chat with Phil Huddleston:
What were your first impressions of Upstock?
Initially, I stepped back from it. I was a little hesitant. Then I just took some time to have a look at it. Once I understood it a bit more I thought ‘I'll give it a go’. Thank goodness I did!
What were your expectations of Upstock before giving it a go?
I didn't have huge expectations because I wasn't sure that my customers would adopt it to the degree they have. I thought it was gonna be like pulling teeth. So I've been pleasantly surprised by their speed of uptake. Now I’m at the point where I really want that final, probably 20% of customers on there too.
What are your favourite features and why?
For us, obviously not having to key in orders is our favourite thing. But more importantly, being able to see what our customers are ordering before we accept the order and being able to respond to them through the messaging. So the fact that you've got the little notation function at the bottom of the order where you can just go back to them and talk to them and say ‘You've ordered this wrong, or are you sure you want that product when it's not part of your normal planogram?’ That means I can head off potential mistakes or confusion with a quick message that’s attached to the order. So that's really useful. Messaging in the app means you're connecting where you know they are already engaged and it’s another tool that reinforces how useful Upstock is for them.
