BEC (System Integration) Ltd, a leading supply chain data capture specialist, announces that trade florist and plant dealer, Tom Brown Wholesale, has invested in the company’s eSmart Voice solution to improve picking operations and speed up delivery timescales.
Tom Brown is a multi-channel business, selling directly to trade florist customers from its warehouse in the traditional way and also online, across the UK. E-commerce has expanded the company’s product range and order volumes have increased significantly. In addition, managing the multiple order profiles was proving challenging and impacting on the time needed to pick and pack orders whilst keeping flower stocks in perfect condition.
As a specialist and highly regarded trade supplier, professional florists have chosen to buy their flower stocks from Tom Brown for over 40 years. The company has a strong reputation for product quality, service excellence, attention to detail and reliability. Family owned and managed, the business has continued to grow in both size and geographical reach.
Fresh flowers have an especially short shelf life and as a company, Tom Brown Wholesale has always embraced new technology to improve warehouse efficiency and accuracy. The company operates a strict next day delivery service and a 24 hour no quibble money back guarantee. Quality is of paramount importance, both to protect the company’s reputation and avoid financial losses. As sales levels increased steadily, managing the legacy, paper-based stock control system was inefficient and difficult to operationally manage and control.
The advantages of voice-directed picking in the warehouse and distribution centre are widely proven. Voice technology helps operatives work faster and safer with hands and eyes free, cut out errors from processes and become a paperless operation. Tom Brown wants to achieve exactly these business improvements and the company approached BEC Systems Integration because of the company’s proven track record in the floristry industry. BEC’s modular eSmart solutions have been successfully deployed into multiple businesses verticals.
Tom Brown, Founder and Managing Director says, “Another floristry company we respect highly had recently implemented a voice solution from BEC and they came highly recommended for both technical capabilities and their understanding of the floral industry.” He adds, “We expect to see a significant drop in error rates and increased productivity, which in turn, means we can take on more customers without seeing an impact to service quality.”
Longer term, Tom Brown hopes to use BEC’s voice solution to help improve productivity by incentivising good working practices and recognising areas for improvement. Once operatives have become used to working with voice technology, the company will be introducing a new operating system where warehouse personnel can work towards continuous improvement following a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed) methodology.
“We expect to see a clear financial return on investment from installing voice picking but in the end having a team of happy warehouse staff and satisfied customers will be the ultimate ROI,” concludes Tom Brown. For more information on BEC visit: www.becsi.co.uk
