Stephen Morris – Joint Managing Director Growth and Efficiency through E-Commerce

Liscombe 130 yr old, 4 th generation family company Manufacturing and distributing PPE to major UK companies Employing 80 Turnover £15m Based Newport, South Wales

Product Range

The Market Challenge Customer base is ‘Blue Chip’ Competition are large companies How do we compete and grow?

The Admin Challenge Efficiency of administration Cost of employment Value added employment rather than ‘Donkey work’ Accuracy of information – too much human input

Technology Solution We saw e-commerce as ………..Computerisation #2 Technology could help us grow without increasing costs Smart use of technology could level the competition playing field and even tilt it in our direction

What happened? Approached our ERP systems supplier with our ideas Impaq Business Solutions (a Microsoft Certified Partner) developed xDE toolset Found a willing customer partner (major UK car plant). Established ‘e’-connection – via XML links Integrated back office operations Now have totally paperless trading ability

The Science Bit Standard Microsoft tools (BizTalk Server,.Net Framework etc) Industry standard catalogue format (CIF3) Industry standard messaging formats (cXML, eBIS-XML etc)

Traditional Business Flow Liscombe Customer Paper Product Catalogue Paper/Fax Order Acknowledgement Goods & Despatch Note Paper Invoice Payment & Remittance Sales Order Purchase Order G.R.N. Customer Manually Matches to GRN

E-Commerce Business Flow Liscombe Customer Electronic Catalogue cif Order cXML Acknowledgement Paper Despatch Note Self Bill Invoice Payment & Remittance Automatic loadAutomatic raising G.R.N. Data Fields populated Build e-catalogue Automatic send Automatic update Automatic Invoice matching Automatic send Transaction Complete Pick Goods

Six manual tasks and six pieces of paper replaced by 5 automated processes and one piece of paper Human error taken out of order process Liscombe staff can focus on customers’ needs instead of processing paperwork Proven improved response times Cost savings through improved administration Process Efficiency

System Flexibility Not all customers work the same way Marketplaces Ariba Point to Point Amazon-style web buying

The Results Paperless trading capability Growth of 20% in without extra staffing Greater customer focus through freed-up time Able to market our IT capabilities

The Present & Future Rolling out to more customers Rolling out to suppliers – Supplier Portal Integrating Web site ordering to enable a low cost sign up for customers