2009 Testimonials

Click a link below to go directly
to the testimonial:

2009 Customer Testimonials

 

  31 March 2009
   

SAB Ltd, the South African subsidiary of SABMiller PLC, started our journey with OPSI Systems at the beginning of 2006. At that time, our business operations came to the conclusion that due to the complexity of our Route to Market, the increasing of our customer base, and the growth of our product offering, there was an increasing need to improve our routing and scheduling capability. We had 23 installations of Descartes’ Roadshow application in our Distribution Centres and an investigation was started to review the current operational requirements and the possible applications that would support this. The outcome of this investigation, along with back-to-back testing, was that OPSI Systems’ FLO application was selected to be implemented, from May 2006, at all SAB Ltd’s Beer division Distribution Centres, a total of 40 sites.

The critical success factors for the selection of FLO was firstly that OPSI systems was a South African company that could offer local support and faster turnaround on updates and enhancements. Secondly, as OPSI was a local company, the licensing and support costs would be in South African rand and consequently not impacted by exchange rate risks of dollar based pricing.

In 2006, SAB Ltd then bought out the minority shareholders of ABI (Amalgamated Beverage Industries) and became the Soft-drinks division of SAB Ltd. This change consequently brought on a similar investigation to that of Beer division with the outcome being to implement FLO in all the ABI Distribution Centres, a total of 21 sites, by the beginning of 2008. It must be noted that in both the investigations that were undertaken, it was a SAB operations decision to implement FLO with the IT department only giving input into the selection process. The number of installations of FLO currently stands at about 62 Distribution Centres.

OPSI Systems is now in a unique position to provide SAB Ltd with solutions to the various routing and scheduling scenarios for our Route to Market. An example of this is that our Full Service Vending business runs a specialised OPSI application (OVAL) that integrates into FLO and provides the capability of forecasting and predicting sales based on a number of inputs and then to schedule routes to fill all the Can Vending machines in the Gauteng area.

I am pleased to say that OPSI systems have a very good working and professional relationship with SAB Ltd, with the relationship extending to strategic, tactical and operational levels of both SAB Beer and Soft Drinks divisions. From an operations perspective, OPSI provide SAB with 24 by 7 support of FLO and OVAL which has seen our incident SLA improve from around 60% to over 85%. OPSI Systems also provide resources to perform ongoing systems anchoring to our FLO users so that skills and scheduling ability improves to the benefit of our customers and business.

At a tactical level we use OPSI expertise to perform delivery day and customer call date analysis; and have piloted a Pick by Delivery Sequence algorithm which we have now implemented into our core SAP ERP solution. On a strategic level, FLO is now the standard Routing and Scheduling application in SAB Ltd and SABMiller Africa&Asia with the application portfolio now extending to OPSI’s PLATO application in SAB Ltd.’s Supply Chain department.

It is a testament to OPSI Systems that they are SAB Ltd’s first point of call when investigating options and solutions to routing and scheduling problems faced by our business and we look forward to their ongoing willingness and highly valued expertise in dealing with our current and future business challenges.

Yours sincerely

Bruce Mattheus

Business Systems Manager: Sales &Distribution

The South African Breweries Limited

^ back to top ^


  16 March, 2009
   

KHALIL HADDAD

Trade Systems Support Manager

British American Tobacco South Africa

16 March 2009

Opsi Systems was contracted by British American Tobacco (BAT) South Africa in 2007 as our preferred supplier for our Field Force Routing software. BAT South Africa had embarked on the final stages of our direct supply chain project. This was the largest project we had undertaken in the history of the company, as well as being scored by our project office as the most complex project– Level 5. The complexity of the project was due to the mammoth task of changing our supply chain model from using third party wholesalers to supplying direct to the retailer. This involved all aspects of the business from HR, Finance, Brand Marketing, Trade Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing, IT, Risk & Security, Legal, and Corporate Relations.

OPSI ’s role was to provide BAT and DHL with routing software for our specific needs. Their software, FLO, was chosen over Road Show for 2 main reasons:

  1. Local support was an important criteria for us.
  2. Our Third Party Logistics Company was also using FLO, which meant collectively we had one supplier who could grow with us to understand our complete ordering and delivery requirements.

FLO had to be customised from a Delivery Routing software program to an Orders Routing software program to suit our business model. This Opsi completed to our exact specifications which were basically:

  • The ability to define territories based on workload and geography.
  • The ability to route customers with different visit frequencies ranging from weekly to quarterly.
  • The ability to calculate the number of visits that could be done in a day based on the planned call duration of each visit.
  • The ability to interface FLO Routes with our Customer Relations Software Program – Siebel product and also uploading routes into Garmin GPS devices.
  • Develop a Reporting suite to support our needs to analyse the routes and also display them geographically for our Representatives.

Opsi I am very happy to say met all deadlines timeously, which aften meant long hours due to the extremely tough deadlines to complete the project on time. Orders Routing was, in fact, the first part of the Project to go live 6 months before deliveries did.

After the Orders Routing Go Live we naturally had enhancements we wanted and support during the teething months which ranged from tweeking scripts, to running our routes scheduling for us because our systems were too slow or we had power cuts that interrupted our runs and weren’t going to make deadlines.

We also asked for a whole range of new reports in December 2008 which have been produced successfully.

Overall besides the great product, FLO, which sells itself, the most reassuring part of our relationship with Opsi is the after sales service and support. They are second to none on my list of software providers as a whole. Being local has made all the difference for speed to market of changes and understanding our business’s needs and demands being unique to South Africa.

The level of expertise and subject knowledge they have brought to the table to help us on our journey since 2007 has been outstanding and honest. Honest in that they know their limitations and have also advised us on where they think we could make improvements or should even change our approach for maximum benefit.

This attitude has only lead to their growth and advance in product innovations. They have provided a far more complex solution to our third party logistics company and this was a resounding success with our first delivery taking place on time and in full. A huge success for our market as other First World markets on go live didn’t manage to deliver on time and in full from the first day.

BAT South Africa’s Direct Supply Project, due to it’s success, has been used as a benchmark for our BAT Company’s around the world. As a result of this Opsi was called by our UK office last year for advice and Information on their software. This is tremendous as BAT Globally recommends Roadshow.

Yours truly,

Khalil Haddad

^ back to top ^


  2 March, 2009
   

Jarlath Quinn , Group Finance Director : “OPSI Systems completed the installation of PLATO at Westland Horticulture with great attention to detail and worked far above and beyond what was expected to ensure that the system went Live.  Since Go-Live they have provided support for the system and on the rare occasion that we have any issues they are resolved quickly, regardless of the time difference between the two countries. The benefit to Westland over the last 15 months has been exceptional, a more streamlined planning process, quicker access to information, greater control of our haulier invoices, as well as an increase in load efficiency.”

Paul McKernan, Group Head of IT: "Previously, all of our planning knowledge resided with one person. With the implementation of PLATO, that knowledge is now contained within the system and our planners can now more efficiently process trips. On top of that, the high level of ongoing support that we receive allows us to continue operating smoothly."

Ian Hobson, Distribution Manager for the Irish Operation: “We don’t have to continually run planning lists. Previously we had to wait until all the orders were on the system before we could run our planning lists. Now we are able to filter the orders through to Plato when they are received without the necessity to run planning lists.”

Stephan Black, a Planner for the UK Operation: “With the automatic generation of GRN’s, we are saving a lot of administration time which was previously spent on manual invoice passing.”

^ back to top ^

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer |  ©2011 OPSI Systems (Pty) Ltd