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:
- Local support was an important criteria for us.
- 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
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