Reckitt & Colman - Telesales Transfer Order System

The Company

Reckitt & Colman are a global FMCG company with an impressive portfolio of top-branded household, toiletry and pharmaceutical products including Lemsip, Disprin, Dettol, Mr Sheen, Harpic and Haze. The company has offices world-wide with it’s major UK location being it’s manufacturing plant based at Hull in East Yorkshire.

The Requirement

Reckitt & Colman required a system to fully automate the telesales process within the Hull location initially, but ultimately, the system was to have the potential to be rolled out globally wherever transfer orders occur. Time pressure required the project to be completed within 6 months.

The system needed to span the complete process from the initial calling of customers and prospects, through to the entering of customer orders, and finally the electronic transfer of the orders on a daily basis to the relevant stockist of the products.

The sales cycle is very much driven by distinct campaigns. The system was required to generate computer based lists of the companies to be called, allocated to the individual telesales operators, and each call was to have a particular priority and exact time to make the call.

Orders were to be added interactively whilst the operator was talking to the customer or on a direct entry basis as a result of orders taken by the field based sales personnel. These orders, known as Transfer Orders, form a major part of the system requirement.

Transfer orders are where orders are taken from independent pharmacies by reps or telesales and then transferred electronically for fulfilment to one of five major wholesalers. The significance of getting this right for these orders can be understood when one considers that half of all pharmacies in the UK are independently owned and therefore order in this way.

Some 2,000 transfer orders are processed monthly which means that the system needs to be superbly efficient and able to maintain a massive translation table containing individual customer numbers and pack codes.
A further requirement of the system was an interface with the company-wide BPCS system.

The Solution

Having searched for a solution over a period of time, including demonstrations of various off the shelf products, the R&C project team decided that a bespoke solution was required. They contacted F1 Computing Systems to discuss their requirements.

After a number of meetings a detailed work estimate was produced to provide a system with the required functionality. Agreement was reached to progress to the next stage in the development process, i.e. the completion of a detailed functionality specification.

The system was developed using Microsoft Visual FoxPro, running on a Windows 95/NT Platform. F1 utilised their own programming methodology and interface standards. This allowed for a rapid development of a quality, user friendly system meeting the precise needs of Reckitt & Colman.

The Process

The detailed specification, including system prototypes, was completed within two months. This process was very intensive and meticulous as the document was to form the basis of the agreement between the two companies.

After a number of review meetings the specification was agreed and work began. The system was delivered in a number of pre-defined phases. Each phase was fully tested by the actual users, and signed off before work on the subsequent phase began.

Commercial Benefits

One example of time and cost saving is in reduced call-backs to pharmacists too busy to place orders when contacted. The system allows the pharmacist’s availability to be recorded and schedules the call appropriately.

Additionally, the program means that the operators can sell more easily because they can call up the history for each customer at the touch of a button. What’s more, telesales, sales reps and the customer services department, will now all use one database where previously there were three, encouraging greater teamwork. Finally the system is millennium compliant so will keep running long after the year 2000.

Alan Oliver, Decision Support, commented ‘This exercise proved to be a brilliant example of multi-disciplinary teamwork working. The system was launched to schedule and to budget - which is quite something to achieve.’