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Purch-lympics Entry #1 - Round #5
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David Ah-Tow
Product Logistics Administrator, Midrand, South Africa
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"I work at an IT distributor as a Product Logistics Administrator, based in Midrand, Gauteng, Republic of South Africa.
I procure all Hewlett Packard IPG and PSG stock - Printers, Notebooks, HP desktops, etc
The sales dept (approximately 250 Consultants) need ETA dates of all ordered stock in an MS Excel summary form on a daily basis in order to quote/update their clients accordingly. This is compiled from various files that are downloaded from the HP Portal.
A few months ago, HP introduced an upgraded reporting service to replace the older version. The old reporting service involved downloading files on a daily basis which would then be manually manipulated in MS Exel once exported. This gave visibility on a variety of info such as Total items ordered, actual qty's shipped, and Vendor order numbers as well as an estimated delivery date.
Unfortunately, this report did not show the actual shipping status of the items in transit once the container was collected by the Freight Forwarder (FF).
In order to obtain this info, the Waybill or LUX number would need to be obtained from the Portal for a particular shipment/Line Item and cross referenced to a report sent to us by the FF. Very time consuming indeed when 100's of line items need this info.
The new version of the Reporting service allowed a complete customized report to be e-mailed to me daily. It included PackID's but unfortunately not the LUX Numbers.
I then asked the Freight Forwarder (FF) to include these PackID's in their report as it only included LUX Numbers at the time. I then Vertically Looked up in MS Excel the PackID's off the HP report against the PackID's in the FF's report in order to get the LUX number.
I then cross-referenced this LUX number back to the FF report which enabled me to find the Flight Number, Flight Date, Customs release date, Delivery status, Package QTY'S, etc of the shipment.
Sounds like something that should always have been available, but it wasn't.
This level and depth of visibility proved to be very effective as evidenced in the drastic drop in ETA update requests vie e-mail, phn calls and personal visits. Our overall efficiency on the logistical side of this Vendor had a marked improvement."
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