Buzz-worthy Customer Service
Founded in 1972, Coffee Bean International Inc. (CBI), is one of North America's first roasters of specialty coffees. Unlike most wholesale roasters, CBI does not operate or own retail stores, preferring to deliver its distinctive blends of teas and coffees to over 2,000 accounts sprinkled throughout North America.
A core component of CBI's sales program is devoted to serving what the company deems "Neighborhood Sales", targeting independently owned stores; and "National Sales", targeting quality-oriented multi-unit coffee cafes, coffee houses and bakery cafes. CBI evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of every program in every account, and then matches or improves key coffees, develops quality standards and training materials, and even creates brand-enhancing point-of-sale materials.
Customer Comes First
Due to this customer-focused strategy, CBI has a very short turnaround time in its manufacturing procedures and, oftentimes, builds a lot of inventory in a single day, according to Hazel Philbrook, Information Systems manager, CBI. "Likewise, we process and ship many orders in a single day. Finding a solution that serves both of these needs was important and not easy for us."
CBI has been using the services of Syspro since 1993. When CBI selected Syspro, the company was looking for capabilities that offered both robust manufacturing and distribution solutions. Today, CBI can slice and dice data in a variety of different ways, says Philbrook.
"Syspro's great strength for us is how easy it is to make data available to other applications." CBI production people, for instance, use an access database that collects standard costs for inventory items from Syspro's Bill of Materials module combined with time clock and payroll information from stand alone systems. This is combined with actual production time and units along with scheduling time and units in an Access database to allow near real-time info from the shop floor about item costs.
Future Flexibility
Customer Problem Reporting, another Syspro application, is an Access solution where invoice information is combined with shipping information from the UPS Worldship database to give detailed information in near real time. "From this combination of information our customer service staff can look at shipping weights, delivery dates and orders costs without leaving their desks," says Philbrook. "Our integrated systems...not only give us necessary business information but they allow to catch errors quickly -- often at stage when the mistakes are not as costly to correct. Billing errors, late orders, inventory shortages, problems with the bills of material all show up quickly and can be corrected before the problems reach our customers."