Case Study
ASL Case Study
The Challenge
Quotes Into Orders
ASL Global is a global provider of Promotions and Marketing Services. They work with many of the world’s most respected and iconic brands – such as Heineken, Diageo, L’Oréal, Coca-Cola and Mars –delivering on their critical campaign activations in over 150 markets across the world. ASL Global has a network of 32 Offices – supporting 29 Countries, across 6 Continents – giving local presence, while their supply chain is managed by experts both in market and in each of the main Far East sourcing hubs.
ASL faced an issue that a significant number of the quotes that they generated were not getting turned into orders. With a slow manual quotation processes hampering their ability to respond effectively. Plus, their local and global sourcing teams are linked only via emails, so that local sales teams could not easily get quotations across the full potential supplier base.
The systems that ASL Global does have were organically grown and their ability to hold vast amounts of granular data was initially very useful, however now there is an inability to see critical management information from this data: they have too much data to be effective and their processes are very bureaucratic and involve manual entry of detailed information.
In addition, most quotes need to be quick and simple, whereas some require more complexity. However, the processes are the same for both types, so the quick and simple actions are slowed by having to go through the same process as for the more complex projects. This introduces delays that can be directly related to the poor return on quotations being successful.
The Solution
Streamline Processes
The Claritum solution is enabling ASL Global to streamline the process for their financial, operational and global sourcing teams in Hong Kong and for their local sourcing and sales teams around the world. Providing a single cloud based solution that is accessible to all ASL Global’s employees and customers. Claritum was selected specifically on how it would affect the client experience – making it “incredibly apparent” that Claritum was the right solution.
Supporting a procure to Invoice process for the simple repeat purchases and also saving a significant amount of time on generating new quotes that can now be based on historical quotes.
The solution provides key real time management information to the UK based management team, at global, national and local levels for each customer. Plus, across the organisation there is consistent and accessible information that is appropriate to the local user’s role within the organisation.
Integration of their SAP ERP system was a key part of the overall project, undertaken by Claritum. Plus, ensuring that financial systems were updated with key financial data such as invoice reconciliation.
For ASL’s customers, there is a branded and centralised catalogue based customer experience portal. This uses the Claritum Customer Portal, that allows our customers to set up dedicated branded portals per customer to handle all enquiries and purchases.
Results
Better return on quotations
The most significant benefit is a better return on quotations, with most of the quotations now successful, as they are being processed using the catalog approach. With an overall higher conversion rate of calls to orders.
The system also ensures that the Finance team in Hong Kong, regional sourcing teams and the UK based leadership team are all working off the same data and being presented with critical real time information to be able to make more effective decisions relating to suppliers and customers: significantly better control and visibility with key information presented.
Invoices are now reconciled, with all errors removed, as the order to invoice matching is now an automated process.
A full Audit Trail for all transactions is available, so that any queries can be quickly investigated.
RESULTS
Access to all 32 ASL offices
The cloud based solution gives access to all 32 ASL offices and supports hundreds of customers’s offices and suppliers in 29 countries across 6 continents. Providing significant, measurable and sustainable savings across the ASL global organisation and their customers organisations.
ASL Global is able to provide a significantly faster response and better overall experience to their global clients, converting more quotes into orders, and Improving on current quote to order conversion times and the value they deliver to their customers.
They have overall a better Integration between the teams of finance, sales and sourcing that has provided significant efficiency gains for ASL Global compared to their previous manual processes.
