30 January 2014

Phoenix’s warehouse management system allows the Stobart team to effectively monitor where pallets are within the warehouse and their progress during the delivery cycle.

Eddie Stobart Chilled Distribution needs constant uptime of business-critical IT systems to ensure smooth supply chain logistics to major UK retailers and manufacturers.

The firm’s cross-docking process is centred on the transfer, picking and consolidation of chilled loads of fresh produce, and it relies on the latest IT to ensure that loads match the orders from individual supermarkets. The warehouse operation works 24 hours a day where any downtime would have a massive impact on the entire retail supply chain.

“As we deal with fresh produce, we rely on our warehouse management software and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) infrastructure to support this fast moving element of our business,” says Vince Sparks, IT director for the Stobart Group. “If our IT systems fail, orders will not be sent out on time and our large retail customers’ operations will be adversely effected.”

IT services provider Phoenix now remotely monitors Stobart’s EDI and provides hardware break-fix support for the system on which the picking operation relies. The warehouse management system allows the Stobart team to effectively monitor where pallets are within the warehouse and their progress during the delivery cycle.

The EDI system also proactively communicates with customers, including order updates and expected delivery times, to ensure that they are ready to take delivery of goods at stores.

“For such a fast moving operation, it’s essential that we can effectively communicate with our customers to keep them informed to ensure that they are primed to take deliveries,” says Sparks. “We rely on EDI for inbound and outbound messaging to communicate with their systems, and Phoenix’s proactive monitoring identifies any message issues, avoiding problems.”

As part of the systems monitoring process, Phoenix delivers monthly management reports. It says that this not only gives an accurate overview of performance against the agreed SLA, it also helps the teams to identify any problem patterns for speedy resolution before they impact business operations.

Phoenix also supports Stobart’s UK chilled sites with a managed IT service for all core hardware, such as servers, with a break-fix service across the warehousing and administrative parts of the business. It works with the Stobart internal helpdesk, which escalates user queries to Phoenix’s nationwide network of engineers. They then rectify the problem on site within agreed SLAs that are prioritised according to the hardware’s operational necessity to the business.