Here in Hong Kong, space is at an ultimate premium. At Haleon, we ensure that more than 200 pharmacies don’t waste shelf space by supplying a wide range of products, including oral health, vitamins, minerals and supplements, and over-the-counter medications such as pain relief, respiratory and digestive products, and more.
We target 99% on time in full (OTIF) fulfillment of deliveries. To meet this, we must process all orders we receive before 3 p.m. by the end of the same working day. Any delays to order processing can have a knock-on effect on picking and processing the items at our warehouses and getting them to our customers.
For more than a decade, we’ve successfully relied on automation from OpenText to process orders received through EzTrade, a platform for electronic data interchange (EDI) operated by the GS1 consortium in Hong Kong. However, the burden on our order processing team was excessive for the 30% of our customers who send orders to us manually via email and fax. Our team often worked late into the evening, re-keying data from paper or emails into our SAP system, increasing the risk of human error.
Time for change to our
OpenText Trading Grid powers the EzTrade EDI platform and it runs in the OpenText Business Network Cloud. Our positive experience with OpenText via the EzTrade platform made OpenText our top choice for a data capture solution. We knew that OpenText could offer extensive geographical reach and experience in the fast-moving consumer goods and healthcare industries.
OpenText began working on designing the business logic for our new solution. Running securely in the Azure cloud, it extracts the relevant data from customer orders sent as faxes, emails or PDFs and automatically enters it into our SAP system for onward processing. Best of all, OpenText delivered the project on time and within budget.
Midway through the implementation, Haleon separated from our former parent company, GSK. We suddenly had much fewer technical support resources at our disposal. Still, we were delighted to discover that we didn’t need them because the OpenText solution was designed to be lightweight and simple to manage.
Enjoying the benefits of better data capture
With our new data capture solution from OpenText in place, we’ve succeeded in automating the processing of non-EDI orders—and best of all, our customers see no difference. We’ve increased our level of straight-through processing from 70% to 90%, covering almost all our customers across Hong Kong.
The impact on the employees dedicated to order processing has been dramatic. Rather than working on data entry until 5 p.m. most days, we save at least 20 hours of manual effort per week. This time can be diverted to engaging with our customers, which helps lift their satisfaction levels.
By automating data capture with OpenText, we’re drastically reducing the risk of human error at Haleon. Our OTIF deliveries have increased from around 98.5% in the past to more than 99%. With a more efficient and robust supply chain enabled by OpenText, we’re helping our customers make the best use of precious shelf space.
This is just another step in our process automation journey, and we’re excited to have OpenText as a partner along the way.
