Rothco

Order Fulfilment Mastery

The foremost distributor of military and outdoor apparel and equipment in the United States, Rothco has a domestic and international customer and supplier base that includes support of a domestic manufacturing facility for its apparel. With year-over-year annual corporate growth in excess of 10%, Rothco is focussed on increasing its market share in its traditional business, as well as taking advantage of the growing military "fashion" market.

Primarily a distribution organization, Rothco is committed to offering exceptional customer service. Customers can place orders easily and be assured of +99.5% order fulfillment - which Rothco believes is crucial to its success. To maximize customer satisfaction, Rothco has mandated and almost always achieves an "order to ship" turn around time of less than three hours, even during peak holiday seasons.

Rothco's Mission: To maintain status and improve market share as the foremost supplier of military apparel and outdoor products through superior customer service and complete, accurate order-to-ship within three hours.

Rothco imports approximately 40% of its product line and exports 30% of the goods from its warehouse in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.

In July 1997, Rothco began searching for a technology solution that could provide full enterprise-wide distribution as well as to support import sourcing and export sales. The company clearly understood its business IT requirements and had in place some applications that supported its critical customer service needs, although in a non-integrated and un-synchronized environment.

To achieve its strategic objective of 10% annual growth, Rothco needed to replicate its high volume order entry system and increase its order fulfillment ratio while maintaining its exceptional order to ship target of three hours.

To increase order fulfillment without increasing inventory levels, Rothco would require visibility into its warehouse at the SKU/lot level. It set a goal of +99% order fulfillment (if a SKU was accepted on an order, it had to be shipped +99% of the time). If an item was not available at the time of order placement, Rothco wanted to place the item on backorder with a very high level of fulfillment against the committed date. To achieve these goals, Rothco's sales and customer service representatives would have to have accurate status of inventory prior to making a commitment to ship any items

Rothco's Challenge: To find a complete global enterprise import/export, sourcing and distribution solution that would provide full import/ export functionality, rapid order entry capability, high levels of visibility into their global supply chain and detailed reporting for Government compliance auditing.

To complicate matters, Rothco often deals in restricted merchandise. To meet Government compliance requirements, the solution needed to alert their operators when products that required special handling or were restricted from sale to a customer or country were being ordered. The solution also had to produce any country any time visibility for complete audit records supporting compliance regulations and reporting requirements.

After one year and a review of more than 30 software vendor reviews, Rothco selected Blinco System's 3rdwave Global Supply Chain Execution solution as its enterprise-wide application. The selection process was so intensive and lengthy because, prior to contact with BSI, Rothco had great difficulty finding distribution applications that could also capably provide full import and export functionality, along with robust domestic distribution and global logistics capability.

BSI's 3rdwave gave Rothco an application that had all the elements it required to capably run its current business. 3rdwave would also provide Rothco with a solid technology application platform for its future plans. Incorporating domestic distribution, importing, exporting, inbound tracking, inventory control, accounting and finance into one completely integrated environment, 3rdwave provided a solid foundation to help Rothco achieve its operating and financial goals.

To meet all of Rothco's business objectives and processes, BSI modified 3rdwave to:

• support rapid order entry by providing, full customer profile with multiple 'ship to' and 'bill to' selections;
• provide accurate on-line SKU-level inventory availability for order fulfillment - including on-the-fly color-size allocation;
• note customer specific, on-line multi-level pricing with real-time credit checking (usually within 10 seconds);
• provide total 100% global pipeline visibility from P.O. placement through inbound shipments into the distribution warehouse;
• support product and country compliance requirements and produce all domestic export shipping documentation - integrate with 3rd party carrier document software;
• integrate accounting, financial and reporting activity to provide real-time positioning of accounts;
• seamlessly integrate front-office with warehouse processes;
• support efficient order-picking and packing to meet 3 hour "order to ship" objective; and
• be easy and quick to use, as well as allow seasonal staff to be 'trained' to use 3rdwave within an hour in order to complete their job functions.

The system had to be flexible to support Rothco's very dynamic business environment. Operating in the fashion industry, Rothco had to be able to adjust quickly to changing customer tastes

The Solution: Find a company that had the application knowledge and demonstrated ability to deliver a full-featured, ultra-fast and already proven solution for domestic and international distribution and sourcing in the apparel industry.

Finding a system that supported and improved on Rothco's current order entry efficiency and productivity were dominant factors in the application selection process. Rothco's legacy order entry system processed +12 multiple color/size SKU's orders in less than 5 minutes. This metric would have to be met and/or exceeded by 3rdwave.

Working collaboratively with Rothco's selection team, BSI's implementation team developed a holistic approach to meet the company's necessary IT solution requirements.

Front and back office functions would be (and have been) functionally integrated in a real-time environment for Rothco to meet its stated objectives of +99% order fulfillment.

Rothco's definition of order fulfillment means that once a customer service representative accepts an item on an order, that item must be available to ship from the warehouse +99% of the time within a three-hour window

If an item is accepted for backorder, Rothco's target is that +99% of the time, the item will be shipped within the time committed to its customer(s).

3rdwave provides Rothco with this capability. Rothco's customer service representatives, while processing a customer order, are able to view on one screen a complete up-to-date customer profile. While processing SKUs, the CSR is automatically alerted if an item is not available for immediate shipment. The CSR can view when the item will be available to the customer to complete its backorder. If the item is on a restricted list, 3rdwave issues an on-line alert.

3rdwave's full catalog repository for all of Rothco's products can also make on-screen suggestions of substitute items without ever disrupting the order process flow. Because Rothco is an apparel and consumer goods soft goods distributor, 3rdwave provides its CSR's with the additional capability of allocating SKU quantities against specific color/size combinations without leaving the initial order entry screen.

Other order entry features supported by 3rdwave are Rothco's customer-specific, up-to-date pricing lists. This feature allows operators to see the best price/quantity categories for an item and make knowledgeable and appropriate recommendations to their customers of how they may save money by ordering at different quantity levels.

The real benefits to Rothco are that all its business processes are now integrated and information is functionally synchronized across their entire its company-wide system. As soon as an order is processed, it is automatically approved or ready for manual credit approval. Pick lists are also made immediately available in the warehouse, including the most efficient suggested pick routes. Once an order is picked, quality assured and packed, 3rdwave is able to automatically generate the carrier bill of lading (and all Customs documentation if the order is to be exported), the packing list and an invoice that has proven to be 100% accurate. All Rothco's inventory (including those in-transit) and accounting records are automatically updated and balanced.

Results: Rothco maintains its ultra-high speed order entry process, continues to be the leader in its specific market segment while having fully-integrated both its back and front offices and all warehouses. 3rdwave has also supported Rothco in continually increasing order fulfillment rates and reducing on-line order entry errors, thus providing better customer service and extraordinary customer satisfaction and loyalty levels.

Managers have absolute real-time visibility into global sales, purchasing and financial information on an as-required basis.

Rothco's manager for Information Technology, Anthony Prossi:

"When we began our solution search, we thought there would be standard software that would address the needs of our business. We quickly learned that very few software vendors have the understanding of domestic business and global sourcing and distribution. BSI was the only vendor who brought together an understanding of the global supply chain and sophisticated software development capabilities in one package. We're happy we found them (BSI), and they were able to deliver 3rdwave to meet our specific and demanding requirements."