Warehouse Stationery invests in B2B website

By ADAM GIFFORD

Warehouse Stationery has pumped close to $2 million into a new business-to-business website involving 25 staff, including call-centre operators and sales reps.

"We have very little of the business market," said Alan Mayo, The Warehouse's general manager for information services for Warehouse Stationery and new initiatives.

"Warehouse Stationery has concentrated on Soho [small office home office] and retail. We see this as a natural progression."

The web store is built with technology from German company Intershop. It is owned by The Warehouse but hosted by Unisys at its Penrose data centre.

Customers can make orders through the internet at www.b2bstationery.co.nz, through the call centre or by fax.

Orders are processed at Wiri, using new hands-free picking technology from Vocollect.

Wiri warehouse manager Glen Murray said staff wore headsets connected to devices on their belts that told them where to pick orders.

"The warehouse management system knows where everything is, so when an order comes in it prepares a picking list in the optimum order for getting round," Mr Murray said.

"Vocollect identifies the user by the sound of their voice. If you're unsure about what you're picking you can ask it for a description of the item, check the quantities and so on."

Mr Murray said the system increased accuracy and seemed to be making the job faster. Orders are delivered by New Zealand Couriers.

Warehouse Stationery B2B manager Greg Davey said that, while ease of use and quick fulfilment were selling points for the new system, retail prices were also lower than many competitors, in keeping with The Warehouse philosophy.

As well as stationery, customers can use the site to buy office furniture, tea and coffee, computer peripherals and consumables, but not computers.

"We wanted the catalogue to be very specific to the business market, which needs a different business model to the retail stores," Mr Davey said.

Mr Mayo said various pieces of technology for the B2B business were put together in six months once the project was approved.

Intershop, which handles all ordering and cataloguing, only needed configuring, not coding. Intershop allows customers to be given unique price lists and to check previous orders and invoices. Pivotal is used for customer relationship management. Email, fax and voice are handled with a single switch through Interactive Intelligence technology from Interaction, built into Pivotal.

The warehouse management software is Tolas from Australia, and inventory management and transaction processing are done by a back-end system built by The Warehouse, Black Isle. The whole system is held together with Microsoft BizTalk.