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Arla Foods automates delivery discrepancies

By Retail Technology | Wednesday June 19 2013

Tightens its approach to processing differences arising with eGRNs generated by its delivery schedule with OmPrompt

Arla Foods has just revealed a new service from OmPrompt that automates the manual processing of delivery discrepancy documentation. 

As the UK’s largest dairy company, Arla makes 4,000 deliveries to stores and distribution centres a day. This activity can generate over 2,500 electronic goods receipt notes (GRNs) per customer, per week.

Ian Singleton, logistics support general manager at Arla, commented: “Typically on a Monday, one member of the customer logistics team would spend the day going through just one major retailer’s delivery discrepancies. They would then do the same for our third party customers, and then process the claims received from our other retail customers.”

When Arla announced last year it was to merge with another major dairy co-operative Milk Link, it engaged OmPrompt to streamline this reconciliation process.

Speeding up previously manual tasks

The OmPrompt claims validation service uses logic to dispose of unnecessary information. It also enables the retailer’s GRN data to be compared to that stored in the supplier’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, providing validation of delivery discrepancies automatically.

Many retailers give suppliers a limited time period in which to respond to claims. During investigation, it is not uncommon for the retailer to send further updates to the GRN. The OmPrompt service works to continuously amend the original claims, which ensures that those claims reported to Arla will be the final ones requiring investigation.

Following the project, Arla’s logistics support team has more time to focus on investigating and defending claims and can concentrate on activity that adds value to Arla. For example, the team has found that looking for patterns and trends in the claims data can unveil specific problems, which can now be identified and addressed.

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