Book distributor improves customer service by modernizing order processing

Company Overview

Central Book House (CB) coordinates distribution between worldwide publishers and regional bookstores, offering innovative services in warehousing, logistics, e-fulfillment, print-on-demand and invoicing. The company packs and distribute more than 200,000 books every day to approximately 2,500 booksellers and libraries. CB also expanded its business to include international publishers who require fast and reliable distribution throughout the European Union.

Business Challenge

CB Logistics relies on automated processes to quickly fulfill client orders. To support its order processing requirements, CB developed many custom applications to manage warehouse inventory, product invoicing and general accounting processes. However, to keep service levels high amid growing complexity, CB needed to automate the intricate interactions of the home-grown order and logistical management systems among each of its 10 warehouses and 2,500 bookstores.

Solution

CB Logistics selected Redwood to automate and orchestrate processes within several key applications to enable the delivery of books on time.

Toon Koppelaars, IT Manager at CB explains “In addition to our own homegrown applications, we also run Oracle Financials. You could say that we have crafted our very own ERP application into which Redwood plays an enormous role.”

Redwood automates and orchestrates processes across both homegrown and off-the-shelf applications to complete the end-to-end business process across many key functions at CB. Often these processes span on-premises, cloud, and containerized environments and require a unified platform to seamlessly coordinate and integrate legacy applications, data and web interactions.

CB Logistics also uses Redwood to visualize and monitor these processes, using dashboards and displays that show the progress of every business process in a visual manner. If a problem occurs, Redwood provides alerts and notifications through their choice of email, SMS, apps, or integration with the company’s ticketing systems. A predictive SLA notifies CB before processes miss a deadline to enable resolution before the issue impacts service.

Results

Redwood has enabled CB to streamline order entry and better coordinate warehouse management. The company now responds immediately to changes and provides rapid email notifications to stakeholders.

“Redwood is our most business-critical component in ensuring that we fulfill orders and deliver them to our customers within the time promised,” says Koppelaars. “Without Redwood, our customers would not receive their books on time, and we could lose out to the competition should our service level drop.”

Since its implementation of Redwood, CB has continued to grow and maintain high service levels even as CB has expanded its offering into three new market areas: media, healthcare and fashion.