Today we take a look at Leon Paul and their experience of implementing automation in their business and the benefits that it brings. Implementing automation can help transform warehouses into places
where people want to work and in Leon Paul’s case they are even considering offering employees a four day working week, such is the impact that their new solution has brought to the business.
Leon Paul
Only six years ago, Leon Paul was picking from 4,500 sport fencing products with a selection of various paper printouts. This had led to a demoralised team, a phone ringing off the hook with customer enquiries and a lack of stock management.
While the London-based manufacturer had accounts and ecommerce software in place, there was no connected system and too many manual processes. The fourth generation family firm needed a connected system, one which would bring efficiency to the warehouse, help manage products and purchasing, and in turn would clean up the customer experience.
For me it was just about applying a level of organisation, traceability, accountability, efficiency, and stop the phone ringing.
– James Fay, commercial director, Leon Paul
To this end, Leon Paul invested in an ERP solution, WMS system and business intelligence software.
Growing Pains
While Fay knew something had to be done, and investing in a solution was necessary to advance the business, such a transition and the implementation was strenuous.
“We had three months of utter pain” admits James, due in part to the unique nature of the business.
Not only do Leon Paul offer over 4,000 physical products, these can make up to 150,000 sales options for their customers, they need to be able to bring entire kits together. The team had to find ways and workarounds to get what they needed from their new Orderwise solution.
We’ve just got on and figured it out. You then make these things work for you. The system itself is very good. The information it has is very good. It is not necessarily the easiest product to use first out of the box.
But then I would always ask, do you remember the first time someone asked you to make an Excel spreadsheet?
– James Fay, commercial director, Leon Paul
In fact, many members of the Leon Paul team have become system back office experts, and want to learn even more.
Four Day Future
Fay now hopes his team can be “energised” and become more efficient in using the solution to such an extent that a four-day week may be a possibility in the future.
If we can have the systems and the processes in place to make sure that people’s work rates are more efficient, so they can produce more without doing more, we can send them home the other day.
– James Fay, commercial director, Leon Paul
This is a case study from the new DeliveryX Automation within reach in 2023 white paper, which has further case studies and discussion around the advantages and flexibility automation offers when responding to issues like supply chain disruption or demand change.
