The Dolls House Emporium operates multi warehouses at its Ripley headquarters. Computer-generated movement lists intelligently prioritise stock to ensure the right amount is in the right place and the right time. Despatch notes are only printed when the order can be fulfilled from the picking face, resulting in pickers having no down time.

Time is also of the essence in the sales office: Arx enquiry and order entry utilises the minimum of key strokes; orders from the website are input into Arx automatically; offers are applied to each customer account, with prompts for sales assistants where applicable. Arx also calculates the number of boxes per order, and the most cost-effective carrier to use, again saving operator time as well as minimising costs. The Dolls House Emporium is finding that the increase in internet orders is reducing the amount of time spent inputting order lines, but increasing the time required to answer customers' emails. This type of information from Arx is important in planning human resource, especially during peak periods.

The Dolls House Emporium has a same-day despatch policy, so anticipating warehouse manning levels is very important. Arx shows the picking and packing hours required to meet this customer service standard, and same-day despatch is achieved on 99.8% of mail orders, and 98.7% of trade orders. Carrier labels and documentation are printed automatically, saving a substantial amount of time every day, and facilitating tracking.

“Because our same-day despatch policy takes precedence, we need to know what other functions may jeopardise this priority. Arx records the time spent on many different tasks throughout the company, so we can plan to do less time-critical jobs cost effectively and out of peak periods. This also assists in making our warehouse bonus system more effective. We have set up our despatch operation to enable us to use temporary staff for packing at peak times without loss of accuracy or customer service – all the picking and validating is done by our trained, permanent staff.

“We also deal with all returns and refunds the same day. Arx prints the refund cheques automatically. We have found the “same day” policy to be very worthwhile – we're always exceeding the customers' expectations, and they don't have to telephone us to enquire about what's happening because it's already happened and on their doorstep. This means virtually all of our inbound telephone calls are either enquiries for catalogues or ordersl.

“Because we supply both mail order customers and retailers, a shift in this balance is very significant, particularly in packing time. The forecasting both in terms of sales volume and the fulfilment hours required, means that we can plan to meet our high customer service standards – not easy when you offer same-day despatch,” said Lee.