TIE Magazine #2: Quantore reduces integral cost price with e-commerce

XXxxQuantoreMission Quantore wants to be the best partner for the office supplies trade in the Benelux countries. To that end, Quantore offers its members the best deal and assists them on their way to commercial success.

Vision Quantore is an organisation that has been created by and for its members and which promotes the interests of its members as best as possible. Together with its members, Quantore ap-proaches the market honestly and transparently. Future The future offers a host of opportunities and possibilities for continuing to grow into a leader in efficiency. Optimum logistics and the use of ICT and e-commerce will help to lower costs further without compromising service and quality.

Quantore’s new warehouse in Beuningen

Marc Gijsberts (left) and Wilbert Hofmeester

TIE ~ 2/2010 ~ P5

BUSINESS INTEGRATIONText Cees Steijger ~ Photography Marcel R. Bakker

Quantorereduces integral cost price

with e-commerce

A cooperative society with over 500 members

ers with products faster and easier. And Quantore continues to develop in the fields of e-commerce and automation too. “We actively support our customers in ICT and e-commerce in order to achieve more sales, efficiency and distinctive capability in the industry,” says Marc Gijsberts, who manages

For more than 90 years, Quantore has been purchasing office supplies, and providing logistic and sales

support. Quantore focuses primarily on purchasing and logistics. By purchasing in bulk, Quantore can offer its members good conditions that enable them to keep their prices low. “We want our members to be able to differentiate themselves in the market both in terms of price and product range and quality,” says Wilbert Hofmeester, Marketing Manager at Quan-tore. We talked to him and to Quantore’s ICT Manager Marc Gijsberts in Quan-tore’s brand new offices and state-of-the-art distribution centre close to the A73 motorway in Beuningen, near Nijmegen. This striking building, equipped with the latest technology and systems, was designed by the Czech architect and artist Borek Sipek, famous for his strikingly colourful designs.

Direct “In our logistics centre, there are more than fifteen thousand products

Quantore Europe is the biggest stockist and purchasing and sales organisation for office supplies in the Benelux. Quantore is a cooperative society of more than five hundred office supplies

specialists, focussing on the private and business-to-business markets.

suppliers are connected via TIE software to our back-office. We send our members and suppliers a fixed set of messages. For members we call that TradelinQ, a set of XML messages that enable them to place orders from their own ERP back-office environment. For our sixty suppliers, the standard is PBS Easy in EDIFACT format. We are the central hub for all product and article information that we release to the web systems, our own systems and our customers’ systems.” At the moment, the Messaging Portal processes 50,000 mes-sages per year and it is expected that this number will rise considerably in the years to come.

Drop shipments Marc expects that this rise will come mostly from an increase in the number of so-called drop shipments. These are web orders that are received through the members’ webshops and delivered directly to the end-user by Quantore. This enables Quantore to re-duce the integral cost price. “In the supply chain, the cost of stocking at two locations is, by definition, higher than distributing from one central location. Customers who supply from their own stock pay more

the implementation of the strategic information plan at Quantore. One of the features of this ambitious plan is the use of online technology in combina-tion with existing offline activities.

Quantore has been working with TIE Kinetix since 2006. The relation-ship started when TIE Digital was taken over by TIE in the same year. Digital Channel has since been incorporated into TIE’s Content Syndication Platform (CSP). Quantore then also started to use the TIE Messaging Portal, to which all of its suppli-ers are connected. “Our

“Our suppliers are

connected via TIE

software with our

back-office.”

ready to be sent to our members or directly to the custom-er,” says Wilbert. “We can stock up to 23,000 articles in our modern warehouse.” Quantore deploys the latest technol-ogy and insights to provide its members and their custom-

P6 ~ 2/2010 ~ TIE

BUSINESS INTEGRATION

than if they use drop shipments. Our customers choice is of-ten based on geographical arguments as to whether they will deliver from their own warehouse or use drop shipments. It’s up to them.” “We took a critical look at our members’ ICT needs,” adds Marc. “Then we put together a number of back-office solutions that members can use as they need. For example, we offer our members webshops in which they do not need to use the same applications as everyone else.”

chain marketing Quantore’s approach focuses squarely on chain marketing. Quantore not only looks after joint advertising such as folders, catalogues and promotional

Quantore stocks up to 23,000 articles

materials but also provides its members with up-to-date product information for use in workshops, and all the email marketing tools that they might need for an effective campaign. For this they use TIE Kinetix’ CSP, which is called Supplies Channel at Quantore. “This smart market-ing tool enables us to manage customers’ websites centrally and to provide them with up-to-date information at the press of a button,” says Marc. “The advantage of this is that the customer doesn’t have to bother with it. We manage databases for professional email campaigns and we sup-ply ready-to-go newsletters that can be adapted to the individual situation, either with or without 1st line support.”

“Orders received by Quantore have now been in-

creasing by 10% year

after year.”

In Quantore’s experi-ence, the number of orders increases almost immedi-ately after members have switched to e-commerce. Orders received by Quantore have now been increasing by 10% year after year. “Of course our customers and end-users have to get used to the fact that when you order something online you can no longer say ‘and throw in a box of those envelopes that we always have’,” says Wilbert. “The webshop isn’t enough in itself. So if you want to stop the end-user from dropping out on his first visit, you have to make it easy for him. By including a favourites list, for example. We also help our customers with Search Engine Optimali-zation (SEO). Our slogan has always been: ‘You do the selling and we’ll do the

rest’. And perhaps in the online era, we’ll have to do more.”

neXt DaY And meanwhile competi-tors are not exactly standing idle. Marc and Wilbert are putting a lot of work into helping their customers on their way and increasing acceptance of the online ap-proach. And they are not shrinking from CSP either. “If we want to keep to our 10% yearly growth, we’ll have to speed up dis-tribution,” says Wilbert. “At the moment, customers must still place their orders for drop shipment before 5.30 p.m. but this deadline is constantly being extended and the end-user will still receive his goods the next day.”

innoVations “And,” adds Marc, pointing to his HTC, “we’re also using Twitter. If there’s a TV commercial for one of our offers, we link that to Twitter, where you can read more about it. This is how we want to handle communities and niche groups.” Hmm, a Twitter alert could be handy! Soon we will see iPod widgets, of course. When it comes down to it, you’re either a business innovator or you’re not.