Batteries Plus implements new supplier management solution with real-time reporting

Indianapolis Batteries Plus, the nation's largest all-battery retailer, has improved efficiency, accuracy and cycle time for purchase order processing by integrating a new supplier management solution with real-time reporting developed by North America-based Blue Horseshoe.

Prior to implementing Blue Horseshoe's Vendor Portal, Batteries Plus manually managed its purchase order-to-payment process. This made it difficult for the company to work with vendors to place and manage purchase orders, ensure timely and accurate documentation to U.S. Customs to meet the requirements of new regulations in 2010 and track metrics of their other vendors during the purchase process.

Blue Horseshoe VP Kevin Paul said there were a number of cases where critical updates were missed by Batteries Plus due to the manual forms of communication used between the company's corporate offices in Hartland, Wis., and vendors in China, forcing Batteries Plus to pay more shipping costs to replenish inventory.

Vendor Portal provides global visibility to the health of a supplier network, a real-time dashboard and reporting on individual supplier performance that enables companies to identify their top suppliers. It provides information that companies can leverage in negotiating supplier contracts, integrates seamlessly into a new or existing enterprise system and provides a live, automated global view of a company's supply chain.

In February, Batteries Plus went live with Vendor Portal and immediately experienced improvements from the automated process that now manages work flow.  Advanced shipping notices are now automatically sent to Batteries Plus warehousing operations, allowing them to receive and store products more efficiently, the company said.

Within six months, Batteries Plus will roll out Blue Horseshoe's Vendor Portal to all domestic suppliers and expand the solution by implementing a new quality control step in the company's overall work flow.

"Blue Horseshoe was able to quickly understand our supply chain business and proposed its Vendor Portal system as a solution to significant challenges we were experiencing," said Daniel Dugan, IT director of application services at Batteries Plus. "Our efficiencies in shipping, receiving, warehousing and tracking international orders have improved and we look forward to our next steps with Blue Horseshoe to further enhance our operations."