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Australia’s GraysOnline drives significant productivity improvements with Manhattan Associates

Australian online retailer and auctioneer GraysOnline has enjoyed a number of significant productivity gains following a successful roll-out of the latest version of the Manhattan SCALE product suite, global supply chain optimisation provider Manhattan Associates said yesterday.

Tony Coorey, CIO at GraysOnline said, "We have continued to enjoy an extremely successful engagement with Manhattan Associates since first implementing its warehouse management solution five years ago. Our business has continued to grow year-on-year by more than 20 percent since we moved our operations online. Manhattan SCALE has helped facilitate this ongoing growth by enabling us to consolidate our warehouse operations into one centralised 350,000 square foot distribution centre, which ships up to 4,000 units per day. Prior to that we only had the ability to process 1,100 cartons so we knew there were significant gains to be enjoyed in terms of productivity throughout our warehouse operations."

Since successfully launching its online business in 2000, GraysOnline now sells more than 120,000 items every month to consumers and businesses from an extensive product portfolio, which ranges from electronic goods and wine, to automotive and mining equipment. Having successfully leveraged Manhattan’s WMS solution to drive productivity enhancements and operational efficiency throughout its supply chain since 2007, key factors in driving GraysOnline’s decision to upgrade to the latest version of Manhattan SCALE were the embedded Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) capability of the solution, which offers increased inventory visibility, as well as, the ability to leverage recent enhancements in the SQL Server database. The ability of the latest iteration of the solution to easily integrate with voice picking technology was also an important consideration for the company.

Having experienced particular success in the company’s wine distribution division, GraysOnline made the decision to invest in a number of Vocollect Talkman T5 Mobile Computing Devices – mobile voice solutions – which enhanced the company’s productivity through dedicated voice picking. The company was also able to leverage other mobile technologies such as remote label printing to ensure the fulfilment of wine-related orders.

"Manhattan SCALE has helped to significantly reduce the time it takes to dispatch orders and doubled our picking capacity at our DC. The SCALE solution’s ability to directly integrate with voice-enabled picking solutions in addition to wireless printers, in the wine picking area specifically, has provided us with significant gains. Since integrating these voice units together with Manhattan SCALE we now ship 2,500 – 3,000 full cartons of wine per day, which is outstanding," explained Coorey.

The flexible nature of the Manhattan SCALE solution was a key component in driving GraysOnline’s decision to upgrade to the latest version of Manhattan SCALE because it continues to support the company’s complex inventory management needs. The configurability of the Manhattan SCALE solution has also allowed GraysOnline to support a number of warehouse management processes including the ability to define specific key performance indicators (KPIs), run and manage reports and centrally monitor the performance of many aspects of the company’s operations.

Commenting on the upgrade, Raghav Sibal, managing director for Manhattan Associates in Australia and New Zealand said: "GraysOnline is one of the most innovative brands in the Australian online retail market. We are delighted to be continuing our support for them as they continue to grow and expand their offerings. With more than 70 product categories, the volume of SKUs the company processes is quite incredible. We are confident that the latest version of Manhattan SCALE will continue to support the company’s continued success and drive even more impressive productivity gains for them in the future."

Manhattan SCALE: Supply Chain Architected for Logistics Execution is a portfolio of distribution and transportation management solutions built on the Microsoft .NET development platform and the Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server family of products. It has been developed for fast growing organisations looking for a high performing, affordable, and low-risk supply chain solution.