Bristan Group Ltd Realise Improved Efficiencies in Their Supply Chain by Easily Extending on Demand Electronic Trading to Their Customer Base Through Wesupply.com

LONDON, 16 April 2008 – Bristan Group Ltd, one of the largest bathroom supply companies in the UK, is today benefiting from the value of an On Demand Electronic Trading solution, having implemented Wesupply to connect with their customers.

Bristan Group Ltd, part of Masco Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of brand-name consumer products for the home improvement and new home construction markets, joined the Wesupply intelligent Network 2005 in order to trade electronically with a key customer. By connecting to the network, they were able to communicate more effectively with the UK’s leading Plumbers Merchant by improving visibility of supply chain information and reducing errors which were prevalent with their existing system.

“It was easy to connect to Wesupply and required virtually no resource investment from us.” explained Richard Evans, Head of IT, Bristan Group Ltd “As a result, we were efficiently sending and receiving data electronically with our key customer and it opened our eyes to how we could trade more effectively with the rest of our customer base.”

Alongside the Wesupply connection, Bristan Group Ltd was experiencing problems with their existing supply chain system, which they were using for all their remaining customer-side EDI. “It was unreliable and support was slow, often non-existent.” Reported Mr. Evans. “As a PC-based system, it lacked resilience to the changing conditions of the market and our customers’ demands, as the lead time for on boarding a new trading partner was lengthy.”

Bristan Group Ltd was looking for an electronic trading solution which could offer the flexibility and scalability to bring on board their customers using a phased approach and would offer standard methodology across trading formats.

Wesupply’s On Demand Electronic Trading solution provides Bristan Group Ltd with a OneTimeTM connection to its network to deliver a low risk, easy to join and mature outsourced solution, allowing quick deployment of a more efficient and cost-effective electronic trading process across their customer base.

Over a twelve month period, Bristan Group Ltd has rolled out Wesupply’s On Demand Electronic Trading solution to all of their major customers, and they are now exchanging invoices, purchase orders, acknowledgements, advanced shipment notifications, and proof of deliveries easily and efficiently. Wesupply also provides Bristan Group Ltd with a Fax-to-Email Connector which allows them to trade electronically with many of their smaller customers who do not have EDI capabilities. This service is proving to be a great success and has had a significant impact on reducing administration costs.

Bristan Group Ltd is now enjoying a reliable and easy to deploy solution which they can confidently use and extend across their customer base. “We have not had a system outage [since implementing Wesupply and we can take on new customers quickly and easily with reliable and professional support from the Wesupply team.” Praised Richard Evans, Head of IT, Bristan Group Ltd.

“Implementation of Wesupply’s On Demand Electronic Trading solution at Bristan Group Ltd is enabling visibility and efficiencies across their customer-facing supply chain which was previously unattainable.” Stated Jerry Quinn, Building Industry Director, Wesupply “Bristan Group Ltd can confidently communicate with its customers via a trusted outsourced solution. Real-time supply data combined with a flexible and agile approach to complex business problems is where the true value of an On Demand approach comes to life.”

“The immense success of the customer-facing On Demand Electronic Trading project has demonstrated how Wesupply could provide the benefits of enhanced business value elsewhere in the organisation.” Commented Richard Evans, Head of IT, Bristan Group Ltd. “The visibility and control created with our customers could be extended to realise greater business efficiencies and management with our external suppliers.”

Bristan Group Ltd is now actively working with Wesupply to extend the solution to their external suppliers in order to exchange order and processing information electronically.

About Wesupply
Wesupply is for manufacturers, distributors and retailers, of all sizes, who are dissatisfied with the complexity, cost, maintenance and cumbersome deployment of current on premise electronic trading and supply chain solutions which ultimately fail to support supply chain innovation.

Wesupply offers On Demand Electronic Trading and Supply Chain Management through a simple OneTimeTM connection to the network, regardless of their customers’ and trading partners’ electronic standards and technologies. Wesupply provides a single, unbiased view of a company’s entire supply chain network and the electronic messages exchanged. The solution enables collaborative control of their supply chain and allows rapid adoption of new processes that deliver visibility and confidence internally and with their network trading partners.

Wesupply is the emerging leader in On Demand Supply Chain Management, with over 400 clients, 1,000 connections and over 50,000 trading relationships, in 16 countries across Europe, USA and Asia Pacific.

For additional information please contact:
Claire Taylor, Marketing Communications Manager, Wesupply. Email [email protected] or +44 (0)845 643 6600.