As part of their program of continuous improvement to provide the best possible service to customers, Ribble Packaging have just completed the implementation of Abaca’s business to business (B2B) system with Smart Packaging in Bristol. Purchase orders placed by Smart are automatically processed as sales orders within the Ribble system in Oldham less than 30 seconds after they are entered by Smart in Bristol. Any errors in pricing, size, quantity and delivery lead times are picked up by the Ribble system and flagged back up to Smart Packaging via an electronic acknowledgement and the offending transactions burn red on their screens.

When the goods are made they are labelled with bar coded pallet labels which enable Ribble to scan the goods out of their warehouse and equally enable Smart to scan them into theirs without an operator touching a keyboard.

Following the delivery an electronic invoice is produced by Ribble which is imported into the Smart system for processing saving Smart a considerable amount of time for their Creditors clerks.

Summing the process up Brian Parkin, Ribble’s IT Manager says “using this new B2B facility has made the processing of orders easier for both our companies and the information flow between the two systems means Smart Packaging are kept informed of the progress of their orders without the need for update emails or phone calls. We are looking forward to rolling this out to more of our other Abaca customers in the near future.