Part of the BEAMS product development database.
You might be quoted ‘USD ($) 0.54 FOB Guangzhou’ but what does that mean in english GBP (£) by the time you get it, with all costs accounted for?
Well it used to take the buyer, working from a spreadsheet template 15 – 20 mins per item per quantity to answer that.
So we learnt their thinking. mapped their process and came up with a workflow
They entered once, figures for the…
- exchange rates
- container costs from various ports
- import duties
- BAF
- UK haulage costs
- terminal handling and security fees etc
They then filled in a simple form. (Actually the RFQ had all these details already entered.
- item name
- quantity breaks
- FOB prices
- port
- quantity per outer
- length, width, height of outer.
[1] Then at the click of a button a script gives you an easily searchable list of tarrif codes.
[2] Human intervention was crucial at this point because would a silver cigarette lighter be regarded by Customs & Excise as silver, cigarettes or a gift? The search found all those terms and the experienced buyer would choose the most relevant one from. Or phone up C&E and get the correct tarrif and enter that value (that was saved for future reference).
[3] The script then loops through those values above and works out the most cost effective way of shipping those quantity breaks.
[4] It also converts a foreign-FOB-price to a delivered-to-your-warehouse GBP price.
[5] It can also show you the itemised permutations if required.
By automating that task it reduced 15 mins to a few seconds for the 5 quantity breaks. Another way of looking at it is that she could get 1,000 DDP prices in the time it used to take her to get 1.
It saved the buyer from being constantly badgered by the sales team for ‘delivered’ prices. And as she had been getting a 100+ quotes a week, she was rarely able to comply. So the sales team had to work on guesses. Never good where clients are screwing fractions of a pence out of the quote.
Automating this task finally meant that the sales team could have a true price for every item to work from and not the odd one or two. You can imagine the implications and savings for the whole company.
FOB = Free on board to DDP = Duty and Delivery Paid
