Customer Story
Hillbrush
Esker Order Management enables Hillbrush to handle growing order volumes with ease.
- exceededTargets of 5% auto-processing, reaching 20%
- loweredorder processing time from hours to minutes
- 100%elimination of call-back logs
- increasedAccuracy & visibility
- improvedStaff satisfaction
Hillbrush was founded in 1922 and remains a family-run business with a global reach today. From the very beginning, the brothers Fred and Bill Coward stamped their brushes with a salmon logo, born out of Bill’s love for salmon fishing. The logo not only distinguishes the business from its many competitors, but as the ‘King of Fish’ it also represents the quality of the products they make. The company manufactures all sorts of brushes and equipment for cleaning, food production and catering as well as for hygiene-sensitive areas such as food processing and HORECA, at its state-of-the-art facilities in Mere, Wiltshire.
CHALLENGES: Customers & staff bristle at the consequences of manual processes
Many of Hillbrush’s customers would send purchase orders to the Customer Service team, and these would be manually processed. This was both time-consuming and open to error.
The principal focus for implementing an automation solution was to reduce manual touch points and errors, which would in turn speed up order processing.
OBJECTIVES
- Improve workflow visibility
- Encourage customers to send orders in PDF format for easier processing
- Increase order processing speed
- Upskill staff by using accessible technology
- Win new business by demonstrating fast order management
SOLUTION: Brushing up on solution know-how takes order processing to another level
Hillbrush implemented Esker Order Management in 2019 and was very impressed with nearly instant improvements for this process. “We needed a solution that would import easily into our WINMAN ERP and Esker did that, which secured the win!” says Sara England, Head of Sales and Customer Service at Hillbrush.
After a few years of using the solution, a number of staff changes meant that the current team was not yet up to speed on all of the solution features. The team signed up for the Esker Customer Experience (CX) Silver Level, and after a few days of training and some focused one-to-one support with a CX Specialist, orders that were previously manually changed are now going through automatically. Dashboards customised to Hillbrush’s requirements allow the Team Leader to know exactly what the team are working on, enabling smoother and more efficient workflows.
“Since the training, I’ve noticed that the level of detail the team has available to them at a touch of a button is amazing. The CX Specialist is able to support Meg, our Team Leader, by working directly in our environment and can suggest machine learning teachings which allow us to process some of the orders entirely automatically,” added Sara. The team love the easy reporting capabilities within Esker, which make it incredibly easy to set KPIs.
Meg and the Customer Service team are completely effusive about Esker, saying, “Esker has made a big difference in the speed of our orders going through as well as in added visibility.”
This also added a noticeable improvement when interacting with customers. "If a customer calls with a dispute or question, all communication is now captured within Esker via the Internal Conversations tool. This has made our lives a lot simpler!”
The management team invested in Esker because of its potential to help the business grow. For a medium-sized but growing business, this level of investment in technology is rare, but has reaped large rewards for Hillbrush.
We can now respond quicker and more efficiently to customer queries, freeing up the team to be more proactive, rather than reactive.”
RESULTS: The magic broomstick for smashing automation targets
Initial targets for auto-processing were set at 3%, but the team reached 5% almost straight away. They are now achieving up to 20% of orders automatically processed. Order processing time has reduced significantly, to an average of 20 minutes per order. The fact that an order can come in and be ready to be processed by the warehouse in under an hour is mind-blowing for the whole company, from management to warehouse staff!
“We are smashing through our targets for auto-processing, which has really impressed our senior management team,” explained Sara.
Sara is proud to talk about Hillbrush’s efficient order processing and says, “Esker is a huge selling point for me when I go to see new customers. I tell them about the level of service we can deliver, which includes the great advantage of being able to process an order in 20 minutes! That normally seals the deal!”
The time spent by the Customer Service team informing their customers about sending orders in PDF formats and explaining to them how Esker’s AI technology can extract the information and populate the order processing fields has been extremely worthwhile.
For Meg, who was involved in the previous, manual processing of orders, Esker has helped her be much more efficient, less stressed and happier! The remaining team members are all new and the additional training has helped them understand the huge potential of Esker.
We highlight Esker’s remarkable AI technology to all our new customers and how it helps us process their orders quickly, which in turn helps their supply chain and distribution run smoothly.”
HIGHLIGHTS
-Investment in upskilling staff has reaped huge benefits
-Targets of 5% auto-processing exceeded, reaching 20%
-Order processing time lowered, from hours to 20 minutes
-100% elimination of call-back logs
-Accuracy & visibility significantly increased
-Staff satisfaction greatly improved by Esker
-CX training
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