Overview

Fujitsu General America is a subsidiary of Fujitsu General Limited, headquartered in Kawasaki, Japan. Fujitsu General America, Inc., a leading provider of a wide variety of innovative and highly reliable products, is the second largest provider of mini-split air conditioners in North America.

Understanding the Challenges

Members of the Fujitsu General marketing team were spending significant time managing inventory and multiple vendors for distribution of marketing related materials to their Distributors Problems resulting were difficulty with inventory management, incomplete shipments due to stock-outs, and lower than desired service levels to Distributors.

Setting Initial Objectives

Fujitsu General’s internal marketing team needed a solution to automate the ordering and distribution of materials to their Distributors. Additionally, Fujitsu General would require in the future an integrated budgeting system that fed real time information back and for with its existing budget system for marketing dollars allocated to Distributors. Additional goals were cost control, customer service, and quality control.

The Advanced-Online Solution

Advanced-Online took control of all products needed by Fujitsu General Distributors including printed materials, promotional products, apparel products, and other miscellaneous products while creating a single online ordering process to support all Distributors.

Advanced-Online set min and max levels for all inventory items based on historical use to eliminate backorders to customers. An automated process for replenishing inventory levels and approvals was put in place. Shipping was also streamlined and costs were reduced.

After a period of time, Advanced-Online worked closely with Fujitsu General to develop an integrated budgeting capability with the internal Fujitsu General website for Distributors. This capability allows Fujitsu General to manage budgeted marketing dollars for each Distributor real time while allowing Distributors to order their own merchandise as needed for marketing.

Advanced-Online provided freedom from the huge overhead costs associated with sourcing, producing, managing, inventorying, and shipping print and other products to their customer clinics. The financial burden of having key marketing and customer service employees previously devote significant administrative time to these tasks has been eliminated by automation.

Advanced-Online’s sophisticated online ordering solution has proven to be successful for Fujitsu General creating an environment of high customer service for Fujitsu General Distributors, spending controls, and quality improvement while reducing staffing costs at Fujitsu General.

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