How Klips Dashboards Saved Premier Stationery One Hour of Work Per Day

Premier Stationery is an Irish stationery company founded in 1978. It ranks among Ireland’s top distributors and suppliers of stationery products, and owns eighteen total stationery brands, including ProScribe Ink Products, Student Solutions, and World of Color. As a leading company in a highly competitive industry, Premier Stationery delivers a high volume of orders daily from its head office in County Tipperary to the rest of the country. 

Coordinating such a massive volume of deliveries day-to-day proved to be a challenging task. To make sure that packages arrived at their destination, the team has to track vast amounts of delivery information before sending out each order. This data included order statuses, assigned delivery dates, delivery locations, order sizes, and customer information. They also wanted to minimize delivery costs, such as labor, fuel, and truck maintenance costs. 

However, Premier Stationery’s team lacked the technology to track their data efficiently. They relied on spreadsheets, which made it difficult to record, monitor, and update information. The  Sales Order Processing and Delivery staff would typically have to spend a significant amount of time chasing down order information from various sources. The delays often resulted in trucks going out half-loaded or in tandem to the same location.

Because spreadsheets needed to be updated manually, they were prone to the risk of data entry error. At times, the Sales Order Processing staff would have over 50 orders without a delivery date assigned. This made it difficult to deliver orders in a timely manner. 

Premier Stationery’s director Gerard Banaghan knew they needed a solution that would make delivery information easier to update and follow. He began to look for a tool that could give them a bird's-eye view of real-time supply-chain information. 

Following supply chains with Klipfolio Klips

To solve their supply chain inefficiencies, Premier Stationery traded spreadsheets for dashboards. They partnered with Klipfolio’s real-time dashboard builder Klips, creating dashboards for their delivery operations, which displayed everything they needed to know about each order before and after the team began shipping. This made it easier for the team to track what needed to be shipped out, how, and when. 

"It's all very well to have the information in spreadsheets and database reports, but if nobody looks at them, it's pointless. With [Klipfolio Klips dashboards], we don't have to go looking for information – it's all there for us."

For example, having all geographic information on hand can help them plan optimal delivery routes to save gas. This allows them to reclaim time for more value-adding activities, such as checking out process exceptions and spotting opportunities.

"I liked the presentation of the data so much. How professional it looked and how intuitive it was."

Without dashboards, the team would have wasted time sifting through rows and columns of spreadsheet data. Currently, Gerard has the supply chain dashboard on his own desktop, and checks on progress from time to time. It keeps him in-the-know about delivery progress, which helps him take immediate action in case any problems arise. 

 "I benefit from the visibility and traceability of data within the system. If any queries arise, I know exactly what's happening at any moment." 

Quick drill downs with informative sidebars

Klips offered Premier Stationery more than just dashboards. It also let the team display “Klips” on sidebars on the company desktop. Not to be mistaken for the name of the program, a Klip is a block of information on a specific KPI.

Premier Stationery has one Klip each for the following:

• Customers
• Order status (new, sent to warehouse, or invoiced)
• Delivery information
• Trucks

Klips puts the information you need at your fingertips so you can make quick, accurate operational decisions. If they needed more detail — such as which truck was sending out which order, or a customer’s order history — at a moment’s notice, they could drill down through the Klip data on the desktop to the back-end database.

Updating data from the dashboard

For Premier Stationery, Klips’ star feature is the ability to update the back-end database directly from the dashboard. The Sales and Delivery staff can update order status on the dashboard as events occur without needing to locate the original data source. This saves the team a significant amount of time and effort.

"Other dashboards might let you view data, but they don’t let you change it. We need accurate, up-to-date data, which sometimes means editing customer information. With Klipfolio Klips, we can do that right from the dashboard."

Another feature Premier Stationery liked was the ability to print out the load manifest document for each truck once they’re assigned their delivery dates. The load manifest lists the details of each trip, including cargo, passenger, and crew information, at the time of departure. 

For example, having all geographic information on hand can help them plan optimal delivery routes to save gas. This allows them to reclaim time for more value-adding activities, such as checking out process exceptions and spotting opportunities.

Premier Stationery saved an hour of work per day

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Transforming supply chain operations with Klipfolio Klips

Real-time dashboards transformed order delivery at Premier Stationery. By providing easy-to-read visualizations of important order information, the Premier Stationery team could make more informed delivery decisions, which lowered transport costs, increased delivery efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction. 

"With Klipfolio, the Sales Order Processing group is building better loads. We're getting orders to customers one or two days earlier than we used to. That gives us happier customers, and that gives us a leg up on the competition."

Supply chains aren’t the only areas of business that can benefit from dashboard access. Klipfolio Klips can generate dashboards for all types of business departments, from marketing and finance, to customer support. Dashboards make your performance data easy to understand, helping you craft smarter strategies faster.