TORONTO -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 04/27/2004 -- Hudson's Bay Company (Hbc) (TSX: HBC) continues with its commitment to use technology to drive operational efficiencies in all aspects of its organization. The Company successfully completed an automation drive with 140 of its Direct to Store suppliers, to effectively eliminate the handling and processing of 450,000 manual transactions annually.
The majority of Hbc's 2,000 vendor-strong supply chain is highly automated and integrated with the retailer. The last area of automation needed was the direct to store complement of some large suppliers and some small and seasonal suppliers. "For the last five years, Hbc's management team has worked to transform the country's oldest retailer into a more efficient and effective organization," said Shabbir Causer, Senior Manager, Vendor Services, Hbc. "Technology is a major enabler in adding efficiency to our supply chain, as the costs of manually interacting with this community were significantly higher than they are today."
Hbc partnered with QLogitek to develop a solution that would fully integrate with Hbc's B2B capabilities and strategic direction. QLogitek's L'eBIZ solution offered several standardized means for suppliers of all sizes, capabilities and locale to quickly and inexpensively automate with Hbc. Within six months, QLogitek was able to successfully rollout the system and, working with Hbc, signed up ninety eight per cent of the targeted supplier community.
"Our team worked closely with QLogitek to make sure that the supplier community was aware of the importance of this initiative to both parties," said Louie Surdi, General Manager, Account Services, Hbc. "We achieved our objectives within the timeframe and on budget."
Not only did this comprehensive roll-out result in a faster more accurate exchange of electronic data, it also improved the trading relationship between Hbc's finance