Industries

Manufacturing

The BlueBox has put a lot of energy into creating the perfect SME manufacturing suit, fully embracing the philosophies of the Lean Manufacturer and allowing an organisation to maximise efficiency, reduce time wastage to a minimum and, probably most importantly, reduce inventory through using kanban, demand driven approach. Fully integrating the BlueBox 2.0 Manufacturing module with Inventory, Procurement, Financial Accounting and Sales, BlueBox 2,0 offers manufacturers a feature packed suite of manufacturing oriented functionality, among others:

• Single Database Solution

  The fact that all your data resides in a single, integrated, multi branch, multi business, multi location and multi currency system means that the traditional manufacturing environment weakness of having multiple systems and silo's of information is an unnecessary waste of resources and time. Having a single point of information and a single truth through which your whole organisation has live visibility gives every aspect of your business, including not only the manufacturers but also sales, warehouse managers, procurement and invoicing the intelligence to make better decisions.



• Demand Driven Stock Movement & Orders

  Central to the Lean manufacturing philosophy is the idea of a 'pull' or demand driven process flow, where products are "pulled" through customer demand, not "pushed" from the production end of the business. Elimination of excess inventory is the goal here. The BlueBox Base ERP, with it's default configuration operates on exactly that principle. Stock movement processes are consequently an important focus area, as are any stock holding vehicles. At it's most basic Sales Orders call for stock from Finished Goods, which prompts Works Orders, which calls for stock from Raw Materials, which prompts Purchase Orders. Stock is literally moved through the business from a single dashboard (Stores Dashboard) which in turn is prompted from order fulfilment needs, or bin level top-up requirements.
  
  The concept of the BlueBox order is of importance here as this is the primary vehicle controlling and avoiding inventory bloating in the system. Orders are one tool at the heart of our system which can ensure that every item of stock in the business belongs to a demand generated order. The impact of this might take a while to sink in, but in essence it means that a business can have an excess inventory of zero!



• Stock Item Bin Links

  Time wastage is reduced dramatically through the implementation of a few critical devices within the BlueBox Base which remove the need for decision making. One of these devices takes care of a few things. The BlueBox Stock Item Bin Links section of the system dictates where stock lives within the business, facilitating routing of stock through the system and business, and saving time by prompting users where to send stock from receiving, and whether to route it through, for example quality control. Users, therefore don't have to waste time deciding where stock should be sent to, but are still able to take the initiative of overriding system suggestions in unusual situations. Leanness is supported through both saving time and simplifying the processes needed to route stock.



• Bin Management and Top Ups

  Setting bin levels on stock might be considered by some to be contrary to the ethos of a kanban oriented, lean manufacturing philosophy. This however is not the case, for two reasons. Firstly, minimum bin levels can continually be pushed down as the business becomes leaner and leaner (right down to one), as can reorder levels, where maximum bin levels can be set to ensure that stock never exceeds capacity. Secondly, bin levels facilitate the "pull" model by acting as the catalyst for stock movement and order (works or purchase) prompting within the system. Properly managed bin levels and bin 'topping up' greatly improves the efficiency of the system. BlueBox bin management allows for inventory to be received and assigned and allocated and packed to preferred bins within the warehouse and one can easily transfer items between bins at the same location without impacting your inventory value or total quantity on hand.



• Work Order Management

  BlueBox work orders allow manufacturers to easy manage the build process for production work orders, to replenish standing inventory levels of finished goods or special order work orders built to specification for a one off projects. Raw materials are assigned to works order as they become available, and when the works orders requirements are fulfilled, it will show up in your dashboard for building.



• Dynamic Bills of Material

  Production flexibility, and being able to produce different mixes or a variety of products quickly, without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production, is one of the core tenets of being lean. To this end, BlueBox has ensured that every manufactured item has the ability to be set to have a dynamic Bill of Material (BOM). This allows not only the substitution of different raw material types on the fly, but also allows the flexibility of complete reinvention for once off production requirements. BOMs are closely tied with work orders and allow for multi-level BOMs to be built one level at a time, or back flushed. As demand for items is calculated based on sales, a separate report shows you when it is time to build more to stock. BlueBox has the ability to dynamically manage your stock and replenishment for both BOMs and their components.



• Dashboard reporting for Key Performance Indicators

  Dynamic and comprehensive KPI reporting filters give users a real-time, drillable view of your businesses performance. Live visibility to quotations, work orders, and easily created custom queries and widgets are displayed on personal dashboards for your decision makers. Drill down allows instant access to greater detail and transaction management directly from the Dashboards. With BlueBox's sophisticated works order and inventory management BlueBox can save your organisation endless hours of work associated with data entry, organisation, and fulfilment. You literally manage your work orders, kitting and assemblies, inventory status, reordering, procurement, and order fulfilment from a single fully integrated system.



• Dashboard Driven Works and Purchase Order Creation

  Systemising areas of a manufacturing business where human intuition or calculations have traditionally played a role is a necessity. There is no place in a lean manufacturing organisation (or, we would argue, in any manufacturing organisation), for a buyers 'gut feel' or "knowledge of the business" determining what is to be procured and in what volumes. Likewise, demand, not human predictions, should be the driving force behind determining what should be manufactured. This is the basis for the logic behind the BlueBox dashboards that drive both the production and procurement processes. The information feeding these dashboards comes from a combination of data in respect of raw material and finished goods stock on hand in the business, back orders and current bin levels, and essentially tells the buyer what to buy and the production manager what to manufacture. The value of this is again reducing time wastage, time being a very expensive resource and one of the core wastes that lean manufacturing aims at reducing; removing the danger of over or under ordering, or manufacturing; improving information sharing and reducing costs.



• SRM

  Effectively managing information sharing has a number of benefits. Sharing appropriate data with customers and suppliers not only entrenches the relationship, but also has efficiency spin offs where account information, order information, job progress and status information are effectively communicated. Browser based systems such as the BlueBox are obviously perfectly suited to disseminating this kind of information and consequently reaping these kind of benefits. Add to this the ability to produce event driven communications such as e-mail and sms notification, and one has a very powerful tool which incorporates the up and downstreams of the supply chain into the very heart of the operation.



• Inventory Management

  BlueBox's Inventory module provides full visibility to your stock globally. Pinpoint where every item of stock resides, be an item sitting in a high-level bin in your warehouse or even with your customer allowing you to increase service levels dramatically, BlueBox inventory will track it. Through serialisation the inventory module will allow you to easily identify, swop out and trace parts. Stock flow is preconfigured in the system with bin levels prompting stock movement throughout your organisation, and your buyers can rely on the minimum and reorder bin settings to procure the right stock at the appropriate time. It provides support for high volume SKU management along with advanced inventory management capabilities such as multiple warehouse management, serialized inventory, bar coding and labels, lot and bin management, expiration dating, pick, pack and ship fulfilment processes, drop-shipment and special orders, returns automation and demand-driven replenishment.

Multi-Level Marketing

Logistics and Supply Chain

Loyalty Club

Retail: Buy, Stock, Sell

The BlueBox Sales environment is a comprehensive, simple to use and above all robust offering. Incorporating and fully integrating BlueBox's next generation POS offering, BlueBox's sales offerings are used from hardcore fastfood retail environments which have to be enabled to provide speedy transactional turnarounds, menu management, on-the-fly backflush manufacturing and integrated inventory control, through to smaller store offerings where sales transactions are a combination of cash and account. CRM functionality and methodology is a thread that runs throughout BlueBox and is therefore part and parcel of any sales oriented solution. Fully integrating the BlueBox 2.0 Sales module with Inventory, Procurement, Financial Accounting and even manufacturing, BlueBox 2,0 offers retailers a feature packed suite of sales oriented functionality, among other features:

• Single Database, Real Time Solution

  The fact that all your data resides in a single, integrated, multi branch, multi business, multi location and multi currency system means that the traditional manufacturing environment weakness of having multiple systems and silo's of information is an unnecessary waste of resources and time. Having a single point of information and a single truth through which your whole organisation has live visibility gives every aspect of your business, including not only the manufacturers but also sales, warehouse managers, procurement and invoicing the intelligence to make better decisions. That fact that your system is web-based and sits on a single database means that your solution is also real-time.



• Dashboard reporting for Key Performance Indicators

  Dynamic and comprehensive KPI reporting filters give users a real-time, drillable view of your businesses performance.Live visibility to quotations, work orders, and easily created custom queries and widgets are displayed on personal dashboards for your decision makers. Drill down allows instant access to greater detail and transaction management directly from the Dashboards. With BlueBox'a sophisticated works order and inventory management BlueBox can save your organisation endless hours of work associated with data entry, organisation, and fulfilment. You literally manage your work orders, kitting and assemblies, inventory status, reordering, procurement, and order fulfilment from a single fully integrated system.



• Sales to Dashboard Driven Works and Purchase Order Creation

  BlueBox creation of sales orders literally feeds the machine. Systemising areas of a manufacturing business where human intuition or calculations have traditionally played a role is a necessity. There is no place in a lean manufacturing organisation (or, we would argue, in any manufacturing organisation), for a buyers 'gut feel' or "knowledge of the business" determining what is to be procured and in what volumes. Likewise, demand, not human predictions, should be the driving force behind determining what should be manufactured. This is the basis for the logic behind the BlueBox dashboards that drive both the production and procurement processes. The information feeding these dashboards comes from a combination of data in respect of raw material and finished goods stock on hand in the business, back orders and current bin levels, and essentially tells the buyer what to buy and the production manager what to manufacture. The value of this is again reducing time wastage, time being a very expensive resource and one of the core wastes that lean manufacturing aims at reducing; removing the danger of over or under ordering, or manufacturing; improving information sharing and reducing costs.



• Sales Orders

  BlueBox gives your sales team complete moment to moment visibility into customer account status and inventory availability when quoting and creating orders improving service levels with live order commitment. Available stock is also immediately reserved for specific sales orders in order to make sure that they are fulfilled on a first come first served basis. Where inventory committed to specific orders need to be re-allocated this can be overridden and re-committed to different sales orders manually.



• CRM & SRM

  Effectively managing information sharing has a number of benefits. Sharing appropriate data with customers and suppliers not only entrenches the relationship, but also has efficiency spin offs where account information, order information, job progress and status information are effectively communicated. Browser based systems such as the BlueBox are obviously perfectly suited to disseminating this kind of information and consequently reaping these kind of benefits. Add to this the ability to produce event driven communications such as e-mail and sms notification, and one has a very powerful tool which incorporates the up and downstreams of the supply chain into the very heart of the operation.



• Live Comprehensive View of Customer

  The fact that BlueBox is a single, fully integrated system (Debtors, CRM, E-Commerce and POS) means that you have a full end-to-end view of the customer across all business units, branched and locations.



• Lead, to Quote to Order Process

  The BlueBox Leads Module will assist you in managing leads until such time as they become a formal quote and join the transactional queue and formal sales pipeline and are managed through to order stage.



• Online Payment Facility Integration

  The fact that BlueBox is a web based platform means that your customers can, if you so wish log on to your site and make online purchases and payments.



• Automated Purchase Order Generation

  BlueBox's purchasing dashboard will automatically suggest orders that need to be placed, based on your existing sales orders, works orders and bin inventory levels and are ready for editing or can instantly be generated into purchase orders, ready to be emailed, faxed or printed straight from BlueBox.



• Inventory Management

  Improve your customer service. BlueBox's Inventory module provides full visibility to your stock globally. Pinpoint where every item of stock resides, be an item sitting in a highlevel bin in your warehouse or even with your customer allowing you to increase service levels dramatically, BlueBox inventory will track it. Through serialisation the inventory module will allow you to easily identify, swap out and trace parts. Stock flow is preconfigured in the system with bin levels prompting stock movement throughout your organisation, and your buyers can rely on the minimum and reorder bin settings to procure the right stock at the appropriate time. It provides support for high volume SKU management along with advanced inventory management capabilities such as multiple warehouse management, serialized inventory, bar coding and labels, lot and bin management, expiration dating, pick, pack and ship fulfilment processes, drop-shipment and special orders, returns automation and demand-driven replenishment.



• Inventory and Fulfilment

  BlueBox natively offers full multi-location physical inventory and distribution including shipping, receiving and returns. You can track direct and drop-shipped orders door-to-door directly with BlueBox software with ease.



• Fully Password-Protected and Personalised Access

  All BlueBox websites and systems are fully password protected. Restrict not only access to the content that each of your users (website guests, staff, customers, suppliers etc.) need to see, but customise access all the way down to field viewing and editing. You have the ability to password-protect your entire system and website. Furthermore, BlueBox offers the facility to personalise the view of every single user or group of users on your system.



• Integrated Inventory Management for E-Commerce

  Because BlueBox's web shopping cart runs off the same platform that your ERP system runs off, if you have the BlueBox Inventory Module unlocked, customers shopping on your site are able to view real-time inventory. Furthermore, if items are out of stock customers are able to back-order stock if you provide that facility. Similarly purchases impact immediately on the inventory system , affecting stock status and levels. Your web store operates off the same order management system as the rest of your company so this eliminates the manual transfer of customer information to customer records.



• Marketing Campaign Integration

  Using the marketing and communications module, you can create targeted campaigns aimed at specific groups of customer and track the results of bulk newsletter and sms campaigns.



• Commissions

  BlueBox will calculate, track and manage your commissions supplying and motivating your sales team with their performance information.



• Customer Login

  Boost your customer service dramatically by allowing your customers to log into your system through a password protected portal to check the status of their accounts, their sales history, help themselves by placing orders, confirming shipments, paying their invoices and log their own tickets.



• Job Tracking

  Provide your customers with the means to track their jobs in your business, view and submit tickets.

Retail: Fast-Food

• Single Database, Real Time Solution

  The fact that all your data resides in a single, integrated, multi branch, multi business, multi location and multi currency system means that the traditional manufacturing environment weakness of having multiple systems and silo's of information is an unnecessary waste of resources and time. Having a single point of information and a single truth through which your whole organisation has live visibility gives every aspect of your business, including not only the manufacturers but also sales, warehouse managers, procurement and invoicing the intelligence to make better decisions. That fact that your system is web-based and sits on a single database means that your solution is also real-time.



• Dashboard reporting for Key Performance Indicators

  Dynamic and comprehensive KPI reporting filters give users a real-time, drillable view of your businesses performance.Live visibility to quotations, work orders, and easily created custom queries and widgets are displayed on personal dashboards for your decision makers. Drill down allows instant access to greater detail and transaction management directly from the Dashboards. With BlueBox'a sophisticated works order and inventory management BlueBox can save your organisation endless hours of work associated with data entry, organisation, and fulfilment. You literally manage your work orders, kitting and assemblies, inventory status, reordering, procurement, and order fulfilment from a single fully integrated system.



• Sales to Dashboard Driven Works and Purchase Order Creation

  BlueBox creation of sales orders literally feeds the machine. Systemising areas of a manufacturing business where human intuition or calculations have traditionally played a role is a necessity. There is no place in a lean manufacturing organisation (or, we would argue, in any manufacturing organisation), for a buyers 'gut feel' or "knowledge of the business" determining what is to be procured and in what volumes. Likewise, demand, not human predictions, should be the driving force behind determining what should be manufactured. This is the basis for the logic behind the BlueBox dashboards that drive both the production and procurement processes. The information feeding these dashboards comes from a combination of data in respect of raw material and finished goods stock on hand in the business, back orders and current bin levels, and essentially tells the buyer what to buy and the production manager what to manufacture. The value of this is again reducing time wastage, time being a very expensive resource and one of the core wastes that lean manufacturing aims at reducing; removing the danger of over or under ordering, or manufacturing; improving information sharing and reducing costs.



• Sales Orders

  BlueBox gives your sales team complete moment to moment visibility into customer account status and inventory availability when quoting and creating orders improving service levels with live order commitment. Available stock is also immediately reserved for specific sales orders in order to make sure that they are fulfilled on a first come first served basis. Where inventory committed to specific orders need to be re-allocated this can be overridden and re-committed to different sales orders manually.



• CRM & SRM

  Effectively managing information sharing has a number of benefits. Sharing appropriate data with customers and suppliers not only entrenches the relationship, but also has efficiency spin offs where account information, order information, job progress and status information are effectively communicated. Browser based systems such as the BlueBox are obviously perfectly suited to disseminating this kind of information and consequently reaping these kind of benefits. Add to this the ability to produce event driven communications such as e-mail and sms notification, and one has a very powerful tool which incorporates the up and downstreams of the supply chain into the very heart of the operation.



• Online Payment Facility Integration

  The fact that BlueBox is a web based platform means that your customers can, if you so wish log on to your site and make online purchases and payments.



• Automated Purchase Order Generation

  BlueBox's purchasing dashboard will automatically suggest orders that need to be placed, based on your existing sales orders, works orders and bin inventory levels and are ready for editing or can instantly be generated into purchase orders, ready to be emailed, faxed or printed straight from BlueBox.



• Inventory Management

  Improve your customer service. BlueBox's Inventory module provides full visibility to your stock globally. Pinpoint where every item of stock resides, be an item sitting in a highlevel bin in your warehouse or even with your customer allowing you to increase service levels dramatically, BlueBox inventory will track it. Through serialisation the inventory module will allow you to easily identify, swap out and trace parts. Stock flow is preconfigured in the system with bin levels prompting stock movement throughout your organisation, and your buyers can rely on the minimum and reorder bin settings to procure the right stock at the appropriate time. It provides support for high volume SKU management along with advanced inventory management capabilities such as multiple warehouse management, serialized inventory, bar coding and labels, lot and bin management, expiration dating, pick, pack and ship fulfilment processes, drop-shipment and special orders, returns automation and demand-driven replenishment.



• Inventory and Fulfilment

  BlueBox natively offers full multi-location physical inventory and distribution including shipping, receiving and returns. You can track direct and drop-shipped orders door-to-door directly with BlueBox software with ease.



• Fully Password-Protected and Personalised Access

  All BlueBox websites and systems are fully password protected. Restrict not only access to the content that each of your users (website guests, staff, customers, suppliers etc.) need to see, but customise access all the way down to field viewing and editing. You have the ability to password-protect your entire system and website. Furthermore, BlueBox offers the facility to personalise the view of every single user or group of users on your system.



• Integrated Inventory Management for E-Commerce

  Because BlueBox's web shopping cart runs off the same platform that your ERP system runs off, if you have the BlueBox Inventory Module unlocked, customers shopping on your site are able to view real-time inventory. Furthermore, if items are out of stock customers are able to back-order stock if you provide that facility. Similarly purchases impact immediately on the inventory system , affecting stock status and levels. Your web store operates off the same order management system as the rest of your company so this eliminates the manual transfer of customer information to customer records.

Retail: FMCG

• Single Database, Real Time Solution

  The fact that all your data resides in a single, integrated, multi branch, multi business, multi location and multi currency system means that the traditional manufacturing environment weakness of having multiple systems and silo's of information is an unnecessary waste of resources and time. Having a single point of information and a single truth through which your whole organisation has live visibility gives every aspect of your business, including not only the manufacturers but also sales, warehouse managers, procurement and invoicing the intelligence to make better decisions. That fact that your system is web-based and sits on a single database means that your solution is also real-time.



• Dashboard reporting for Key Performance Indicators

  Dynamic and comprehensive KPI reporting filters give users a real-time, drillable view of your businesses performance.Live visibility to quotations, work orders, and easily created custom queries and widgets are displayed on personal dashboards for your decision makers. Drill down allows instant access to greater detail and transaction management directly from the Dashboards. With BlueBox'a sophisticated works order and inventory management BlueBox can save your organisation endless hours of work associated with data entry, organisation, and fulfilment. You literally manage your work orders, kitting and assemblies, inventory status, reordering, procurement, and order fulfilment from a single fully integrated system.



• Sales to Dashboard Driven Works and Purchase Order Creation

  BlueBox creation of sales orders literally feeds the machine. Systemising areas of a manufacturing business where human intuition or calculations have traditionally played a role is a necessity. There is no place in a lean manufacturing organisation (or, we would argue, in any manufacturing organisation), for a buyers 'gut feel' or "knowledge of the business" determining what is to be procured and in what volumes. Likewise, demand, not human predictions, should be the driving force behind determining what should be manufactured. This is the basis for the logic behind the BlueBox dashboards that drive both the production and procurement processes. The information feeding these dashboards comes from a combination of data in respect of raw material and finished goods stock on hand in the business, back orders and current bin levels, and essentially tells the buyer what to buy and the production manager what to manufacture. The value of this is again reducing time wastage, time being a very expensive resource and one of the core wastes that lean manufacturing aims at reducing; removing the danger of over or under ordering, or manufacturing; improving information sharing and reducing costs.



• Sales Orders

  BlueBox gives your sales team complete moment to moment visibility into customer account status and inventory availability when quoting and creating orders improving service levels with live order commitment. Available stock is also immediately reserved for specific sales orders in order to make sure that they are fulfilled on a first come first served basis. Where inventory committed to specific orders need to be re-allocated this can be overridden and re-committed to different sales orders manually.



• CRM & SRM

  Effectively managing information sharing has a number of benefits. Sharing appropriate data with customers and suppliers not only entrenches the relationship, but also has efficiency spin offs where account information, order information, job progress and status information are effectively communicated. Browser based systems such as the BlueBox are obviously perfectly suited to disseminating this kind of information and consequently reaping these kind of benefits. Add to this the ability to produce event driven communications such as e-mail and sms notification, and one has a very powerful tool which incorporates the up and downstreams of the supply chain into the very heart of the operation.



• Live Comprehensive View of Customer

  The fact that BlueBox is a single, fully integrated system (Debtors, CRM, E-Commerce and POS) means that you have a full end-to-end view of the customer across all business units, branched and locations.



• Lead, to Quote to Order Process

  The BlueBox Leads Module will assist you in managing leads until such time as they become a formal quote and join the transactional queue and formal sales pipeline and are managed through to order stage.



• Online Payment Facility Integration

  The fact that BlueBox is a web based platform means that your customers can, if you so wish log on to your site and make online purchases and payments.



• Automated Purchase Order Generation

  BlueBox's purchasing dashboard will automatically suggest orders that need to be placed, based on your existing sales orders, works orders and bin inventory levels and are ready for editing or can instantly be generated into purchase orders, ready to be emailed, faxed or printed straight from BlueBox.



• Inventory Management

  Improve your customer service. BlueBox's Inventory module provides full visibility to your stock globally. Pinpoint where every item of stock resides, be an item sitting in a highlevel bin in your warehouse or even with your customer allowing you to increase service levels dramatically, BlueBox inventory will track it. Through serialisation the inventory module will allow you to easily identify, swap out and trace parts. Stock flow is preconfigured in the system with bin levels prompting stock movement throughout your organisation, and your buyers can rely on the minimum and reorder bin settings to procure the right stock at the appropriate time. It provides support for high volume SKU management along with advanced inventory management capabilities such as multiple warehouse management, serialized inventory, bar coding and labels, lot and bin management, expiration dating, pick, pack and ship fulfilment processes, drop-shipment and special orders, returns automation and demand-driven replenishment.



• Inventory and Fulfilment

  BlueBox natively offers full multi-location physical inventory and distribution including shipping, receiving and returns. You can track direct and drop-shipped orders door-to-door directly with BlueBox software with ease.



• Fully Password-Protected and Personalised Access

  All BlueBox websites and systems are fully password protected. Restrict not only access to the content that each of your users (website guests, staff, customers, suppliers etc.) need to see, but customise access all the way down to field viewing and editing. You have the ability to password-protect your entire system and website. Furthermore, BlueBox offers the facility to personalise the view of every single user or group of users on your system.



• Integrated Inventory Management for E-Commerce

  Because BlueBox's web shopping cart runs off the same platform that your ERP system runs off, if you have the BlueBox Inventory Module unlocked, customers shopping on your site are able to view real-time inventory. Furthermore, if items are out of stock customers are able to back-order stock if you provide that facility. Similarly purchases impact immediately on the inventory system , affecting stock status and levels. Your web store operates off the same order management system as the rest of your company so this eliminates the manual transfer of customer information to customer records.



• Marketing Campaign Integration

  Using the marketing and communications module, you can create targeted campaigns aimed at specific groups of customer and track the results of bulk newsletter and sms campaigns.



• Commissions

  BlueBox will calculate, track and manage your commissions supplying and motivating your sales team with their performance information.



• Customer Login

  Boost your customer service dramatically by allowing your customers to log into your system through a password protected portal to check the status of their accounts, their sales history, help themselves by placing orders, confirming shipments, paying their invoices and log their own tickets.



• Job Tracking

  Provide your customers with the means to track their jobs in your business, view and submit tickets.

Service-Based Business