Flow & Villa Maria’s bold combination of exceptional service and efficient teams

CHALLENGE

Over more than 60 years, Villa Maria has grown to become one of New Zealand’s most award-winning and globally recognised wine producers. Their journey with Flow coincided with growing pressure from customers demanding EDI connections, automatic updates and inventory information. At the same time, their own customer services team were struggling under the weight of a manual ordering process and the need to hire new staff was a barrier to growth.

Villa Maria chose Flow Software to provide an integration solution flexible enough to grow as their requirements and their business grew alongside it.

SOLUTION

Villa Maria’s key systems are connected by Flow, so incoming orders are now all automated. Customer orders received via the CRM system or EDI are managed by Flow, which checks pricing, availability and stock levels in other internal systems before confirming the order and recording it in the ERP. Orders are then delivered automatically to the warehouse management system to be picked and packed. All this workflow, automation and connectivity is managed by Flow Software’s middleware platform.

Connecting electronically with customers, suppliers and freight provides and automating the ordering, dispatch and invoicing processes, has saved Villa Maria’s internal teams over 160 hours of order checking and data rekeying each month. Staff can now focus on high value, productive work meaning faster, more effective processes and better customer experience.

One of the reasons I love working with Flow Software is their service.

Whether it’s a new project or just logging a support request, the Flow team are always responsive, professional and easy to work with.

I measure other vendors against the high bar Flow sets.

Brett Harvey, IT Strategy & Services Manager, Villa Maria Estate

RESULTS

EFFICIENT TEAMS

EFFICIENT TEAMS

Prior to Flow, Villa Maria’s customer service team manually checked and rekeyed every customer order. As volumes increased, desk space to seat the extra team members needed to keep up with the work, was quickly running out.

Once Flow was implemented, the resulting integrations and EDI connections drastically improved the teams’ efficiency, saving at least a full FTE and over 160 hours of manual work each month.

FASTER DELIVERY

FASTER DELIVERY

Because orders are automatically checked by Flow, if correct, they can be released straight to the warehouse. Only orders that fail the automatic checks and validations are reviewed manually.

This ‘manage by exception’ approach has improved order turnaround times dramatically. Orders can be dispatched the same day they are received, keeping customers happy with bar fridges full and and supermarket shelves stocked.

Villa Maria