Qstock case study: Bidfood 2023
What the Bidfood team love most about Qstock
“Removing our paper-based system and digitalising our processes and activities has allowed us to remove duplication within our processes and utilise our resource to their full potential.”
“Qstock leads to greater employee engagement and autonomy, as operators can take responsibility for managing their workflow, prioritising and actioning the right stock movements to meet the operational requirements for their site.”
“Qstock is a simple, intuitive and easy application to use, so operators can hit the ground running.”
“Our customers can receive live up to date data, so they can see what stock we have and can get the product they need, exactly when they want it.”
“Now we know that we have the right product in the right place at the right time, our warehouses are more productive and efficient than ever before.”
“CSD know our systems and operations and were able to tailor Qstock to make sure it was exactly what we needed.”
Hear from James Jeffryes, Bidfood’s Operational Change Manager, about how Qstock is helping the company
What is your vision for the future and how is Qnetex helping?
Over the last few years, Bidfood has worked closely with Qnetex to build a number of algorithms into our warehouse system, utilising data such as product volumetrics of the stock and our warehouse configuration and capacity to find the ultimate location for products to fit into our racking. The algorithms were working well, but we had exhausted the capabilities of our current paper-based WMS system, to deliver its full potential.
With Qnetex and specifically Qstock, we have been able to move to live feeds into our WMS environment, allowing the system to direct our operatives to the optimum location, in real time. That means we can now make the most of our algorithms, using them to their full potential to make our stock movements more efficient and accurate.
What did the implementation involve?
Through a process of close collaboration with CSD, we worked out how to develop Qstock to complement and enhance our operational processes. We initially ran a trial, inviting stakeholders from across the business to assess the technology, to ensure the solution was fit for purpose for our business and operational needs. Their feedback was essential and very positive, which allowed us to move onto a three-month pilot, live, within the operation at our Manchester depot. We were keen to run the pilot for a long period of time, to tailor further the solution, iron out early life fixes and enhancement and spot the opportunities and make any tweaks to optimise the solution. All with the support from CSD both onsite during the early stages of the pilot through to consistent remote support throughout the pilot to tweak and tailor the solution which was fantastic.
The benefits were obvious almost instantly. Suddenly our systems were coping with a much bigger number of transactions, and the warehouse teams were really happy with how intuitive and easy to use Qstock was. We’re now rolling it out across the country.
With a national deployment plan, implementing Qstock to 24 warehouses across the country, we decided to take a phased approach with implementation. Whilst the technology itself was a significant step change to our processes, we needed to ensure we built in a people centred approach to change, investing time in communication and training to complement the solution and to ensure the technology lands from the start.
Simplicity is key for us. Sometimes, applications can try too hard, with lots of interaction and commands, but operators just want to get the job done. They know their warehouse inside out and understand what needs doing, they just need a powerful piece of kit that helps them achieve that. Qstock is visual, immediate and intuitive, and is really easy to use.
Have there been any financial benefits?
Aside from working more efficiently and productively, by eliminating our paper system we’re optimising our stock movements across our warehouses and improving the service to our customers, both internally and externally. Qstock is harnessed predominately during our day operation, which focusses on the receipting of stock and the subsequent movement of stock across the warehouse into the optimum location, in readiness for our pick operation, our customer orders. Having a more intelligent system with Qstock and focusing on moving the “Right Product, at the Right Time, to the Right Place” we have seen an improvement in service to our customers, where we are seeing significant reduction in our shortages and credits to our customers, all supporting our service excellence commitment to our customers.
Our Operational teams have seen a positive impact on the performance within our warehouse teams. Moving more products due to the ease and simplicity of the solution, reducing unnecessary replenishments during our customer picking operation, resulting in more efficient picking times. We are also reconciling and driving greater stock counting due to the greater accuracy of stock movements which is supporting our food waste reduction efforts.
What feedback from the end users have you had?
We run regular qualitative assessments in the business, and the feedback from the warehouse floor has been extremely positive. We asked our colleagues how well the application was supporting them in their job, and 85% agreed that Qstock enabled them to increase their location accuracy for putting stock away.
Not only that, 95% agreed that Qstock allowed them to work more efficiently than the old system we had in place. Probably most tellingly of all, we asked everyone whether they would ever want to go back to the paper system and not a single person said yes.
There is a real buzz and excitement about the successes of Qstock across the business with other depots getting in touch to ask us whether they can be next in the roll out. Sometimes in a business people can be wary of change, but we’re finding that people are crying out for Qstock!
Find out how Qnetex helps you with everything from processing orders and managing stock to organising your warehouse and tracking deliveries – all in a single ERP