Whitehill & Co

Arguably the best known company in the Australian giftware Industry, Whitehill & Co, owned by Bryan and Farida White, have chosen MiniSell as their electronic method of communication between their National sales team and their Melbourne head office.

 

Whitehill had previously experimented with other methods of smart order processing but this had been limited to trade previews held in their Melbourne Showroom.

 

Like many companies, Whitehill thought that their existing order processing system provider should be able to handle their needs for a field sales system. After spending many thousands of dollars experimenting with a specially written system that never met their requirements, they eventually realised they needed to turn to a specialist in this field. They needed a system that would work for their “twice per year” trade previews in all states as well as on a year round basis for their reps and agents out on the road.

 

The MiniSell field sales automation product from Amsolve Software Pty Ltd, answered Whitehill’s every need in this regard. The fact that Enesco in the UK was already a MiniSell customer helped Whitehill realise that this was the right way to go. A local company with a global presence specialising in field sales requirements, has integrated easily into their existing systems.

 

Because so much of Whitehill’s business relies on forward ordering at their preview events, the rep or agent needs to know what the customer has on forward order while doing their normal day to day orders in an “in store” sales call. This is to avoid duplicate orders, phone calls to head office and having to carry paper order form copies.

 

Whitehill sales people now have the benefit of all product and customer forward order information,as well as sales call details and order history, contained in the MiniSell program. The program is resident on a Symbol MC50 pocket PC device, chosen by Whitehill for its ruggedness and ease of scanning via the integrated scanner feature.

 

The MiniSell system was first used at their Christmas 2006 previews in February 2006 and has dramatically streamlined the order entry process at their head office. All sales orders at their previews and on the road are sent via the Internet to the MiniSell web server, then directly imported into their existing Harmony order processing system – no data entry required!

 

One of the major advantages after the Whitehill preview events is that now they immediately have the information on forward order requirements, without having to wait for manual keying of all the orders, which in the past could take several weeks. They now know how much of each line they need to order from their various overseas suppliers as soon as the last order at a preview is taken.

 

Whitehill have just completed one full year of MiniSell field use and the move has been extremely beneficial to their reps and agents as well as their processing and forecasting requirements.

 

Whitehill distribute in Australia a large range of world recognised giftware brands including: Enesco,Demdaco, Border Fine Arts, Lilliput Lane, Franz, Argenta, Mr. Christmas, Queen’s and many other brands.