CUSTOMERS
CANNON GROUP
Cannon drive forward with
Navision and Metaphorix
From its beginnings in the village of Milton near Abingdon, Oxfordshire to a modern integrated logistics and distribution network, Cannon traces its origins to the early 1900’s. Most of its customers have been with it a long time, whether it is packing automotive parts for MG Rover Limited, distributing packed lubricants for Total UK Limited or transporting pre-stressed concrete from Bison Concrete Products Limited to build the country’s latest football stadia.
More recently the various Cannon businesses were consolidated under the heading Cannon Group Limited, still based in Oxfordshire but with three parts to the business – packing, transportation and distribution and warehousing. These operations have important synergies, and the disconnected, disparate systems that previously supported them quickly started to look outdated.
As well as building on the success of this £20m plus turnover, 300-strong workforce private company, its focus on meeting customer requirements has helped shape it. “Our relationships with customers are true partnerships,” says Finance Director Ian Doye. “We don’t provide a standard service, we ask customers what they need and tailor our offering to their particular requirements. And we’ve been doing that for over 40 years. You could argue we do too much for customers.”
Because that approach required Cannon to tailor its IT systems to each of its customer’s needs, it was left with a range of different standalone systems covering location, stock, distribution and planning. These legacy systems dated back many years and were developed in-house, based on non-relational database technology.
Standardising the platform
Cannon originally brought in Navision, the mid-market enterprise application provider subsequently acquired by Microsoft Business Solutions, to run its accounts, but Cannon quickly decided to make it the platform to connect its different standalone systems. “One of the reasons we wanted to use Navision for this was that everything could be connected together easily,” says Doye. “And everything we’ve done so far has been. Any integration issues we’ve had have not been with the technology but with the business.”
He adds: “Both within the three separate individual operations, we do distinctly different things although they all follow similar business processes. If a company wants their own individual warehousing system, then we’d build them a warehousing system.”
The trick for Cannon has been to replicate its client-centric philosophy at the front-end, while connecting up its business at the back-end. Navision Solution Centre Metaphorix built a communication framework based on Microsoft BizTalk Server and Commerce Gateway, giving each client a tailored front-end running on a standardised Navision backbone.
Handling a huge amount of complex orders per week through electronic data interchange, the system handles distribution planning, picks in the warehouse, shipping details and displays Proof of Delivery, order delivery status, stock enquiries and even warehouse location on the website.
Performance analysis
For a company working on very tight margins, the ability to perform real-time analysis on drops, throughput, price and so forth is crucial and Doye puts its 99 per cent plus on-time delivery performance partly down to the system. “Our profit driver is not directly from the customer. It’s getting the highest effectiveness and utilisation out of our resources used to perform their work.”
Periodic analysis on performance has turned into a rolling exercise. “There are reasons why you run vehicles in certain ways. Profiles develop over time, in terms of regions and date. Now we can get the information out of the system on a daily basis and do any changes we need.”
As well as equipping the company with a platform for the future, making connections with new clients more easily and mapping existing business processes and best practices, the new system has helped Cannon internally communicate more effectively. “Now we are smarter and we spend time on things that should have time spent on them.”
