Euroscatola s.p.a. operates in the corrugated cardboard, alveolar polypropylene and expanded packaging sector since 1973. the company currently has a main plant in Bregnano (Como) and one in Cantù (Como). It also has a logistics warehouse in Lomazzo (Como), one in San Salvo (Chieti) and one in Città della pieve (Perugia)
From a box factory dedicated mostly to furniture market, Euroscatola has evolved by expanding its offer, guaranteeing to an increasingly extensive and differentiated clientele a complete and efficient service. To date, the company boasts a large product portfolio: from industrial packaging to displays to die-cut boxes produced with flexo, offset and digital technologies.
With these potentials, the company is able to satisfy not only the requests of small and medium-sized enterprises but also of large companies, making the management of the processes very heterogeneous.
Given the growing volume of business and many requests, Euroscatola needed a software that would simplify pre-production process by finding the winning ally in Docupoint, able to meet these needs.
This choice proved to be strategic, as it identified B+B as the ideal partner for the acquisition of a software capable of improving the relationships between commercial and technical offices, thanks to the complete knowledge of daily dynamics of a technical office and skills in the development of ERP software for packaging.
The main objective was to insert an information system able of improving the service and the quality of responses to the customer and at the same time optimizing the work for all the internal resources employed in pre-production activities. Managing in an orderly manner what are commonly called internal orders, i.e. requests made by the customer that do not actually constitute a job order, but which are preparatory for receiving the order from the customer.
Therefore it’s obvious the strategic importance of all these activities, as being able to respect the desired response times, proposing an ideal solution based on customer expectations, reducing not-conformities, implementing an automatic communication system between the departments, but also the request of printing plates and die cutting forms to suppliers, planning the activities of all resources within these offices through a graphic planner that allows you to monitor in real time the workload for budgeting, structural design, sampling, graphic design, performance study of papers and quality, because all this allows traceability of these operations as well as the possibility of making directional analyzes that help make commercial and strategic decisions.
Face to face with LUCA DIAMANTE, Supply Chain Manager di Euroscatola
Let’s have a chat with Luca Diamante, Euroscatola Supply Chain Manager who deals with the supply of raw materials and has been working closely with Cappelletti family for 30 years, proposing the most suitable investments that comply with the corporate strategy.
What were the initial needs behind the installation of Docupoint?
“The initial goal was to insert a software for the management of commercial activities, but soon we realized that a classic CRM was not enough for us, as we do not offer static products to our customers, for us every time it is a new project, a tailor-made suit that must be developed on the specific needs of the customer. These conditions necessarily require constant and orderly dialogue between the various commercial and technical departments, therefore the need to cover all these needs with a single IT system.
For this reason, we chose Docupoint, as in addition to all CRM classic functions, it also has the management of the technical office and the management of both these activities was exactly what we needed.
It would be an understatement to define Docupoint only a CRM, we consider it a ERP of the pre-production step or a planner and manager of requests in real time that helps us keeping track of all activities by sharing them between departments, speeding up times, reducing errors and activities that don’t have added value.
Based on the results obtained from the management of the commercial and technical office, we have also implemented Docupoint for the part relating to quality, that is, customer complaints and those towards our suppliers, which was previously managed via e-mail and through forms filled directly in the various departments.
Together with B+B we managed to create a data flow through new formats involving the Quality Manager, the commercial department, the technical office, the production for supplier complaints and the accounting for the issuance of credit notes, making it become a fully automatic system”.
What specific needs has Docupoint been able to meet?
“Thanks to its specificity and flexibility, now we manage everything that before its implementation was processed on paper, through long and frequent phone calls or e-mails. This often led to information loss and entailed the risk of not processing requests completely, lengthening the time required to process requests. By using Docupoint we have been able to improve the quality of relations between commercial and technical departments, empowering all the functions involved in the various projects and giving visibility of the time necessary to carry out the various activities required. Thanks to some specific features of the software such as the insertion of mandatory fields, nothing is left to chance having the ability to share the same data between departments. A very necessary need was also to completely reorganize the technical office. Before the adoption of Docupoint, salespeople were not aware of the real amount of work that we had to manage within the design department and therefore were unable to give any indication of the time required for carrying out the work. Through the Planner now it is possible to have at hand the situation of each activity from technical design to sampling, from graphic design to outsourcing of processes up to color management. Based on specific colors, each activity highlights its progress, if the sample is ready to be shipped, if it is awaiting approval or must taken in charge by the next activity, such as, for example, budgeting.
With this planning now it is possible to understand and manage emergencies. Also for this reason, the relationship between sales department and technical office, that sometimes found themselves in conflict due to delays in the execution of projects, has improved. Now both can quickly and easily understand where there is need for support and which phase of activity is most hindered.
People are more encouraged to collaborate and fill in the correct information, paying more attention to the process as a whole.
The situation of each individual customer is grouped in a single tab. Personal data, accounting, logistics, sales representatives and contacts related to the customer, the type of activity required, the technical design, the type of packaging, the type of wave, annual budget and per single batch, are all information readable by any platform as Docupoint is a Web system.
In this way, salesperson who is out of the office or at the customer can have all the information of what has been requested, the display of all attachments and all the activities carried out for the customer. One of the main strengths of Docupoint is also that of being able to extrapolate reports that can be viewed with Excel or with Microsoft’s Power BI. They are useful information to understand how many projects are processed, how many revisions are made, how many of the requests become orders, analyzing their reasons in an analytical way. Today’s customer is much more demanding than yesterday’s and in the market wins who first knows how to respond completely and in a qualitatively adequate way. Another essential feature of Docupoint was the possibility of integration towards our management system as well as native integration with ArtiosCAD design software”.
How many people use Docupoint, in what role do they operate and to manage which activities?
“The commercial organization is made up of commercial officials, sales agents and back office employees. When the brief for a new project is compiled, dialogue is activated directly with the technical office which is dedicated to structural design and sampling. A structure of 21 people who use together Docupoint to manage their daily activities.
I do not hide the initial skepticism of some salespeople due to a new operating method, but after a few weeks the whole team understood its added value, making its use an indispensable organizational routine.
Concrete and positive results, to the point that in a short time we decided to implement Quality and non-compliance management in Docupoint, where 5 other people are active”.
What type of selection did you make and why did you choose Docupoint?
“We chose Docupoint because we knew B+B as our supplier of ArtiosCAD and Kongsberg plotter. We trust B+B and we were aware that their product would prove to live up to our expectations. We know that it is a specialized structure that perfectly knows the business and the internal problems that can happen in such a particular sector as that of packaging. When we contacted B+B we did not have software that carried out these activities, there were studies in progress with other systems but due to the complexity of the user interface, the incompleteness of data and the reduced flexibility, those projects were never started.
In a short time, we needed something very solid, tailored perfectly for our organization and needs and B+B proposed Docupoint to us. Thanks to B+B assistance team, every modification and request is quickly taken care, the software is constantly evolving and this allows us to study together with B+B, possible releases and continuous improvements”.
What could be the next developments?
“There are several stages that we could automate with Docupoint but what arouses most interest could be its use as a database on our website www.PACK4U.it for purchasing boxes online. Docupoint is in fact used by other companies together with Packway quotes form which allows you to codify in detail all the raw materials, the working centers and the production flows also graphically reproduced in the technical sheet in order to be able to draw up estimates for each type of article, and all this is also integrated with e-commerce sites. The estimate is currently the most critical phase in Euroscatola which requires more time, especially with regard to complex products such as displays or boxes made up of multiple elements.
Creating an automatic system that helps us in the development of repetitive as well as complex products using the new integration with ArtiosCAD could constitute an investment on which to focus our future attention”.
