RS Components

On-board with a worldwide online challenge

Our client 
RS Components, a high service level electronic and electromechanical distributor, supply a portfolio of 350,000 products right across the globe. With 5,500 worldwide employees and an operating revenue of £877.5m, they’re a sizable concern. E-commerce in 70 countries using websites working in 17 languages accounts for an important 33% of their sales.

Our challenge
With their large product portfolio still growing rapidly, RS Components needed to reduce the time it took to bring new products to market. To achieve this target, they needed to reduce data entry errors, give staff greater visibility of workloads and help managers to identify bottlenecks at a glance.

Our team’s solution
Beginning with the rationalisation of the user’s requirements and following a review of present systems, our team tailored a SharePoint solution specifically for RS. Initially, we developed a ‘Proof of Concept’ to evidence that SharePoint would deliver within their working environment. The agreed solution allowed Product Managers to upload data into a bespoke SharePoint list using a custom Web Part. A clear diagram illustrated the path each product took through 8 different departments. The IT solution was based around the diagram and allowed staff and managers to visualise and identify any potential bottlenecks. We established a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure RS Business Managers maintained an overview of progress for each product. We ensured managers could ‘drill down’ into the data and, using SharePoint, could see their team workloads at a glance.

Our client’s perspective
James Farquhar, Enabling Applications Manager commented: “Speeding up New Product Introduction is a key strategic focus for RS Components and an area that Group IS were asked to get involved with to quickly improve productivity. The Crimson team quickly got up to speed with the business processes and understood the key areas that needed to be addressed – visibility and the ability to collaboratively work on product introductions in parallel rather than sequentially. Their high level of engagement with the business users established buy-in early on and ensured that pragmatic decisions were made collectively rather than imposed later in the project. The iterative build approach based on the MOSS platform meant that value was delivered to all 8 involved departments in a matter of weeks rather than the months that would have been required of a solution built from the ground up.”

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