MWC had a difficult time handling the unique returns requirements for clients such as consumer electronics manufacturers. It maintained multiple systems, significant data entry staff and difficult reconciliations to ensure that clients received accurate data about their returns. Its system also needed the ability to interface with call centers handling customer service; accounting departments issuing credits; quality departments assessing the reasons for the returns; and the inventory departments trying to manage and recapture value from the returned items. MWC (Rancho Dominguez, Calif.) teamed with Andlor Logistics Systems (Vancouver, B.C.) to create a more efficient and less expensive
system to let clients manage returned goods and quickly processes the items to recover the highest value. Andlor’s BacTracs Reverse Logistics Management software, installed in 2003, lets MWC configure and automate the processes to meet the needs of each specific client. MWC can link the processes together as required through return management authorization (RMA) creation, complex receiving, shipping, crediting, inspection, test, repair, quality control, packaging, inventory management and data communication with the clients’ ERP systems. BacTracs captures and verifies item serial numbers and generates a bar coded “traveler” for the units as they are moved through the returns processes. The Web-based system’s dashboard gives real-time status of returns across all departments, the transaction activity volumes and the user-defined alerts requiring operational attention. Reporting is provided for the different levels of operations and management and can be downloaded into various reporting tools for further analysis The software gives MWC greater control of returned units and inventory. The result is faster turn around times on the returned units. “BacTracs manages every state and transition of flow for our clients,” says Yosuke Abe, Vice President at MWC. “BacTracs has provided us with savings of 40 percent of human resources compared to our older systems.”
