NORDIC WAREHOUSE AND LOGISTICS MANAGED FROM COPENHAGEN

When you need to be able to serve all of Scandinavia with day to day deliveries, it poses very high demands on logistics and inventory levels. However, high service requirements do not necessarily mean that a warehouse in every country is needed. On the contrary, one well-functioning, central warehouse can do the job, while at the same time reducing staff costs and warehouse rent, if one knows how to do it properly.

Together with Copenhagen Capacity, manroland, worldwide supplier for the printing industry, figured out how to do it right in regards to their Scandinavian activities. Manroland had warehouses in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and wanted to optimize their business without compromising customer needs.

- By centralising our warehouses, we could offer a broader range of products, because the products are more likely to be sold, when they are gathered in one place, which was also a great flaw in the smaller, decentralized warehouses. At the same time, our customers are accustomed to a high level of service and fast delivery, so
the challenge was therefore to centralise our activities without the customers noticing a difference. And we succeeded, Gitte Nielsen, Chief Financial Officer in manroland, says.

CLEAR FOCUS AND QUALIFIED HELP
The decision to locate in Norway, Sweden or Denmark quickly became a choice between the latter two. Because Norway is not a member of the EU, there are some trade barriers, which make the flow of goods into and out of the country difficult. And since the Swedish customers are primarily located in Gothenburg and Stockholm and further south, they can fairly easily be reached from Copenhagen, from where the rest of Denmark also easily can be served, Copenhagen became the obvious choice. In the beginning of the process, manroland lacked an overview of their options, but then they were introduced to Business Development Manager at Copenhagen Capacity, Casper Keyghaldi-Østergaard. His advice and expertise, not least because of his past in the logistics industry helped manroland.

- Copenhagen Capacity brought valuable information and knowledge to the table, which I and the Swedish CFO did not have. We examined different aspects and developed a programme to calculate the changes in relation to staff and warehouse. This saved us a lot of time and valuable resources, and made us able to make qualified decisions on the centralisation of the warehouses and the logistics opportunities. Overall, it meant that we ended up with a truly flexible solution which we are very pleased with, Gitte Nielsen says.

IMPROVED COMMUNICATION
Although there is nothing like change, it is not all parts of a company in transition that are equally happy with the changes. At manroland, the centralisation of the warehouses was primarily an internal challenge for the salespeople, who were no longer able to visit the warehouses and physically check the goods. It is a process
of change which is now progressing well, and which also made way for an unexpected, yet positive, side effect.

- It takes a while to get the new routines incorporated, but our salespeople and administrative employees can always contact the warehouse with any questions they may have. In exchange, the centralisation has resulted in increased communication across the Scandinavian offices, because we still have offices in Norway and Sweden. We have thus discovered that our employees have found entirely new ways in which to communicate and they have gained a much greater sense of belonging and mutual connection, Gitte Nielsen says. Manroland’s customers have not been affected by the centralisation. On the contrary, some customers have received their supplies more quickly than before.