Haleon is a world-leading consumer health company. With a portfolio of leading brands in oral health, vasomotor symptoms, and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, millions of consumers around the world use the company’s products every year.

Group revenue:

£10.9 billion in 2022
Employees:

22,000
Headquarters:

Weybridge, UK

Summary

Challenges

Orders must be processed rapidly for next-day delivery.
Need to receive orders via fax, email, or PDF.
Error-prone manual entry led to rejected deliveries, reduced efficiency, and higher costs.

Solutions

Selected a trusted global partner.
Replaced manual data entry with an automated data capture solution.
Implemented low-touch IT management.

Results

Boosted order processing automation to 90%
Saved 20 hours of manual work per week
Lifted OTIF delivery rate to over 99%

Challenges

Hundreds of pharmacies place orders for next-day delivery that must be processed rapidly, efficiently, and accurately
Smaller pharmacies do not have access to an EDI platform, and therefore send orders as faxes, emails, or PDFs
Manually re-keying orders into the ERP system increased the risk of human error, leading to rejected deliveries, reduced efficiency, and higher costs

Part of the Haleon group of companies, Haleon Hong Kong is a leading consumer healthcare enterprise that supplies well-known brands to pharmacies across the region—including Sensodyne, Polident, Corsodyl, and many more.

Joe Ho, customer supply chain lead at Haleon, said, “Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated territories in the world—and at pharmacies, shelf space is at a premium. To help keep consumers across the region supplied with the products they need, we aim to deliver quickly and efficiently to the more than 200 pharmacies in Hong Kong.”

Delivering on time, every time to hundreds of pharmacies in Hong Kong requires Haleon to orchestrate a lean supply chain and logistics network. The company aims to deliver a 99 percent on time in full (OTIF) fulfillment rate. To hit this target, the company must process all orders received before 3 p.m. by the end of the current working day.

“Order processing is one of the most important stages of our fulfillment process,” said Joe. “That’s because any delays to entering orders into our SAP business systems could cause delays for picking and packing processes in our warehouse, and ultimately to the next day’s customer deliveries.”

For many years, Haleon and its parent company GSK have relied on automation from OpenText to streamline order processing. Approximately 70 percent of Haleon’s pharmacy customers used the EzTrade platform for electronic data interchange (EDI) to exchange documents such as purchase orders and invoices automatically. Operated by the GS1 consortium in Hong Kong, the EzTrade EDI platform is powered by OpenText Trading Grid and runs in the OpenText Business Network Cloud.

Joe continued, “While most larger pharmacies and pharmacy chains use EDI, 30% of our customers sent orders to us manually via email and fax. To enter these orders into our SAP system in time for next-day delivery, our order processing team were working late into the evening. Manually re-keying data from paper or emails into SAP also increased the risk of human error, resulting in rejected deliveries, reduced efficiency and higher operational costs.”

We’ve increased OTIF deliveries from around 98.5% before to over 99% today. Thanks to our OpenText capture solution, we’re shaping a more efficient and robust supply chain, so our customers can keep their shelves stocked.

Joe Ho
Customer Supply Chain Lead, Haleon

Solution

To streamline its approach to B2B integration in Hong Kong, Haleon engaged OpenText to help automate order processing for non-EDI customers. Using data capture technology from OpenText, the new solution minimizes the need for error-prone manual work.

Products deployed

OpenText™ Trading Grid

Leveraging modern data and application integration, Trading Grid enables true business-to-anything (B2A) integration on a cloud-native platform
OpenText™ Information Capture and Data Extraction

Optimize data quality, accuracy and insight for any organization

Selecting a trusted global partner

Based on more than a decade of success of using OpenText technology via the EzTrade platform, Haleon selected OpenText to help deliver a capture solution that could offer high levels of accuracy, speed, and reliability for mission-critical B2B flows.

“As well as having extensive geographical reach, OpenText has a great deal of industry experience across both fast-moving consumer goods and healthcare,” recalled Joe. “We were looking for a robust, dependable solution, and we were convinced that OpenText had the services, solutions and experience to help us realize our goals.”

Replacing manual data-entry processes

Working closely with Haleon, OpenText designed the business logic for the new data capture solution. Running securely in the Azure cloud, the solution extracts the relevant data from customer orders sent as faxes, emails or PDFs and automatically enters it into the company’s SAP® system for onward processing.

“As the main technology provider behind the EzTrade platform, OpenText is already responsible for processing B2B data on behalf of some of the largest companies in Hong Kong,” added Joe. “As a result, we were confident that OpenText was the optimal choice for Haleon, and our experience on this project confirmed we made the right decision. The OpenText team listened carefully to our requirements and delivered an automation solution that met all our needs—on time and within budget.”

Offering low-touch IT management

Midway through the solution implementation process, Haleon separated from its former parent company GSK. Haleon found that the OpenText solution was perfectly aligned to its needs as a newly independent business.

Joe explained, “In the past, we could rely on the technical support resources of our parent company, but after the divestiture we had much leaner resources available to support the digital systems for the Hong Kong business. OpenText designed their capture solution to be lightweight and easy to manage, which allowed us to avoid any significant increase in IT administration workload.”

We see OpenText as an ideal partner for supply chain innovation. In the future, we’re excited to work together to identify ways to harness automation to enhance other process areas.

Joe Ho
Customer Supply Chain Lead, Haleon

Results

The new capture solution from OpenText is completely transparent to Haleon’s customers. Customers continue to send their orders to Haleon in their preferred format, and the capture solution automatically extracts the necessary data.

Boosted order processing automation to 90%

Through its work with OpenText, Haleon has achieved its goal of automating order processing for non-EDI customers, enabling higher levels of straight-through processing.

“We have boosted the level of order processing automation from 70% to 90%, covering almost all of our customers across Hong Kong,” said Joe. “The final 10% represents customers that either do not place regular orders or that require more complex automations. Thanks to the time we’re saving, we can easily process these orders manually.”

Saved 20 hours of manual work per week

By freeing its order processing team from manual data-entry tasks, Haleon is empowering its employees to focus on value-added activities.

“We have two full-time equivalents dedicated to order processing, and previously it was the norm for them to work on data entry until 5 p.m. every evening,” Joe confirmed. “Today, we finish all our order entry tasks by 3 p.m., which saves at least 20 hours a week of manual work. As a result, our teams can spend more time engaging with our customers, contributing to greater customer satisfaction.”

Lifted OTIF delivery rate to over 99%

With clean, accurate order data flowing into its SAP business systems, Haleon has slashed the risk of human error—helping it to deliver the right products on time.

“We’ve increased OTIF deliveries from around 98.5% before to over 99% today,” commented Joe. “Thanks to our OpenText capture solution, we’re shaping a more efficient and robust supply chain, so our customers can keep their shelves stocked.”

Looking ahead, Haleon plans to explore further opportunities for process automation. Joe concluded, “We see OpenText as an ideal partner for supply chain innovation. In the future, we’re excited to work together to identify ways to harness automation to enhance other process areas.”

Blog

Haleon harnesses automated data capture to keep shelves stocked at pharmacies across Hong Kong

Joe Ho, Customer Supply Chain Lead at Haleon, explains how the company cuts errors and lifts on-time delivery rates to over 99% with automated data capture from OpenText.

Read the blog