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View from the Top - Part
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PROFILE
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Alan Sutherland
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Company: Menzies Distribution.
Interviewee: Alan Sutherland.
Job Title: Technical services
manager.
The Subject: In a tight market,
newspaper and magazine distributor Menzies has overhauled
its IT infrastructure to make it more competitive.
PERSONAL FILE
NAME: Alan Sutherland.
BACKGROUND: Alan is technical
services manager for Menzies Distribution, the news
distribution arm of John Menzies plc. He joined Menzies
30 years ago from the Distillers Company, initially
as a Cobol programmer to help develop the sales ledger
system.
Alan was looking to move on in the
early 80s, when he was invited to join the team developing
the new order and invoicing system which was to be distributed
to over 80 branches UK-wide using the latest Motorola
68000 processor technology.
He has been involved in the evolution
of this system ever since and is now responsible for
nationwide IT hardware and network infrastructure and
first-line IT support.
Although Menzies now has only 25
distributed branch systems, each is a substantial operation
in its own right, with powerful Sun Microsystems servers
and some sophisticated printing, packing and returns
handling technology.
In addition, Menzies has some 1,400
desktop and mobile users to support throughout the UK.
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Q: WHAT WERE THE BUSINESS REASONS FOR ENHANCING
YOUR IT ENVIRONMENT?
A: The newspaper and magazine business has not exactly been
a growth industry for a number of years, declining through
competition from other media sources – particularly the internet.
Therefore, we have had to explore ways of making the distribution
business more efficient and competitive, hence improving our
bottom line and maintaining market share.
Menzies Distribution really has two customers: the publishers
on one hand and the retailers on the other, both of whom have
different values and requirements.
Although our contracts are with the publishers and we have
traditionally operated on their behalf, we currently have
a particular focus on the retailers in order to improve our
service to them.
The cornerstone of our distribution business is our allocations
system; this determines the quantity of copy we distribute
to each location every day.
We handle newspapers and magazines from about 40 locations
throughout the UK and previously had staff at each location
dealing with the publishers and the allocations.
We decided to centralise this function with core people at
our head office in Edinburgh, creating a team who would manage
it for the whole country.
By combining the move with a redesign of the allocations
system, we were able to reap major efficiency benefits.
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Conspectus 2007
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Copyright © 2007
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