HarperCollins Supply Chain

Welcome to Harper Collins Supply Chain Division - The UK's Leading Book Distributor

Our Distribution Centres, based in Glasgow, has a volume throughput of over 100 million books per year.

We have 3 Distribution Centres giving a combined footprint of 750,000 square feet of warehousing.

Our site is however much larger with over 110 acres in total offering us scope and potential for future expansion HarperCollins also offers a full range of distribution services to our own publishing business in addition to a number of 3rd party client representing 70 publishing imprints, with over half of the volume despatched being 3rd party.

We have invested significantly in our systems and infrastructure in recent years with new order to cash, warehouse management and hi-tech operational handling systems ensuring every unit of stock is fully scanned through every stage of our operational process from receipt into HarperCollins until final despatch to fulfil customer orders.

Our customer and client experience is second to none.

CLIENT SERVICES

We work with our Clients in a collaborative partnership, each client is allocated a dedicated contract manager, whose main role is to ensure that all aspects of service is fulfilled in line with our SLA's. Our relationships are excellent and we have a clear understanding of what our clients both want and need from the supply chain.

We measure, monitor and provide our clients with monthly reports and statistics covering all aspects of the services we provide.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Provision of first class customer service - We have a Team of 45 on hand to take orders and own any queries from beginning to completion.

We have uniquely intimate relationships and understanding of accounts through low employee churn rate. Continuously supporting and valuing our people has always been key to our success, which is reflected in the average length of service we have on site. Almost half of our employees in the operations have a 25 year or greater tenure, making us one of the most knowledgeable Customer Service departments in the industry.

- Our customers are retailers and supermarkets, wholesalers, independent booksellers, schools and local authorities, libraries, end consumers and export customers.

Salesforce our CRM tool tracks all customer interactions and provide us with valuable information about customer demand as we aim to improve our processes, give customers more options and drive efficiencies.

On an average per week we handle 7000 cases - which is 1000 calls and 6000 orders or enquiries via email and mail.

CREDIT MANAGEMENT

The main focus is collection of cash from customers on behalf of HarperCollins and clients of around £300 million per year. We are often seen as an extension of the clients own business.

Other responsibilities of the team are account creation with credit risk assessments, and dispute management.

Some general aftersales activity also completes that end-to-end logistics.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVMENT

We have a Project Management Change Team and full time Process Engineers dedicated to the continuous improvement of our business, as well as project managing any acquisitions on new client startups.

We offer a new business 'Implementation and Integration Service' for any new clients wishing to transfer to HarperCollins whereby we manage all aspects of the physical move and systems integration on their behalf.

QUALITY ASSURED

HarperCollins is approved by Lloyd's Register of Quality Assurance to ISO 14 Thousand and 1, 2004 standard and ISO 9 thousand and 1, 2008 Standard. We are also accredited under the BIC Supply Chain Excellence Award scheme.