Linfox will adopt software to make it easier for employees and customers to interact easier
By Ruza Zivkusic | November 9, 2010
Transport and logistics giant Linfox is about to adopt software that will see their employees and customers interact easier with each other.
Six of Linfox’s staff recently joined 18 students at Victoria University in where they put their skills to test for an intensive electronic competition that saw them make life-like decisions as bosses of a global company in a simulated environment.
Linfox staff acted as mentors, coaching the teams in their supply-chain decision-making while using the leading Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP).
Students got an insight into managing the details of a real company.
Linfox’s president of supply chain solutions John Ansley says the company is due to implement the ERP software early next year, which will bolster friendly competition within the company.
“We’ve got a large portfolio of customers and my thought was that we get the non-competing customers in the same market space, there might be customers that collaborate with each other in retail and business and we can approach the game with them and some of our internal teams,” Ansley says.
The company has used SAP for 12 years.
“We’ve continued to push it more across our business, it is an integrated sweep of solution and for us it’s simplified our process landscape as well as the transport system and warehouse system.
“Their hours are recorded on a system that is integrated directly into the system; it makes their life easier and more sufficient.”
Victoria University’s SAP academic programs director Paul Hawking believes the game between students and industry professionals was the first conducted in Australia.
“Some of the students never touched the software before but they learned very quickly,” Hawking says.
“Playing a game provides a fantastic learning environment, the students were highly motivated and adopted far quicker than the academics.”