Dilmah, a Sri Lankan family tea company has today become one of the largest global tea brands. It markets its pure unblended Ceylon tea directly to the consumer in more than 90 countries globally. Their motto is to establish Ceylon Tea as the finest!

In pursuit of excellence, the company established an integrated family tea business with investments in plantations, printing and packaging, tea broking, import & distribution of equipment & materials for the industry all with a single focus - the world’s finest cup of tea, fresh packed at source in Sri Lanka.

Dilmah offers a wide variety of tea to an extensive customer base world wide. With the increasing demand customers have begun to face challenges in services such as online purchasing and tracking of order status. Providing quotations was taking considerable time. With daily fluctuations in tea pricing and packaging costs, delays in responding to order status, and keeping customers informed about product catalogue and specification became a tedious process. This resulted in a high ‘Need’ from both the customers and management to have information freely available and in a timely manner.

Dilmah wanted their customers to readily access needed information such as order enquiries, status, credit amount, inventory level, and delivery lead-time. Simultaneously Dilmah wanted to make available information on demand to support an international business environment.

After a selection process was carried out it was decided that Proteus^®Webportal would give the visibility required by both Dilmah’s customers and staff.

Proteus^® Webportal which is built on Progress OpenEdge^® Architecture gives users the convenience of real-time information. Whilst customer experience is dramatically improved with real-time visibility of product and pricing information, order and delivery status, Dilmah’s marketing department also has access to customer information such as margin and discounts windows, Bill-of-Material details for make-to-order requests and all necessary business status.

Proteus^® webportal helped in crystallizing Dilmah’s ERP system which facilitated the marketing team to view information online from back-end ERP. The team’s access to this information enabled them to be up to date with the progress of Orders being processed and further allowed them to evaluate discounts and optimal pricing of the product.

By giving customers access to information via Proteus^® Webportal, Dilmah has been able to greatly improve customer service and increase productivity. Dilmah has efficiently managed its business, controlled costs and continuously analyze and increase revenue.

Dilmah has benefited in reducing their operational expenses by cutting down on human intervention which lead to errors and delays in response. This automation has improved the efficiency of the product cycle and maintained delivery schedules for both the customer and Dilmah.

“Business visibility is of utmost importance at Dilmah. Information must be readily available, and this need not be a complicated Business and IT mandate. The Progress-based Proteus solution and Kingslake's consultants delivered excellent, measurable results in completing a project that was originally scheduled for 9 months in 3.”  Malik J Fernando, Director Operations, Dilmah

For further information please call Linda Rodway on +44 (0) 121 717 7474 or email me on moreinfo@proteussoftware.com

http://www.dilmahtea.com