Paper planning

We speak to Mark Jansen, MSG's mail & parcels operations manager: "We plan everything related to mail and logistics within MSG. For this, we used our Word and Excel sheets. In AFAS, we created new orders and then placed them in a Word template we created ourselves. It was then printed and entered into the order folder. This caused us to walk back and forth with sheets all day. A lot of hassle, in other words. To make things more manageable, we also put everything in Excel. Because of all these manual actions, everyone was very busy and actions were accidentally forgotten."

Digital planning from AFAS

Mark continues: "In our search for a new planning system, we came across vPlan. Our orders from AFAS go directly into the vPlan backlog. From the backlog, we can then plan the orders. The idea is to keep our backlog empty, if this is not the case we can point this out to our colleagues and this way an order is never forgotten again."

MSG now uses vPlan for their repro, delivery and sorting departments: "An order goes through all the process steps in vPlan, from registration to invoicing. Each department does its own task in this. This gives a much better overview and insight than how we had it in Excel before."

Adoption of vPlan within MSG

Mark talks about the implementation of vPlan at MSG: "We implemented vPlan step by step within MSG. We started with our back office so that they could master the system first. The back office is where all orders come in and they then deploy it throughout the organisation. Once the inside sales department was up and running, we also added the colleagues from sorting, delivery and print & printing to the planning." According to Mark, the departments are very pleased with vPlan: "They always and everywhere have insight into the status of orders and know exactly what needs to be done. Because the departments saw that there is a much better overview with vPlan, adoption was quickly high."

"Thanks to vPlan, our employees always and everywhere have insight into the status of orders and know exactly what needs to be done"

Experience vPlan

"Our experience with vPlan is very good. During our implementation we received good support, even on site. That process went very smoothly, allowing us to use the planning tool almost immediately. When we sit around the table with other companies who have problems with their planning, we would certainly not hesitate to recommend vPlan," Mark concludes.

Mark, thanks for the nice chat!