Bonheur Marketing Corporation (Bonheur)

Bonheur Marketing Corporation (Bonheur) is one of the top logistics and distribution companies in the Philippines. Its hidden identity as a corporation is a low-keyed representation of the business trust given to them for their capability to distribute products nationwide by well-known companies like Philip Morris.

Bonheur started in 1990 as a nationwide distributor for Philip Morris. Armed with acute business acumen and aggressive marketing approach, Bonheur’s business grew and carried other consumer products. All of these are the offshoot of the trust they earned from their first principal Philip Morris. Currently, they do regional distribution for such names as Bristol-Myers, Kimberly-Clark, Safi (the makers of Datu Puti and Papa Ketchup) and Diageo Phil. Inc. (distillers of Johnny Walker and Gilbey’s gin) to name a few.

Today, Bonheur maintains six business offices nationwide. These are the Buendia, Parañaque, Calasiao, Isabela, Bicol and Cavite offices. The largest office that serves as depot is the Parañaque office, which measures 4,000 square meters. The company employs 200 regular employees excluding those who are on contract. It also manages a fleet of 100 vehicles.

Managing Information

Mr. Ramon C. Chan, Executive Senior Vice-President, said, “The primary business challenge that we have right now is how to reach and aptly manage the tertiary markets.Tertiary markets are the sari-sari stores nationwide. These channels still play a big role in reaching consumers. “And managing information at this level is extremely difficult. That’s why information and communications technology is playing a great role for us,Chan stated.

Bonheur uses the regional depot with a van salesman organizational structure to distribute the products they carry. Complementing the van salesmen or “extract salesmen as Chan puts it, are the booking salesmen who cover institutional or key accounts like the supermarkets. “With this set-up,Chan said, “inventory-related information and the aging accounts receivable data are crucial. Properly managing this information and acting on what it says may even mean our business survival.

Aggravating this situation is the fact that Bonheur uses its principals' different information systems that resulted to having six information systems running its business. “We tried integrating all the systems before but our different principals also change their information systems, thus, making the integration efforts useless and a waste.Since then, Bonheur has learned to use all different systems and has lived with re-encoding all the hardcopy outputs of the different systems to Bonheur’s own system.

Fujitsu’s contribution

“What we appreciate about Fujitsu Philippines is that the staff listens to our needs. They study our ways of doing business and our requirements before developing a system. FPI adjusts to us, not the other way around,he said.

This collaborative type of business relationship has resulted in automating and pioneering wireless work in Bonheur’s warehouse system. “With the use of the scanners and the handhelds, our stock picking efficiency has improved,Chan said. This is important to Bonheur because its warehousing system has to manage at least 300 SKUs per principal and the system is the only centralized business activity in the company’s geographically distributed operations.

Another offshoot of this working environment is an initiative to automate Bonheur’s mobile sales nationwide. Chan detailed, “When the system is in place, we are expecting to improve the integrity of the data gathered by our salesmen. They do not have to labor doing their Daily Activity Report (DAR), which usually take, at the very least, an hour to finish. It will be automated already and entered only once. Another benefit that we really appreciate is that only authorized discounts will be allowed.

“But most of all,Chan smiled and quipped, “we do not have to put so much effort to understand the hand writing of our salesman.