Success Story: Global brand retailer - Fashion industry
Situation
Our customer, a global brand retailer in fashion, had year over year growth in sales and revenue. Until the Covid pandemic came along, and supply chains worldwide got disrupted. Sales and revenue declined for the first time in their history.
Critical Issue
Our customer was using multiple Excel files to manage the incoming goods into and outgoing goods out of their warehouses. Quick adjustments to the plan were a lengthy exercise (days) and an overall overview across the different aspects of planning and warehouses was very difficult. Data extracts from the Excel files were uploaded into Tableau for additional dashboards and overviews.
Reason
The use of Excel as a solution for Supply Chain planning, when dealing with a simple model, is not a problem. As soon as the underlying planning models starts to become more complex, functionality is added and more data is fed into the Excel sheets, the maintenance of the plan becomes cumbersome, and each Excel planning sheet is disconnected with the other Excel sheets. The creation of an up-to-date and aligned plan takes days.
Capabilities
Our customer realized they need a more robust and scalable solution. The Director Supply Chain Planning/ IBP realized that replacing Excel would benefit their company if implemented fast, with the support of customers’ team members and connected to source systems like SAP.
We provided
With our in-depth supply chain knowledge and our expertise of implementing Pigment, we provided the right mix of business knowledge and technical expertise to implement a new solution tailor made for the needs of our customer. The business knowledge we brought to the table as a sparring partner was highly valued by our customer.
Result
Positive results were realised in different areas:
- Faster planning: we reduced the planning cycle from days to hours.
- More detailed planning: using Excel sheets, the planning was stuck at a specific level due to Excel constraints. With Pigment, a more detailed plan is possible.
- One platform for
- Data load & -cleansing.
- Adjustments to the plan.
- Dashboards to create the visuals.
- Scenario planning: using the excel planning sheets, one plan was created, using Pigment many plans can be created (scenarios).
- Fast implementation
- S&OP: within 4 months of throughput time (60 days of development).
- Demand: within 1 month of throughput time (12 days of development).
- Much cheaper for the software licenses and the implementation days compared to the SAP Analytical Cloud (SAC).
- Ease of use and maintenance by the business users: day-to-day use and operational maintenance can be done by the business users.
