About Company
AUSS Company is a major distributor of cosmetics, perfumes, and household chemicals.
- Operates 4 branches;
- Employs over 2,500 people;
- Serves over 5,000 clients;
- Distributes products for over 40 multinational corporations, including Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, L’Oreal, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, Schwarzkopf, and others.
- In the market since 1991.
Inventory Management Specifics
With over 40 multinational suppliers, AUSS Company purchasers manage an average of 7-10 contracts each to calculate orders. This involves processing enormous amounts of data, especially when factoring in recommended order sizes from the sales department.
Additionally, managing supplier promotions and translating them for customers previously required immense manual work. To handle the double workload of promotions and regular purchasing, AUSS would have needed to double the size of its purchasing department.
The massive volume is evident from the fact that in just six months of using Forecast NOW!, over 24,000 promotions accumulated in the system!
Reasons for Implementation
AUSS Company previously used a 1C-ERP-based auto-ordering system, but it lacked capabilities for promotional planning. The company considered two options:
- Upgrade the existing 1C-ERP system
- Implement a separate, specialized solution.
Ultimately, AUSS opted against upgrading 1C-ERP and chose to adopt a new program specifically for promotions.
"When evaluating solutions, I looked at 5 different options," said the Deputy Director of Logistics for Inventory Management and Goods Movement. "But Forecast NOW! stood out for two key reasons. First, it provided all the functionality of higher-priced competitors at a much lower total cost. Second, I already had experience with Forecast NOW!, so I knew we could implement it quickly.”
Implementation and Use
"The net time of implementation took around two months," explained the Deputy Director of Logistics. "We spent about two weeks writing processes to extract data from 1C and another two weeks testing. Then we took a month uploading marketing promotions, configuring them in Forecast NOW!, and doing more testing. After that, we began using the program regularly for all promotions."
Prior to implementing Forecast NOW!, almost no one at AUSS worked with promotions. The company had to build the entire promotional planning process from scratch.
Originally, managers gathered promotions from supplier sales departments in Excel and individually uploaded them into Forecast NOW! During initial testing, there were occasional overlaps from managers overwriting each other's promotions data. This occurred because each manager could upload their specific contracts.
To address this, AUSS appointed a single promotions manager role in the purchasing department. This person became solely responsible for uploading promotions data, calculating, and planning promotions in the system. By making this position the only one with upload rights, the issue of overlapping data was eliminated.
"Alongside promotions testing, two other key processes were happening," explained the Deputy Director of Logistics. "First, our systems analyst was checking stock balances and reconciling loaded data. Second, I was training employees on using Forecast NOW! - we analyzed the algorithms and principles to understand the system. Gradually, we transferred order calculations from Excel into the program. Within a month, we had transitioned the calculations for all contracts from our 40 suppliers into Forecast NOW!"
Benefits of Use
Implementing Forecast NOW! provided AUSS with several key benefits:
- Greatly increased process transparency and order visibility compared to before. This benefit was evident immediately after adopting the system.
- Automated handling of tens of thousands of promotions. Doing this manually would require an entire department.
- Streamlined efficiency analysis dozens of times over. Previously, creating a report on excess stock took one week of manual work. Now any logistician can run the same analysis in just 20 minutes with total confidence in accuracy.
- Drastic time savings for logisticians' daily tasks like calculations, order creation, analytics, reporting, and more. Work takes several times less time compared to before.
- More accurate service level forecasting. With all promotions accounted for, the forecast no longer fluctuates wildly week-to-week like when relying on 1C-ERP data alone.
"For me, the main advantages of Forecast NOW! are the transparency of processes and data, plus getting extremely timely and accurate information on our current situation - far better than any manual Excel or ERP system calculations," said the Deputy Director of Logistics.
"I really appreciate the flexibility of the Forecast NOW! team. They listen to suggestions, discuss issues, collaborate on solving problems, and keep improving the product. This collaborative approach means a lot. Additionally, any team member I contact is knowledgeable about recent changes and can provide answers quickly, unlike some software teams where you wait days for specialized technicians. The responsiveness and expertise give me confidence in Forecast NOW!"
