Acrelec, leader in the self-service kiosks and stores digital solutions market decided to implement an S&OP process to maintain its competitive advantage and reinforce the relationships with their subsidiaries.
A growing French company
Acrelec, leader in Phygital is a french company founded in 2004. With an increasing growth for the past 5 years, the company has now more than 700 employees and 140M€ in revenue in 2018. With a presence in 70 countries around the world, Acrelec offers a turnkey premium experience around hardware, software and services.
A necessary high responsiveness to answer customers’ demands
The company is working globally with important and demanding customers (such as McDonald, Burger King or Walmart) which implies an important number of customized lines per country. With a booming business and new customers Acrelec experienced a loss in responsiveness for its products production. The short-term vision only included a demand plan for the upcoming 3 months.
It was impossible to foresee large orders which resulted in discrepancies between subsidiaries and the industry department. At this moment it was crucial to get back to a common goal and face those stakes as united group.
To do so, Guillaume Caron, Supply Chain Manager at the time, decided to implement a global S&OP process in order to bring more clarity to the ongoing situation.
Learn more about S&OP in our latest article
A necessary evangelization process
Henrick Imbach, actual demand & sales manager for the group and previously manager of the China production factory, found the S&OP idea interesting and decided to assist Guillaume with this new project.
“The fact that we were growing so much was not helping, indeed, it is very hard to stimulate change when everything seems to be just fine! He explains.
An evangelization period was decided to explain the meaning and importance of the forecasts and S&OP process to the subsidiaries’ management.
An implementation step by step
The decision to implement a S&OP process was taken in March 2017, the first SOP was held in June and the first S&OP cycle in September 2017 with a complete agenda.
The different sides of the S&OP were added along the way: KPIs on customers performance, Macro-Business review with the implication of all for the buying decisions, Supply review and demand planning.
The choice of Colibri
For Guillaume and Henrick it was impossible to maintain the S&OP within Excel. They needed an easy to use, accessible and understandable tool.
“After 2 to 3 days of trainings users were completely autonomous, with Colibri you can also have access to a lot of information coming from our ERP, giving a global vision of the situation”
Moreover, event if it was easy to convince the management teams of the S&OP process, convincing the subsidiaries was a bit more complicated…
“Colibri was perfect to includes the subsidiaries. To offer them an easy to use and to understand solution, far more ergonomic than the Excel files previously used, allowed us to prove the efficiency of the tool and the process” tells Henrick.
The subsidiaries’ onboarding was facilitated by Colibri and today they only spend 30 minutes a month on the tool, it is simpler and far more playful
Significant gains after only 12 months of process.
After one year of full S&OP process, Acrelec recorded:
- A 2 million euros gain on purchases thanks to the stock reduction and a better purchasing management
- 27% additional production capacity
- A 63% reduction in all the buffer stocks on all the product families
- A better collaboration between the teams and a better organization and structuration allowing to free the teams from tedious and nonproductive tasks.
What you should remember when implementing a S&OP process
- You need one person to lead the process beginning to end
- KPIs are key and allow to correctly follow the business and the process
- Remember that the S&OP does not add more meetings. On the contrary many meetings are removed thanks to the process, in the end you save time.
- Finally, to have a tool such as Colibri allow to onboard the users easily and to better collaborate.
Colibri is extremely “light” and understandable even when you have no experience on other tools. The screens are graphic and much appreciated by our subsidiaries, the information is available and readable” concludes Henrick.
