L'Oreal has developed software to help its account
managers work with major retail chains to forecast and improve
sales of its products.
The global cosmetics firm has developed an application based on
Cognos planning
software that uses sales data from the company's core SAP
database.
The system enables retailer-specific sales forecasts to be
produced much faster than the previous system, which was based on
Excel spreadsheets.
Each week, sales information from retailers' electronic point of
sale systems is uploaded into the cosmetic firm's SAP BW
datawarehouse. It is then transferred into Cognos.
The tool enables L'Oreal's national account managers to run
planning and forecasting models that project unit sales and profit
margins on L'Oreal products in retailers including Asda, Boots,
Tesco and Morrisons.
Having successfully offered the service to these accounts,
L'Oreal is now targeting smaller retailers.
Keith Mattocks, project leader of sales and marketing IT at
L'Oreal, said the key to the project was identifying the Cognos
tool and subsequently convincing the company, which had
standardised on SAP systems, that it was the right choice for
business intelligence.
"SAP could have been used, but it would have required more
costly development," he said.
Another challenge in using SAP for planning and forecasting,
according to Mattocks, was that it would have required the sales
team to use a live SAP feed to make off-site sales presentations to
retailers, which could have caused problems.
The software, implemented by Nottinghamshire-based BI-Inform,
was developed last year using an iterative process, which Mattocks
said proved effective and speedy, and enabled collaboration with
end-users.
"We had a working prototype within a few weeks and key users
could get involved early on," he said.
After using Cognos software for the November to January planning
cycle, Mattocks said L'Oreal would roll it out to the next tier of
retailers, including Savers and Wilkinsons, by the end of
March.
SAP said it does provide its own forecasting tools for
retailers, but some users choose to implement their own forecasting
software.
Link to L'Oreal UK
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