I had a very interesting conversation with one of our clients in the personal care manufacturing and distribution business about their efforts to strengthen their brand position through technology. She shared with me that recently her Marketing team executed the most successful social media campaign, and that their markets responded most favourably to their messages. The correct selection of technologies, understanding of market expectations, and strong internal human skills and creativity yielded a clear 21.7% growth in sales in mere three months. She was thrilled.
Sales accelerated at her hundreds of distributors, and as stock decreased, they began placing orders to replenish. Stock at her regional distribution centres, which usually lasts a couple of months, depleted in a few weeks, prompting the release of product stored at her manufacturing facilities. Her COO detected these variations very early, and his team began activating the tools we provided to their teams to properly address the changes in demand. He was tense but not at all stressed.
She remembered years ago, when we prepared a proposal to change her ERP for LOVIS EOS. At that time, her company was 1/10th of its current size and permanently struggled with growth attempts. Every time they had 5% to 10% annual growth, problems with unreliable data and broken operating and business processes emerged, and much of this growth was lost due to a lack of sales fulfilment. They were living the classic ERP nightmare with the Excel-ence disease included.
Happily, she does not believe in the old adage “better the devil you know than the angel you don’t know”. Besides, she was tired of dealing with this situation and agreed to try our proposition, which, in her words, “sounded too good to be true”. To eliminate any trace of doubt, we took two weeks to prepare a fully customised demo that solved her problems and needs using her own data. As soon as she and her team saw LOVIS EOS running the way they needed, and revised the savings in time and effort we had delivered to other clients, she authorised the subscription and implementation project. The initial fully customised implementation to their needs at that time took us five months from kick-off to go-live. As the company grew, her team and ours adapted our platform to their evolving needs; we worked on post-implementation projects every 2 or 3 years.
Some years later, she called us to help her optimise her supply chain, which was exponentially more complex. After a quick data diagnostic, we realised that her team, in their best interests, had been using LOVIS EOS effectively. The data reflected their operational, financial, and accounting reality with very little effort beyond their normal day-to-day tasks. Her System Administrators had been doing a great job, and her hundreds of users, some new, some not, had been permanently certified through our LOVIS Academy.
This status opened the door to a more advanced Materials Requirements Planning Technology, called DDMRP, which was developed a few years earlier by two consultants. We had recently incorporated this new technology into LOVIS EOS and, as with everything we add, it was already included in her subscription at no additional cost. The post-implementation project took a few weeks and required a low level of consultancy services investment. Because the data required by the technology were fully reliable, the actions it proposed were quite logical. A few weeks later, the inventory was reduced from its already low level by around 9.4%, the last-mile lead time was reduced to 2 days, and the reaction capacity to demand spikes almost doubled. Moreover, operational costs dropped by approximately 7%, and the company achieved full payback on this investment in under three months. Everyone was happier, and they knew they were prepared as ever to increase their growth speed.
The social media campaign was an utter success. When we talk about brand positioning using technology, this is the arena we almost always think of. However, before her company began running on LOVIS EOS, every successful attempt to improve brand positioning through media was followed by a loss of brand value in the market because it failed to fulfil the final promise: deliver the right product in the right place at the right time, so the customer could satisfy their need.
In Arthur C. Clarke’s words, “Technology, properly used, is indistinguishable from magic”.
Companies are needs-satisfaction systems immersed within markets, which are needs-requiring systems. Their interactions, including awareness and fulfilment, are the basis for a strong positioning of the provider with the consumer. Next time you evaluate a technology-based brand positioning campaign, analyse if your fulfilment technology is up to par with your brand and honours your value promise.
Rafael Funes
