JJA

The Challenge:

INVENTORY CONTROL THROUGH ROBUST SALES FORECASTING AND PROCUREMENT PLANNING

“For the last 10 years, we lived a time of exponential growth and we doubled our workforce, requiring us to standardize our methods and our processes, flows and interchanges, whether for sales forecasting or procurement,” explains Nicolas De Panafieu, Supply Chain Manager at JJA.

JJA’s strategy is also a promise to ensure optimal stock availability and fast delivery. Doing this means anticipating, managing, organizing, securing and optimizing the supply chain. It calls for an S&OP approach based on equally efficient and robust technology. 

“Customer deliveries in just 72 hours.” This is one of the points that sets JJA apart with a product offering at the best quality/price ratio and always at the cutting edge of the trends. This means having a large stock to ensure optimal availability. Naturally, it’s a commercial advantage, but it also embodies an element of risk. With an annual product range renewal of 40%, inventory control and control over its turnover are essential to ensure an efficient business model that makes products available at the right price. Inventory control means anticipating. To anticipate is to prepare for the future. 

A powerful demand planning solution and a team of 12 demand planners now form the hub for the data exchanged between the Sales Department and the Supply Department, in charge of purchases and product collection. Information travels up and down between the different stakeholders. “It is a classic S&OP approach, which we structure in step with JJA development,” adds De Panafieu.

The Solution:

QAD DSCP PROVIDES A ROBUST, COLLABORATIVE AND INTEGRATED SOLUTION

JJA’s Information System was scattered with business tools corresponding to what the various departments needed but not providing full internal and external collaboration. The company wanted to set the foundations for a more collaborative supply chain. It reviewed its organization and implemented an S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning) approach. This meant finding the solutions that would become the supporting pillars. The choice was made for using cloud-based Demand Planning for sales forecasting and Procurement Planning for supply planning. 

“In addition to the functional and business scope of QAD DSCP solutions, we wanted to be able to count on the backing of a recognized expert in demand and supply chain planning during these changes. We wanted a company and a team with a clear vision of our business, our challenges and our goals,” explains De Panafieu.

The Benefits:

JUST-IN-TIME ORDERS

There are obvious improvements after just one year: better product life cycle management, better anticipation of item seasonality and of new trends, creation of a shared database for all the S&OP stakeholders, making for more reliable information which is always up-to-date, and better management of sales peaks in the history. 

After setting up Sales and Operations Planning based on a reliable and agile sales forecast, demand planners are executing a procurement plan. 

“They are autonomous in fulfilling their orders because QAD DSCP technologically advanced solutions have helped to better the structure of our organization resulting in reducing the risk of errors,” continues De Panafieu. “We all know what can hurt our business at JJA, and in particular that is a slow moving item, that directly impacts our profitability. We have to make every endeavor to ensure that our orders mirror as accurately and closely as possible the needs of our customers and our requirements as regards lead times. Internal collaboration gives us agility and a longer-term vision, and having streamlined flows provides a significant competitive advantage.” 

“We began to see benefits almost immediately such as increased inventory turnover, a well-structured procurement plan in terms of “Economic Order Quantity” (the right quantity at the lowest cost), just-in-time securing of purchase orders, dynamic management of safety stocks. We also saw an optimization of interchanges with partners/suppliers who are informed further upstream what our ordering intentions will be, enabling us to further reduce procurement lead times,” adds De Panfieu.

“Over the past 12 months, our sales have continued to grow. We achieved this without having to increase our working capital requirement. It proves that our S&OP approach, backed by our internal organization and QAD DSCP, is the right choice and fully addresses JJA’s needs,” concludes  De Panafieu. 

And what about the future? “We are determined to continue in this permanent quest for performance, something that is so important to the company.” 

*QAD Digital Supply Chain Planning (DSCP) was formally known as QAD DynaSys