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Rubix, Europe's largest supplier of industrial maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) products and services, faced a significant challenge in improving customer satisfaction and reducing operational costs. The company, with 650 locations across 23 European countries, employs over 8,500 employees and serves more than 220,000 customers. However, the company's annual customer net promoter score (CNPS) survey revealed that customers desired better visibility of their order statuses, including access to shipping URLs, event information, and delivery confirmation. This lack of visibility impacted a significant portion of Rubix's 3,000 customer service staff across Europe, who had to handle delivery inquiries over the phone, requiring further inquiries with carriers and drivers. Furthermore, many of Rubix's customers operate large-scale assembly lines, relying on on-time delivery of critical components daily to ensure efficient operations and high standards of quality.

In conflict-affected and high-risk areas (CAHRA), the extraction and trade of minerals such as tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold can contribute to conflicts and human rights abuses. These raw materials are used in a wide range of products, including everyday electronic devices. The challenge lies in promoting responsible mineral trade, which requires transparency and traceability in the supply chain. The lack of a reliable system to track and trace these minerals from their source to their final destination makes it difficult to ensure ethical practices in their extraction and trade. The ITSCI Programme was established to address this issue, focusing on the supply chains in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda.

MSD Animal Health, a globally operating pharmaceutical company, faced a significant challenge in managing the order intake from thousands of veterinarians using their products. The company needed a system that could accurately predict the quantity of medicine each veterinarian would require each month. The lack of such a system led to inefficiencies and waste, as it was difficult to anticipate demand and manage inventory effectively. The challenge was to develop a software solution that could automate the prediction process, streamline order intake, and improve overall efficiency.

NEXT, a UK-based retailer with over 500 stores in the UK and Ireland and around 200 franchised stores in over 30 countries overseas, is committed to the responsible sourcing of timber and timber-containing products. The company's vision is to work with supply chains to deliver timber products that come from responsible or certified sources such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). NEXT aims to achieve a target of sourcing 100% of its timber from responsible and certified sources by 2025. However, the challenge lies in meeting the due diligence requirements as stated by the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), which was designed to reduce illegal logging by ensuring that illegal timber and timber products can't be sold on the EU market.

The Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) is an international initiative that was established in 2006 with the aim of promoting responsible soy production. The organization is committed to ensuring the growth of responsible soy production through the commitment of the main stakeholders in the soy value chain and through a global standard for responsible production. The RTRS standard for responsible soy production includes requirements to halt conversion of areas with high conservation value, to promote best management practices, to ensure fair working conditions, and to respect land tenure claims. However, implementing a certification scheme for production and one for Chain of Custody posed a significant challenge.

The safety of meat, dairy, and eggs begins at the farm level, with animal feed playing a significant role. The supply chain of compound feed involves suppliers of raw material, producers, and farmers. SecureFeed was established to ensure the safety and quality of compound feed. However, the compound feed sector has a complex structure with many different stakeholders, making it challenging to manage and collect data. This complexity is also seen in other industries such as pork, beef, fruit, vegetable, and horticulture. The challenge was to connect these supply chains and ensure transparency throughout the sector while responding rapidly to any issues.

The Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) is a certification system designed for woody biomass used in industrial, large-scale energy production. The program aims to provide assurance that woody biomass is sourced from legal and sustainable sources, allowing companies in the biomass sector to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements. SBP’s Data Transfer System (DTS) holds a wealth of information on biomass supplied with an SBP claim. The DTS facilitates the collection and carriage of energy data throughout the biomass supply chain, enabling the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions and the identification of any carbon savings achieved by burning biomass in place of fossil fuel sources. Initially, SBP used a combination of questionnaires and checklists based on Microsoft Word and their CRM system to record information on certifications and audits. However, this system was not efficient and did not provide the level of data quality and insight required.

The Rainforest Alliance, an international non-profit organization, is committed to conserving biodiversity and ensuring sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practices, business practices, and consumer behavior. Operating in 74 nations, the organization collaborates with various stakeholders in the supply chain, including producers, suppliers, brand owners, and retailers, to improve sustainability and livelihoods, and preserve wildlife and forests. However, managing such a vast and complex supply chain, especially for commodities like cocoa, coffee, and bananas, presents significant challenges. The organization needed a way to collect and analyze data from the start of the supply chain to the finished labeled goods, to manage processes more efficiently and maintain the credibility of the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal.

Tony’s Chocolonely, a chocolate company founded in 2005 by Dutch journalist Teun van der Keuken, was established with the aim of transforming the cocoa industry and eradicating child slavery. The founder was appalled to discover the prevalence of child labour in the cocoa industry and decided to create a chocolate brand dedicated to achieving a 100% slave-free chocolate industry. However, the challenge lay in ensuring transparency and traceability in the supply chain. The company chose to work directly with farming cooperatives in Ghana and Ivory Coast, but needed a way to monitor and ensure that the cocoa beans were sourced ethically, without the involvement of child labour. The company also aimed to improve the livelihood of farmers and train them in better agricultural practices.

The Union for Ethical BioTrade (UEBT) is a non-profit association that promotes ethical sourcing, ensuring that companies and their suppliers source natural ingredients in a manner that respects biodiversity and human rights. UEBT provides advisory, training, and capacity development services related to ethical sourcing, particularly in Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), a key aspect of the UEBT standard. However, managing and verifying compliance with ABS rules and best practices across multiple stakeholders, including UEBT members, their suppliers, and certification bodies, posed a significant challenge. The organization needed a robust system to streamline and optimize its audit management process, facilitate supplier onboarding and risk assessment, manage certificate information, and generate comprehensive reports.

Verso Corporation, a leading producer of graphic, specialty, and packaging paper and market pulp, was facing significant challenges with its manual tracking practices. With two manufacturing locations, two distribution centers, and 30 local warehouses, the company was losing hundreds of hours per month due to inefficient and time-consuming manual tracking. This lack of visibility into the transit process often led to customer service representatives interrupting the logistics team to ascertain the status of customer loads. Additionally, high carrier turnover rates complicated the process of uploading EDI data from carriers into a portal for customers to track their orders. Late shipments were particularly costly due to customers' tight press deadlines, with press downtime translating to thousands of dollars in lost revenue—a cost typically covered by Verso.

The global pharmaceutical company, established in 1977, faced significant challenges in its freight invoice verification process. With hundreds of shipments every month, the company operated on a global long-term price agreement with its freight forwarders. However, errors in the invoice verification process were affecting the productivity and efficiency of its logistics and accounts teams. The logistics team had to manually check every invoice and forward it to the account and finance department for approval. This labor-intensive process involved a large team and kept them from focusing on more critical tasks. Over 4% of the invoices received were duplicates, and the entirely manual verification process made seeking approvals, processing payments, and following up with vendors for the correct invoices extremely difficult and time-consuming. The process was prone to errors, leading to overpayments due to unchecked invoices that did not match the initial quotation. There was also a lack of standardisation and transparency in the invoice reconciliation process. The auditing process was inefficient and complex due to the lack of a consolidated repository to document the invoices and their status.

A leading tyre manufacturing company based in Mumbai, India, with production facilities across the globe, faced a significant challenge due to the Suez Canal blockade in March 2021. The blockade, caused by a skyscraper-sized container ship named Evergreen, left about 200 ships stranded at either end of the canal, severely impacting global trade. The financial implications were massive, with the blockade amounting to a loss of nearly £7 billion of goods a day, or approximately £290 million an hour. The tyre manufacturer's westbound and eastbound shipments were halted, impacting cargo worth $18.5 million. This resulted in delays in the delivery of finished goods, affecting eight customers across Europe and the US. Furthermore, the supply of raw materials to production facilities in India was severely disrupted, causing significant interruptions in the production cycle.

HaulMatch, a leading online automobile shipping broker, was facing significant challenges due to a lack of visibility over shipments. The company's shipments, which often took 20-30 days of transit time, were difficult to track, leading to numerous queries from shippers about the status of their shipments. This required HaulMatch’s internal team to invest several hours in fetching the latest update on their customer’s shipment location. The team had to visit third-party websites for updates on shipment location and then share the details with their customers, a process that was time-consuming, tedious, and prone to errors. Furthermore, their customers could not leverage crucial insights such as visibility on the carriers offering them the best service, trade routes that ensure cost optimisation and speedy deliveries. The inefficiencies in tracking updates led to numerous queries regarding the status of the shipment, leading to customer dissatisfaction.

The company, a leading chemical distributor with a presence in over 11 countries, faced significant challenges due to the pandemic-driven port congestion that affected global trade. With over 200 international shipments per month, ensuring timely delivery was a top priority. However, the port congestion disrupted over 51% of the company’s shipments. The prolonged port delays impacted the production cycles of the company’s suppliers, especially in the far East, North America, and Europe, compromising delivery schedules across regions. The company also struggled with a capacity crunch as vessels queued outside ports and turnaround times increased. Securing cargo space became challenging due to lack of visibility over space availability and changes in lead times. Additionally, communication gaps arose as keeping stakeholders informed about changes in arrival timings, delays in transshipments, etc., became increasingly difficult due to a lack of reliable information on port delays and inefficiencies in tracking updates.

The company, a global leader in specialty generic pharmaceuticals, was facing significant challenges in managing its logistics operations. With over 100 monthly shipments via ocean and air, tracking the progress of all freight and assessing the performance of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) was a daunting task. The communication process was inefficient, with updates on task completion being shared via emails, leading to multiple email trails for each shipment. This made it difficult to map and audit the progress of every shipment. The inability to track shipment status and assign follow-up tasks to stakeholders resulted in hefty penalties like demurrage and detention charges. Furthermore, the negligence of the LSPs could not be identified until the fine was levied. The documentation process was also unorganized, with all shipment documents being shared via email. The lack of a common repository for these documents led to process inefficiencies and difficulty in tracking missing documents.

Mega WeCare, a global pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products manufacturer, was facing several challenges in its logistics operations. The company had a limited vendor pool, which restricted the number of negotiations for each shipment, leading to higher shipping costs. The traditional method of negotiating deals via calls and emails was hampering the productivity and overall efficiency of its logistics team. Many of the company's shipments were contract-based, preventing them from leveraging competitive rates throughout the year. Additionally, the annual contract prices included buffers and contingent costs, resulting in additional expenses for the company. The manual creation of reports led to inefficient data analysis and unclear insights, further complicating the situation.

Polymers International, a global player in the plastics and rubber industry, was facing significant challenges in tracking the movement of its approximately 200 monthly shipments. The lack of efficient tracking mechanisms led to difficulties in keeping customers informed about shipment statuses, resulting in confusion and subpar customer service. The operations team had to visit multiple carrier websites to gather updates on shipment locations, a process that was not only time-consuming and prone to errors but also diverted the team from focusing on more critical tasks. The inaccuracies in tracking updates led to a surge in customer queries regarding shipment statuses. The team also struggled with accessing timely information on changes in departure and arrival timings, making it challenging to provide customers with accurate delivery dates. Furthermore, the company was unable to leverage crucial insights such as visibility on the carriers offering the best service, trade routes ensuring cost-effectiveness and speedy deliveries, thereby compromising their ability to identify cost-saving opportunities and make informed decisions.

BBQGuys, a leading provider of grilling and outdoor living products, had developed an internal drop ship program to connect vendors with customers as eCommerce became increasingly prevalent. However, this in-house effort led to a need for repetitive, manual documentation and vendor onboarding processes. The lack of communication, compliance insights, and readily available documentation resulted in high maintenance costs for their drop ship program. The executive team, along with representatives from seven internal departments, identified the need for an automated drop ship program that would reduce manhours, offer flexible integrations with vendors, and increase documentation visibility.

Boscov’s, the largest family-owned department store chain in the Northeastern United States, was seeking to expand its online presence beyond its 50 physical department stores. After several years of working with a previous drop ship provider, the executive team decided to find a more scalable solution that would provide a comprehensive eCommerce solution and a platform that would allow them to expand. However, they found themselves stuck in a lengthy and confusing contract negotiation with another organization, losing valuable time. With a strict deadline in place, Boscov’s needed a brand-new drop ship program in under eight weeks.

Nanit, a company that revolutionized the parenting world with its innovative products, faced a significant challenge as its growth began to skyrocket. The company's existing eCommerce solution provider was unable to keep up with the rapidly evolving operations. As a result, Nanit initiated a massive internal changeover to NetSuite. However, as the integrations increased and processes became more complex, Nanit realized the need for a more efficient solution. The company decided to switch to Logicbroker while the NetSuite integration was still underway. The challenge was to develop a 'hybrid' eCommerce solution that would primarily operate outside any one system while onboarding was still taking place. The goal was to ensure a simple, one-connection-point system that could scale with Nanit's continuous growth.

Orangetheory Fitness, a boutique fitness studio franchise, identified a significant challenge within their business model. The franchisees were spending a considerable amount of time purchasing miscellaneous goods such as cleaning supplies and water bottles, which detracted from their ability to build relationships with members. To address this, co-founder and CEO Dave Long proposed the creation of a B2B Marketplace that would allow franchisees to directly purchase approved equipment and supplies. This initiative evolved into a co-branding opportunity with suppliers like PATH, an eco-friendly bottled water company. However, the challenge was to find the right technology partners to support this new B2B marketplace, Supplies Central, and to connect suppliers to it.

Shipwire, a full-service third-party logistics provider (3PL), was seeking a solution to help their clients comply with retailers’ required EDI and drop ship specifications. They were looking to expand their service offerings and provide their clients with full-service eCommerce enablement. The challenge was to find a way to connect their clients to retail and marketplace channels quickly and efficiently without compromising the quality of service. They were also looking for a solution that offered flexible communication protocols to ensure their clients could comply with retail channel mandates and maximize efficiency. The challenge also included finding a way for their clients to connect to limitless channels without the need for IT department involvement or written code.

A leading Canadian retailer, operating across automotive, hardware, sports, and leisure sectors, was grappling with the challenge of accurately predicting consumer demand and efficiently distributing inventory across its network. The retailer's demand forecasting was hampered by the lack of ability to incorporate various external demand drivers such as weather, demographics, pricing, promotions, product assortment, and location. This was particularly problematic for fashion and seasonal merchandise. Additionally, the allocation process was highly manual and relied on backward-looking information, without considering tailored allocations to stores. The stores were also running over capacity without leveraging intelligence to assist in prioritizing the distribution of new and profitable styles.

The global biosimilar manufacturer was facing a significant challenge in managing its supply chain data. The company primarily relied on its ERP system for Contract Manufacturing Organization (CMO) financial information, but lacked a comprehensive system for generating and maintaining Supply Chain Management (SCM)-related data such as Bill of Materials (BOM) and Bill of Distribution (BOD) information, planning item, inventory visibility, and fixed plans. As the business continued to grow and launch new products, the need for a system to better control product flows and supply chain plans became increasingly apparent. Additionally, the company did not have a supply chain master planning solution, with all SCM-related data being maintained by planners and CMO execution managers in isolated Excel sheets, leading to a lack of alignment. Furthermore, the manual creation of supply plans by planners meant that item level details were often overlooked, and manufacturing lead times, lot size, and yield were managed at the product group level rather than the SKU level, resulting in a lack of precision and hierarchy.

The customer, a global leader in optical retailing, was facing challenges with their highly manual and Excel-driven Assortment Planning process. Each country followed its own method of working, leading to sub-optimal assortment and missed sales opportunities. The local country teams had little to no authority from the global team, resulting in a lack of alignment in terms of assortment selection. The company also experienced difficulties with planning at both store level assortment capacity and box constraints. The processes for managing the pre-season and in-season demand, as well as managing the correct ‘active’ assortment in the old systems were highly manual and often lacked accuracy and precision. This led to significant challenges related to store replenishments.

The company, a retail and wholesale business offering a variety of merchandise and services, was grappling with outdated and disconnected systems and processes. This led to manual and redundant work, which hindered their ability to serve customers optimally as an omnichannel retailer with localized apparel products. The company had multiple solutions to support the apparel space allocation and assortment planning process. However, these were mostly spreadsheet-based point solutions, lacking simplification, connectivity, and intuitiveness. The company had tried to implement a solution six times with various vendors, but all attempts were unsuccessful. Furthermore, assortments based on consumer demographics and regional variances were not being planned, leading to a misalignment with space allocation and product offerings. The company was also not leveraging any enterprise analytic insights to optimize the space allocation and assortment development processes, relying instead on manual calculations that varied by department and user.

The global technology company, a designer and manufacturer of semiconductors and software, was grappling with a highly manual and disconnected approach to managing their forecasts. The company relied heavily on spreadsheets, the Adexa system, and emails, which made the process inefficient and prone to errors. The supply side, which included inventory planning, order planning, and scheduling, was also entirely manual, necessitating extensive coordination due to the outsourced fabless model. The company's demand planning processes were not agile enough and lacked high accuracy levels. Furthermore, wafer inventory was challenging to manage and often too high due to the large dependency on manual planning. The order commit accuracy was poor, as the overall planning did not consider constraints and business rules.

The beauty retailer, marketing 15 brands and 2000 SKUs across various distribution channels, faced a significant shift from physical retail channels to online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift necessitated a future-proof planning tool to support their ambitious growth plans and to gain a deeper understanding of demand drivers. The company was heavily reliant on Excel, which led to latency and siloed processes. They lacked a comprehensive understanding of the main drivers of demand for their five channels. The company was also unable to plan at the desired level of granularity, leading to shortages and delivery delays. Demand planners were spending most of their time crunching Excel spreadsheets, unable to focus on higher-level strategic tasks. Manual interventions were frequently needed, especially for estimating the effect of New Product Introductions.

The manufacturer of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and building management systems and controls was facing significant challenges in its supply chain management. The company was struggling with large delays in replanning for any delay in the supply of critical components, which was causing disruptions in production and customer order fulfillment. Additionally, the company had limited visibility into the supply chain disruptions of its Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, which further complicated the situation. The company was also unable to effectively analyze alternative scenarios to mitigate supply disruptions, which was a significant challenge in the face of events like the COVID-19 pandemic that caused widespread supply chain disruptions.