Success Story - ARC Supplier Portal & Analytics

Multiple format retail conglomerate 327 Stores | 8 Retail Formats | 6,000 Employees Philippines
Headquartered in Manila with 49 branches and 327 stores in eight retail formats across the Philippines, Robinsons Supermarket Corporation is one of the largest supermarket chains in the country. The company belongs to the Robinsons Retail group along with Robinsons Department Store, Handyman Do It Best Center, Robinsons Appliances, Top Shop, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Toys R Us, and True Value.

Challenges faced
Robinsons Supermarket was facing the following challenges in managing its supplier universe:
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Business context
The merchandising team at Robinsons Supermarket is responsible for sourcing products sold in all its stores. Selecting and sourcing high quality products at reasonable prices, and on time, to offer a wider assortment of safe, innovative and nutritious products to its customers is of paramount importance to the company. This requires a great deal of group effort on part of hundreds of suppliers and stores spread across the country. Collaboration with suppliers network was the link in the chain that Robinsons was looking to strengthen.

Ineffective communication with suppliers: The legacy application in use at Robinsons did not allow a two-way communication with all its suppliers. Information distribution was one-sided making it impossible for suppliers to take active part in the process of product procurement as well as complicating the process for the merchandising team without the clear picture of suppliers response/feedback. Insufficient collaboration capabilities: Robinsons Supermarket was facing problems conducting negotiations with suppliers, developing periodic promotions, schemes and offers on products, and managing a huge number of vendors. Lack of collaboration was affecting timelines as well as effectiveness of such efforts. Limited visibility in supply chain: Robinsons Supermarket was experiencing limited visibility in every aspect of its supply chain including merchandise procurement, supplier performance, inventory management and effectiveness of delivery. High cost of supplier collaboration: The legacy application included an additional fee for every new supplier license procured. With the number of suppliers increasing every day, this system was proving to be expensive as well as ineffective. Difficulty in meeting customer demands: Robinsons found it cumbersome to compare purchase orders to inventory levels on a near real-time basis. It was difficult to compare these to sales order data, and thus Robinsons could not optimize inventory levels which resulted in inadequate supply to meet customer demand.

Manthan Systems Solution

Robinsons Supermarket needed to infuse strong collaboration into its supplier management system. The merchandizing team was looking for a powerful application with advanced collaborative capabilities. Manthan Systems ARC Supplier Portal and Analytics, with its powerful supplier collaboration platform and analytical capabilities, proved to be the perfect fit in this business context. SPA is a comprehensive, web-based collaboration platform for retailers, suppliers, vendors and other touch-points in the retail chain. ARC SPA also provides analytical information and guided analytics with key metrics for informed decision making. SPA has provided Robinsons a single interactive platform with a comprehensive view of the entire supplier portfolio by integrating the key supplier reliability data with financial viability metrics.

Availability and exchange of information

Easy access, support for two-way communication and user-friendly nature of the portal interface helps Robinsons to exchange information about sales, inventory, purchase orders, goods receipts and payments along with relevant KPIs to outright and concessionaire business model suppliers. Using Manthan Systems SPA, Robinsons Supermarkets suppliers can now propose new products to be introduced to customers. Merchandizing team can approve the proposals using tiered approval approach based on SPAs analytical data. SPAs web-based new product introduction form along with SPAs ability to track requests and their status helps the managers plan new products quickly and more efficiently. Other important areas of information sharing have been product details amendment, price cost changes amendment, out of stock advisory, obsolete stock advisory, stock availability advisory, SKU allocation by suppliers for vendor managed inventory and consignment vendors. New store delivery calendar in SPA gives both parties a clear visibility into the timelines and delivery patterns of new stores.

Roles and functionalities

Through its configurable workflows, SPA has addressed Robinson Supermarkets major pain points in the procure to pay (P2P) cycle: the request to address the person in the right role at the suppliers end. Purchase order (PO) approver being out of office was one of the concerns of Robinsons suppliers before deploying SPA. This was affecting the suppliers especially in cases when the receipt of purchase orders was closer to cancel date. SPA provides functionality to automatically assign POs to alternate approvers when original approvers are out of office and revert to the original approver after his/her return. This helps Robinsons to approve the purchase orders in time and the suppliers have lead time to process purchase orders.

Why ARC?
Manthan Systems ARC has brought into our enterprise an extensive collaboration with suppliers and a clear visibility into various aspects of merchandising. ARCs well-thoughtout design and effective application are its biggest strengths. - Thelma G. Roxas,
Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, Robinsons Supermarket Corporation

Collaborative efforts and business reviews

With SPA, Robinsons Supermarkets suppliers are able to be proactive and contribute to a joint business goal. They are able to propose product promotions, store promotions, volume discounts and also book campaigns. Now suppliers can view the list of gondola available for hire in various Robinsons stores and propose to hire gondola in selected set of stores. The portal facilitates the supplier to create and upload planograms and planogram data for a review. The workflow allows modifications to be made to the planograms and approve/reject the same. Approved planograms can be sent to the selected Robinsons Supermarket stores for a review. Robinsons Supermarket has involved its suppliers in setting of business goals and periodic business reviews using ARC analytics.

Role-based analytics
SPA allows Robinsons Supermarket to analyze data across the enterprise, suppliers, vendors and its trading partners. SPAs role-based dashboard view and analytics provides various staff members on suppliers end as well as at Robinsons a clear visibility, actionable data and insight required for every specific role. Supply chain executives at Robinsons are able to take quick and informed actions, evaluate space productivity, conduct better negotiation, manage vendors effectively, and approve/reject various proposals from suppliers.

Alerts and announcements

SPA supports aligning the delivery schedule of the suppliers to new stores to ensure that the stores open with full stock. This is made possible by providing visibility of fill rates. SPA supports email-based alerts, reminders and escalations that are automatically sent to appropriate roles on the suppliers side regarding NSO fill rates, fill rate discrepancies and other incongruent data/information and delays.

Why Manthan Systems

Speaking about why Robinsons Supermarket chose Manthan Systems solution, Thelma G. Roxas, VicePresident & CIO said, Among several characteristics of the ARC, we found its data model driven retail-centricity to be a key differentiator and of significant value to our retail businesses. ARCs scalability and its ability to be deployed rapidly have proved to be major advantages that align with our IT strategy goals.

Benefits discovered
Improved performance: Complete visibility into purchase order tracking by supplier and buyer has improved the in-stock percentage at the stores by 2%. SPA has helped the procurement staff to obtain exact knowledge about the quality of produce available. This has resulted in an increase in the sales of fresh produce at many stores. The visibility has helped store operations, replenishment department, buyers and suppliers in planning and has improved the vendor fill rates by over 5%. Efficient promotion planning: Intense collaboration and two-way communication between the company and its suppliers has led to efficient promotion planning, thereby reducing the gap between projected and actual sales significantly. Clearer product visibility: Streamlining New Product introduction process has resulted in timely introduction with visibility to all stakeholders. Reduced transactional costs: Robinsons has successfully reduced its transaction costs due to extensive use of a Distributed Portal-Based Platform. Easy access to information has reduced the cost of sourcing, warehousing and transporting merchandise. Cost savings and speedy financial return: The SPA license pricing is not based on usage and can be rolled out to any number of suppliers and users without incremental costs, adding to the cost benefit of the solution. The subscription-based investment model with key suppliers brought supplier subscription revenues and helped Robinsons achieve an extremely fast ROI. Increased customer loyalty: The analytical capabilities of SPA have helped Robinsons achieve an accurate SKU rationalization analysis. It also provides a better picture of destination items. This knowledge has improved the companys customer loyalty index. Clearer identification of areas for enhancement: Complete transparency in all interactions between supplier and retailer has helped Robinsons identify areas to reduce cost, reduce risk, and also find new opportunities to improve its operations.

About Manthan Systems

Manthan Systems produces cutting edge analytic solutions for global retail and CPG organizations. Manthan's award winning products, under the brand name ARC, span a wide range of retail segments and formats, transforming decision making for some of the biggest names in global retail. For more information, visit www.manthansystems.com.