Enhanced Supply Chain and Financial Planning through Integrated Intelligence at Sogegross

Sogegross Group is among Italy's top ten private groups in the large-scale retail sector. The company is headquartered in Genoa and operates in most Central and Northern Italian regions. The group's presence is primarily focused on the brands Sogegross and Grosmarket (cash & carry channel), Basko (supermarkets and superstores) and its e-commerce channel www.laspesabasko.it, Ekom (food discount), DORO supermarkets (supermarkets and superette franchises), Primia and Q Maiuscola (two private label brands within the group). The company employs 2,700 people across 270 stores and has 322 Board users.

Sogegross, a large-scale Italian retailer, was faced with the challenge of managing a complex supply chain and financial planning process. The company needed an operational and organizational information system that could align their business needs with IT requirements within their intricate retail chain. The complexity of their operations required a planning solution that could transform an unstructured information system into a more standardized and functional one. Sogegross' supply chain includes seven platforms dedicated to specific types of products, including fresh food, fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, dry and fresh discounters, packaged food, and frozen products. Annually, they manage over 65,000 tons of fresh products and more than 33,000,000 boxes of packaged goods.

To address their challenges, Sogegross implemented the Board Intelligent Planning Platform. This platform infused smart analysis and forecasting capabilities at each key step of their supply chain and business function, including financial planning processes. The platform was used across key business functions and processes such as financial planning & analysis, anti-fraud measurement, purchasing, sales and marketing, logistics, human resources, and IT services. The Board platform allowed Sogegross to match business users' needs from different job functions with the related IT requirements across the entire supply chain and finance, translating them into core shared objectives. The platform also enabled the creation of ad hoc reports while allowing access to a single database under standardized control.

• The implementation of the Board Intelligent Planning Platform has resulted in significant operational improvements for Sogegross. The platform has empowered both the IT and business departments with an intelligent planning tool that addresses specific business issues through ad hoc reports while allowing access to a single database under standardized control. This approach has resulted in overall improvement and job satisfaction. The platform has also demonstrated a surprising ability to generate effective solutions within extremely short time frames and has been easily integrated into other software systems. For example, Board is now fully integrated with Sogegross' retail merchandising system. The company has also praised the ungrudging willingness of Board’s expert teams to provide prompt and effective support when needed.

• Reporting acceleration: Sogegross can now create a daily report in four seconds, compared to two working days previously required.

• Cost reduction: The cost of developing detailed reports has reduced by 30-35%.

• IT resource optimization: The company can quickly verify peaks of HW/Services weekly, allowing the IT Department to adjust the ERP’s functioning based on the best distribution of disk space across the company.