Lacoste's Journey to Automating Reimbursement Requests and Shortening SLAs by 50%

Lacoste is a globally recognized fashion brand, founded by French tennis legend René Lacoste. The brand is known for its famous embroidered crocodile on its shirts, shoes, and sports clothing. In 2019, Lacoste employed over 8,500 people with operations in 98 countries and 1,100 physical stores around the world. In addition to its physical storefronts, Lacoste also has e-commerce operations in over 30 countries, offering their customers a digital, self-service experience. Their digital presence began to grow rapidly as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to a significant increase in online sales.

Lacoste, a globally recognized fashion brand, faced significant challenges with its reimbursement process, particularly in its Brazilian e-commerce operations. The surge in online sales due to the Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in customer return requests, which required a quick and error-proof reimbursement process to ensure optimal customer experience. For debit card purchases, the Finance team had to initiate a lengthy process of collecting and running the client’s information through internal approvals until it could be handed off to the Accounts Payable team. This process was organized through email, spreadsheets, and printed documents, with the approval flow being the most manual part. The Finance team had to gather physical signatures before processing the reimbursement payment. The increase in online sales and remote working began to impact the deadlines for customer reimbursements directly. The Finance team needed to find a digital and agile solution to gain efficiency in this process and replace their manual workflow.

Vinicius Castro, Projects and Digital Operations Manager at Lacoste, initiated the implementation of Pipefy, a platform he had previously worked with, to improve their internal and external e-commerce operational workflows. The platform was onboarded and implemented within a month. To digitalize the reimbursement process, four teams - Customer Support, Fiscal, Accounting, and Accounts Payable - began using Pipefy. The reimbursement workflow begins with the support team filling out a Pipefy Form when a reimbursement request is received. After this, all teams follow the standardized flow inside the software. The flow of information between teams became more clear and standardized, reducing the effort from each team member and making the process more efficient. The use of process automation also contributed to the team’s efficiency gain, saving over 1,000 hours of manual labor.

• The implementation of Pipefy brought about a drastic change in Lacoste's operations. It helped Lacoste scale their reimbursement request processes without needing to increase the team’s headcount and keep up with their increasing online sales. The process standardization allowed them to generate reports and measure each team’s efficiency, enabling managers to make smarter decisions. The increased efficiency provided by Pipefy to the reimbursement process caught the attention of other departments in the company, such as HR and Finance, who also intend to incorporate their processes into the tool and expand their journey towards digital transformation. According to Vinicius, Pipefy is helping Lacoste’s team every day in reaching their goal: to achieve excellence in customer support. With standardized processes and automated manual tasks, the team can be more efficient in offering the best to their customers.

• The average time to process a reimbursement decreased by over 50%, from 45 days to 20 days on average.

• Around 1,300 reimbursement requests via bank slip were processed in 2020.

• Lacoste’s team saved over 1,000 hours of manual labor with automation rules.