Charlotte Russe, a rapidly growing retailer, operates more than 500 stores in the U.S. in addition to its online and mobile shopping platforms. The company excels in delivering a differentiated brand experience that embraces the Charlotte Girl’s on-the-go lifestyle. However, the existing system infrastructure and associated business processes were limiting the company’s ability to grow, operate quickly and efficiently, and keep pace with both its customers’ demands and the competitive environment. Prior to the upgrade, the Charlotte Russe team was spending numerous hours each day manually uploading spreadsheets across various functions, which left the team with little time to analyze or act on the data. Due to some inefficient business processes, the company also experienced delays in getting purchase orders to its vendors, a core requirement of its business.

Pharmaceutical suppliers and retailers in Denmark operate in a tremendously complex environment. Every two weeks suppliers must submit product pricing to the government without having any knowledge of how their competitors will price similar pharmaceutical products. The government then selects among bids for the lowest-priced prescription drug, which serves as the only one that it will fully reimburse for a given two-week period. After those two weeks, the process starts all over again. One company excelling in this highly competitive market is Nomeco A/S, Denmark’s largest pharmaceutical wholesaler with a 70 percent market share. Specializing in health logistics, Nomeco is an international center of excellence for the Danish pharmaceutical industry and part of the wholly owned subsidiary of the Finnish company Tamro – the largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in Northern Europe, Poland and the Baltic countries.

PEP, Southern Africa’s largest single-brand retailer, operates at the low end of the market, providing a critical service to low-income families across the southern nations of Africa. The company strives to price its clothing, footwear, and housewares as low as possible to make them attainable for consumers. This focus on low prices necessitates maximum efficiency and cost control across its supply chain. However, PEP struggled to keep its stores in stock with merchandise due to long lead times and inaccurate orders. The company's ordering calculations were not very advanced and did not take into account all of the constraints. PEP needed technology that would help it achieve more sophisticated order calculations.

Office Depot France, a leading European office products reseller, operates 56 stores across France, selling more than 9,000 products. The retailer creates planograms for all of its product ranges, providing each individual store with its own set. However, with numerous physical stores and a large product range to support, the retailer previously relied on a manual Excel-based process to create and compare its planograms. This time-consuming process for analyzing and comparing planograms for different stores could take up to two hours per planogram. In addition, Office Depot France’s merchandise planning team encountered numerous data inconsistencies, as there wasn’t a link between the floor and space planning data that was being produced. As a result, it was becoming difficult for Office Depot France to conduct range reviews and make planogram changes in an efficient manner.

Grupo Marti, the largest sporting goods retailer in Latin America, was facing challenges with inventory control and out-of-stock conditions in stores due to rapid expansion and reliance on manual processes and Excel spreadsheets for planning replenishments. As the company grew from 39 stores to over 270, these methods proved inadequate. The company was also struggling with maintaining focus on their basic products, which were a significant part of their business. Another challenge was the inability to factor in seasonality and promotions into their replenishment plans. Communication between stores and operations on inventory plans was also a problem. Marti wanted to extend the view of inventory and demand beyond their operations to improve communication with suppliers and optimize the overall supply chain.

LG Electronics, a global leader in technology innovation and market leadership, faced a significant challenge in its European logistics network due to exponential growth over the past decade. The company's logistics control was traditionally outsourced to various third-party logistics providers, resulting in limited visibility and control, and a reactive management style. This outsourcing also led to information bottlenecks and dependency on third parties for any innovation in transportation planning. LG Electronics Europe was also relying on an outsourced manual transportation planning system with fixed routing methodologies, which limited its ability to optimize loads, carriers, and overall capacity. As a result, LG was not able to control all costs efficiently. The company sought to consolidate and upgrade its European logistics operations by bringing control in-house, aiming to proactively measure performance and continuously improve in terms of both service and costs.

KappAhl, a leading Nordic retailer, was facing challenges with its allocation system. The company was performing approximately 3,800 allocations per night on two home-grown systems, which were no longer meeting the demand. The former systems were automated but did not allow the company to work at the lower level of detail required to achieve its goals. With 12,000 unique style/color combinations per season across 400 stores in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Poland, KappAhl needed greater flexibility and expanded capabilities to improve sales while maintaining margins.

United Facilities, a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, was facing challenges with its warehouse management processes. The company's legacy warehousing system was becoming too expensive to maintain, and it was struggling to provide efficient service and savings for its customers. The company was also dealing with an increase in fractured ordering, where customers place the same orders multiple times a day. This was leading to inefficiencies in the picking process, as workers had to visit the same bays multiple times to pull products for the same orders. Additionally, one of its customers had set an ambitious goal of realizing significant savings over several years.

São Paulo Distribuição e Logistica (SPDL), a strategic venture between two of Brazil's largest newspaper groups, O Estado de São Paulo and Folha de São Paulo, was facing the challenge of continuously optimizing their distribution costs in the face of skyrocketing fuel costs and the proliferation of online news sources. SPDL's transportation network serves more than 900 cities and 700,000 last-mile distribution locations, with 1,250 vehicles traveling more than 100,000 kilometers each day. Despite having a mature operation, SPDL was seeking greater levels of efficiency. They were relying on spreadsheets and manual analysis techniques, and there were no additional savings opportunities that they could identify. They had systematically and thoroughly reviewed every truck route, using the tools they had available.

Presstalis, a leading media distribution company in France, manages more than 3,600 magazines and newspapers from around the world. The company needed to ensure that these publications are displayed in a way that promotes sales growth across its customers’ retail outlets in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. This was a complex endeavor as media space planning in these countries is often governed by legal restrictions. In France, every publication title can be placed in retail stores and kiosks due to the freedom of press. This results in a vast quantity and diversity of publication titles, meaning Presstalis had to be very efficient in utilizing every inch of available space in retail stores and kiosks.

Pacific Star, a food distributor based in Mexico, faced a complex supply chain challenge. The company had to store and transport over 7,000 products to various customers across a large geographic area. The products fell into three categories - dry, chilled, and frozen, each requiring specific storage conditions. The company also had to consolidate orders and deliveries to keep costs low. The biggest threat to Pacific Star's profitability was shrinkage, which occurred when warehouse stock passed its expiration date. The company aimed to optimize inventory management practices in four warehouses to increase accuracy and productivity, improve service, manage shelf life, and decrease shrinkage.

Owens & Minor, the nation’s leading distributor of medical and surgical supplies to the acute-care market, sought to improve its demand forecasting and replenishment processes. The company aimed to enhance its ability to meet changes in customer demand on time and profitably, while further reducing its capital investments. The company had been using a homegrown purchase order system which was obsolete and had no ability to optimize the actual order. The company also faced challenges in building truckloads and was limited in adding more truckload vendors. The company was running well over its service level goal in aggregate and wanted to meet its service level goal with less inventory.

NII Holdings, a wireless communication leader in Latin America, was facing critical challenges in forecast accuracy, inventory right-sizing, and product obsolescence. The company's planning tool was a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that was prone to errors and time-consuming manual data entry. The company needed to upgrade its forecasting and replenishment solutions and processes to improve efficiency and accuracy. NII operates hundreds of stores under several different retail banners and layouts, from free-standing buildings to mall kiosks. Because its business is based on high-tech products with innovative features, some of the company’s most critical challenges lie in the areas of forecast accuracy, inventory right-sizing and product obsolescence.

Avnet, Inc., one of the world’s largest distributors of electronic components, computer products and embedded technology, was facing challenges in leveraging the full potential of Blue Yonder’s forecasting solution. Although the company had been using the solution for several years, it was not utilizing all of its features, leaving potential benefits unrealized. Avnet planners were still doing certain forecasts manually that could be handled automatically by the Blue Yonder solution. Furthermore, Avnet was not capitalizing on opportunities to provide value-added services for customers and to increase revenue.

Walgreens, the nation's largest drugstore chain with fiscal 2014 sales of $76 billion, serves millions of customers every day. In order to help these shoppers easily find the health, wellness and beauty products they're looking for, Walgreens launched a consumer-centric retailing program back in 2009 to provide localized offerings in its new and remodeled store formats. However, the company faced challenges in managing the vast array of products and ensuring that the right products were available at the right locations. The company needed a solution that could improve planning accuracy and efficiency across the organization.

RONA, the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home renovation and gardening products, faced challenges in managing its inventory across its vast distribution network. The company had thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) and millions of SKU locations in more than 17 distribution centers (DCs), making inventory management a complex task. The process to generate a demand forecast to support inventory management was disjointed, with little automation and many hand-offs. RONA needed to understand more precisely where inventory was needed across its entire distribution network. The company was only looking backward and needed to look ahead and act on the future.

Praxis, one of the largest do-it-yourself (DIY) chain stores in the Netherlands, was facing a daily challenge of employee planning. They needed to find a balance between efficiency, effectiveness, and customer service. With proper planning, they could improve customer service and prevent excess capacity as well as undesirably high workloads. Acknowledging this, Praxis started searching for an advanced planning solution that would ensure getting the right person at the right time in the right place. After extensive market research, Praxis selected JDA Workforce Management, from JDA’s Store Operations solution. This system met Praxis’ functional requirements best. Praxis was also enthusiastic about the user interface and the short implementation time.

Gruppo PAM, one of Italy’s leading grocery chains, was facing a challenge of maintaining a large product range and outstanding service while still achieving the operational efficiencies necessary to keep prices low. The company needed to buy inventory in the right quantity to maximize its margins while minimizing its financial exposure. The company realized it needed advanced technology capabilities to automate its forecasting and replenishment processes. The challenge was to find a solution that could help them optimize forecasting and replenishment at its distribution centers while rationalizing and minimizing product inventory.

Giant Eagle, Inc., one of the nation’s largest food retailers and distributors, faced a major challenge in properly scheduling, tracking, and paying its employees to deliver services, receive shipments, stock shelves, set up promotions, and perform other tasks involved in running the stores. Prior to 2007, scheduling was mostly manual, resulting in overstaffing, understaffing, and excessive overtime costs. The company had older time and attendance and time clock systems that required a lot of manual intervention. Payroll errors resulted from inaccurate information and punch errors. Compliance with labor laws was always a concern due to the large number of minors employed in the stores.

Big W, a division of Woolworths Limited, operates 181 stores across Australia, generating approximately AU$4.4 billion in sales annually. Over the past few years, the retailer has experienced significant growth, making it more challenging to ensure that its seasonal merchandise was being delivered to the right store, in the right quantities, at the right time. Big W recognized that it needed to replace its 20-year-old allocation system, used to push 50 percent of its merchandise to its stores, with more sophisticated and advanced technology. Big W sought a solution that would enable its planning assistants to allocate multiple product lines at once, while ensuring that it was delivering an ideal product mix to its stores as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to improve stock availability, reduce markdowns and increase sales.

As the second-largest grocery retailer in Sweden, Axfood operates 250 stores under the Willys and Hemköp brands and collaborates with approximately 820 proprietor-run stores. The company faced the challenge of managing space planning across more than 1,000 stores to ensure consistently high revenues and margins. The company's space planning team had to manage a large volume of planogram work, with each planner managing 200 to 300 planograms that needed to be updated three times a year. The level of collaboration between Axfood and its proprietor-owned stores varied greatly, making it crucial to support consistently high-performing displays and plans across all stores.

Teva UK Limited, a major supplier of pharmaceutical products to the UK health service, needed to optimize its supply chain to handle the growing complexity and scale of its business. The company adheres to stringent quality procedures to safeguard the integrity of its stock, tracking products both by EAN number and batch number. Stock must be kept in temperature-controlled conditions and in an environment that meets the highest standards of cleanliness. Due to the growing complexity and scale of its business, Teva decided to build a new logistics center that would support its increasing volume and provide new ways to service its customers. The company sought a warehouse management solution, with advanced features such as automated storage and retrieval, pick by light, a powered conveyor and a paperless operation, that would enable it to increase efficiencies, save costs and improve service in the new facility.

Sunny Delight Beverages Co., a leading producer of juice-based drinks in North America, was faced with the challenge of transitioning their JDA Warehouse Management production server to a new location. This transition was time-sensitive and needed to be completed within a 63-hour window. The company needed to partner with JDA to support the production server transition and consult with JDA experts before the transition to create a solid foundation of the support process. The company also needed to rely on the JDA Support Services team for troubleshooting and speedy resolution.

Sanitarium, the largest health food company in Australia, has been advocating the benefits of wholesome plant-based foods since 1898. Over the years, the company has seen a fundamental change in its business due to advances in technology. Sanitarium has partnered with JDA to adopt end-to-end supply chain solutions that include JDA Supply Chain Planner and Inventory Planner, to drive production, deployment, and capacity planning. These solutions have enabled high customer service levels and continued reduction in total stock holding. However, as the markets grew, Sanitarium saw an ongoing need to deliver profitable, high customer service levels to new and existing customer segments. Distribution space and working capital were also a constant challenge with the continuous need to reduce stock holding. The company embarked on a strategy to implement an order promising and allocation management system, using JDA Order Promiser, with the objective to ensure accurate promise dates and quantity, reserve supply for key accounts while minimising order shortage, and reschedule open orders based on the latest supply picture from JDA Supply Chain Planner.

Renault, a European automotive company, has built a reputation for quality, innovation, and service. A critical part of this equation is the automaker’s spare parts business. They pledge to deliver any one of 200,000 spare parts overnight through a multi-echelon distribution network. Renault maintained multiple layers of redundant safety stock in order to meet its overnight delivery promise even though its own supplier lead times range from two to eight weeks. Renault wanted to reduce inventory levels to free up cashflow without degrading its spare parts delivery commitment. Renault’s spare parts operations are supported by two master warehouses and a network of dozens of distribution centers scattered across Europe. Historically, Renault was able to honor its customer overnight delivery commitment by maintaining high spare parts inventory levels across its complex European distribution network, which includes up to five tiers of suppliers, dealers and regional distribution centers. This required stocking large amounts of redundant safety stock since supplier lead times vary from two to eight weeks. This was costly.

Partner Communications, a leading cellular operator in Israel, is known for delivering superior customer service in a crowded market. The company has built a reputation for product and service innovation, being the first cellular provider to introduce 4G services in Israel. Speed of delivery is essential to their business in order to provide the best service quality to their customers. To support its commitment to providing outstanding customer service and product availability, Partner turned to Blue Yonder in an effort to improve service levels, increase productivity and reduce costs by automating product forecasting and distribution planning.

Oriflame, one of the largest direct sales companies in the world, was facing challenges in managing its fast-growing business. The company's annual revenue has increased rapidly over the past 20 years, placing pressure on its global production and distribution network. Oriflame also replaces or relaunches around 800 of its 2,000 products annually, making it especially difficult to forecast demand for these new stock-keeping units. Additionally, Oriflame publishes a new catalog every three weeks, with specific offers that are valid only for that three-week period. When a catalog expires demand can dip significantly, making forecasting and fulfillment more challenging. With that level of fluctuation in demand, the company wanted to determine exactly how much product to have on hand to ensure it wasn’t left with excess inventory.

Medifast, a rapidly growing company, was facing challenges in scaling its ERP system to accommodate the increasing volume in each of its distribution centers. The company's goals were to decrease labor costs in the shipping function, save in annual shipping costs, and reduce unloading time for trucks by optimizing their distribution center operations. Prior to implementing a new solution, Medifast employees were hand-selecting boxes, measuring efficiency based on speed, and required two employees to scan, weigh, and apply shipping labels. This process was inefficient and led to excessive use of void fill and delays from repacking.

Grupo Flexi, a leading footwear manufacturer in Mexico, faced increasing complexity in its supply chain as it expanded its product assortment. The company produces over 13 million pairs of shoes annually, with each pair requiring up to 30 different components and several raw materials. One of the most critical materials, leather, has variable lead times ranging from three weeks to three months, depending on the supplier. Flexi sources materials from several countries and distributes them to its manufacturing operations, which include 30 company-owned and subcontracted factories. Eight years ago, Flexi decided to expand its product assortment, introducing new products for different market segments. This initiative increased the complexity of managing more raw materials and stock-keeping units (SKUs), as well as more construction of shoes, which required different specializations and capacities in different factories.

Grupo Damm, a prestigious brewery based in Barcelona, Spain, was facing challenges with its outdated transportation management solutions. The company's supply chain had become more complex, and its customers were farther away. This made it extremely important for the company to tightly control the distribution chain through integrated systems and better meet its customers’ needs. The existing solutions, which were implemented more than a decade ago, were becoming outdated. To reduce manpower and administrative costs — while also leveraging additional capabilities in the software — Grupo Damm decided to upgrade its JDA transportation management solutions.