Henkel: VMI Case Study

Picture this… you’re the name behind some of America’s favourite brands. From Dial soaps to Purex laundry detergents, Right Guard antiperspirants, got2b hair styling products, and Loctite adhesives, your brands are part of daily life. With respect to your supply chain, you manage five regional DCs, 3,500+ SKUs and 2,000+ customer delivery points across the U.S. and Canada.

But, as customer demand for VMI continues to increase, you recognise that your VMI program can’t scale to the level needed without a change in approach. Your existing VMI system isn’t integrated and is managed using manual data manipulation and Excel spreadsheets. You approach is very inefficient and non-standardised, which prevents you from applying more advanced VMI practices.

So, you establish a clear goal for your VMI program: find and implement a solution that will enable optimising the VMI process for existing VMI accounts and enable expansion of the VMI program to additional customers in a cost-effective, confident manner. After extensive evaluation, you choose to implement TrueCommerce. Our portfolio of 80+ VMI customers helped you make up your mind and as we were already handling a number of very large CPG customers, processing millions of SKUs and managing thousands of locations around the world, we were the clear choice.

Now, you’re realising significant benefits. Dozens of daily processes that previously required manual work are now automated. The need for your IT teams to interpret retailer product activity or perform error-related reporting is eliminated. You’ve also greatly improved reporting capabilities and you now know scorecard metrics before your customers do, which enables you to collaborate more effectively with your VMI customers when holding periodic scorecard review meetings.