After a large-scale project spanning four years, Beeline Group has successfully completed the conversion of its merchandise management system from an in-house development to SAP S/4HANA. In this challenging project, the consultants from CAS AG were able to provide significant support with their in-depth knowledge and experience in the area of SAP CAR. “There are not many who understand retail processes as well as the specialists at CAS AG,” says Patrick Jüstel, Head of IT Applications at the Beeline Group, praising the Hamburg-based consultants.
With the new merchandise management system based on SAP, internally known as beeOne, the market leader for fashion jewellery and accessories in Europe and the USA has been able to significantly improve the management of its tens of thousands of sales displays in its retail partners’ stores. Replacing the old system with its numerous system discontinuities, SAP S4/HANA solution now provides the Beeline Group with a consistent mapping of its processes, significantly improved transparency of its stores and push-based management of its product displays. The more than 2,500 employees who fill the sales displays in the 22 countries in which the Group operates no longer have to plan merchandise themselves.
The introduction of SAP S/4HANA was associated with significant challenges for Beeline Group. For example, the European fashion jewellery market leader repeatedly encountered performance problems with the SAP systems when managing the very large number of stores. The project also revealed that the modules of the retail-specific planning and allocation solution SAP CAR were not sufficiently aligned with each other and caused significant problems when interacting.
Significant challenges with SAP Retail
With the help of the retail specialists from CAS AG, Beeline Group has been able to overcome the problems with the SAP modules without straying too far from the SAP standard. Among other things, CAS AG has used SAP tools to develop a new interface between the SAP modules Assortment Planning for Retail and Allocation Management for Retail, which fineally seamlessly supports the Beeline Group’s processes. ‘With CAS AG, we were able to create a stable, standardised and automated interface that we can use to efficiently plan and manage the assortment for many new stores,’ says Patrick Jüstel, praising the consultants.
In the SAP standard, the interaction of these two SAP CAR modules was not suitable for the Beeline Group. This had become particularly apparent when the fashion jewellery experts took a new retail company as partner on board. A new partner of Beeline Group sometimes brings 2,500 stores and more with it. For these, the assortment and the ideal quantities must be planned efficiently from a single source, yet individually for each store. However, this was not feasible with the rigid logic that SAP provided with the Allocation Management for Retail and Assortment Planning for Retail modules. In particular, at the time of its introduction, SAP’s Assortment Planning for Retail module provided more of a rough framework than a ready-to-use solution.
Problems with SAP modules overcome
With the support of CAS AG, which has already provided considerable help to numerous retail companies in implementing SAP CAR, Beeline Group was able to implement the SAP CAR modules to suit their processes and connect them seamlessly. Patrick Jüstel is very satisfied with the work of CAS AG: ‘We have overcome major challenges together. The consultants at CAS AG always work in a solution-oriented manner, and our cooperation is characterised by a great deal of trust and respect.’
