Company: L’Oreal USAWebsite: www.loreal.com
Industry: Consumer Goods
Technology Platforms: SAP, SQL Server
L’Oreal creates a more accurate forecast with less effort using John Galt’s Atlas Planning Suite
L’Oreal is one of the world’s largest cosmetics companies, employing more than 52,000 workers in Europe and the Americas. Today, L’Oreal has four major divisions and owns more than 30 brands, including such household names as Redken, Maybelline, Garnier, The Body Shop, Ralph Lauren, Lancome, and many more. These brands are distributed via a complex global supply chain that includes numerous channels and thousands of retail partners. Company revenues topped $17 billion in 2005.
Prior to 2005, L’Oreal USA’s Luxury Products Division (LPD) lacked a single demand planning system and process. Forecasting was conducted manually using Excel spreadsheets and it was a time consuming process. The manual process didn’t have the ability to shift its key metrics quickly, a capability that is critical in the beauty industry. With a major SAP implementation imminent, L’Oreal USA LPD sought a demand planning tool that would support process standardization and produce a systematic input for the ERP system.
The Atlas Planning Suite provided L’Oreal USA LPD with a powerful platform to execute their planning process. In particular, L’Oreal USA LPD planners were impressed with the ability to automate the forecasting process using the Demand Management Engine . L’Oreal USA LPD also chose to deploy the web-based Atlas Planning Portal to enable their planners to collaborate on the replenishment forecast with 25 users and produce reports for other business departments. The Atlas solution offered the capabilities L’Oreal USA requested with a superior value and ROI.
With the Atlas Planning Suite, L’Oreal USA LPD took control of their demand planning process and data using a single tool. As a result, support of the forecasting process is far more responsive because ownership can be clearly defined. The ability for L’Oreal USA to train new users and respond to the dynamics of the cosmetics industry is also substantially better because of the ease of use of the Demand Management Engine and Planning Portal. Overall, Atlas Planning has brought about time savings and process synergies, allowing L’Oreal USA LPD to keep up with the rapid twists and turns in the beauty industry.
In order to build on the successes realized by implementing John Galt’s Atlas Planning Suite, L’Oreal USA LPD is currently receiving education on additional functionality within the tool. “There’s still a lot of untapped potential in the Atlas
