Pilot project with SAP Integration has ended with success
The original situation
The building supplies shop, as well as the often affiliated sales locations, are among the traditional business areas. But such companies also have to meet the challenges of the digital transportation – which means that there is a great deal of potential there. The building materials segment at BayWa recognized early on the opportunities that this presented and is exploring the potentials of digitization very pragmatically and from different directions. In the course of the conversion of two existing building material enterprises, an additional building block was tested out as part of a digital pilot project.
It was at this time that the question of price marking started to become a central issue: traditional price labels not only entail all manner of manual work. A major problem with them is keeping them up-to-date. Whenever there is a change, prices have to be changed as quickly as possible both on the product and at the checkout. During regular operations, this ties up resources unnecessarily and also runs up against the problem that changes to labels cannot be made quickly enough.
Two pilot locations were therefore fully changed over to an electronic price marking system. The price marking function was to be integrated into the SAP ERP system, as was the case before. But the objective was to eliminate the hassle of red tape and the manual changing of labels. Another specific challenge was that the implementation of the Electronic Shelf Labeling (ESL) had to be done during normal operations.
Solution
The software solution for electronic price marking, based on NAVI (Nagarro VUSION Integrator), was implemented in just three weeks for each site. All of the existing labels were replaced with electronic displays and included both live data and current prices. After the smooth implementation, a three-month test phase followed. During this time empirical values were collected on daily performance, speed, time saved and reliability. Using this data as a basis, additional conversions are now being planned.
A main prerequisite for a smooth implementation in such a short time was the close collaboration between the departments involved. This included, among others, BayWa IT, various departments at BayWa Baustoffe and the employees at the locations, and of course the experts from Nagarro ES.
Added value
BayWa benefited from a number of advantages in the project, not just because of the extremely short duration of just ten weeks for the entire project of during normal operations. An additional major advantage was that the digital price marking was integrated into the existing SAP environment (SAP ERP system), and therefore no additional island solution was needed.
Thanks to the new system, prices on labels now no longer have to be changed manually. They can now by changed over automatically and price changes can be made in real time. This way discrepancies can now be avoided between the price marking on the shelf and the price at checkout, and this has an impact both on the company itself and on customer satisfaction. With the electronic process, manual changeover is now a thing of the past, which this leaves more time for important tasks of customer consultation.
After the successful ESL implementation, other use cases will be developed, e.g. an employee module, and the system will be integrated into other building supply enterprises. BayWa and Nagarro ES will once again be joining forces to take up these topics for a successful implementation.
Internet: https://www.baywa.com/