Download Grupo Merza Improving Wholesale and Retail Insights

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SAP Business Transformation Study | Retail and Wholesale Distribution | Grupo Merza
Grupo Merza: Improving Wholesale and
Retail Insights with Analytic Solutions
from SAP
For groceries, beverages, pharmaceuticals, and more, Mexico counts on retail and
wholesale giant Grupo Merza. Using the SAP HANA® platform, SAP Lumira® software,
the SAP® Sales Insights for Retail analytic application, and SAP Predictive Analysis
software, Grupo Merza is speeding business insight to better understand what
drives customers, sales, and a growing bottom line.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Retail and Wholesale Distribution | Grupo Merza
Executive overview
Company
Grupo Merza
Headquarters
Michocan, Mexico
Industries
Retail
Wholesale distribution
Products and Services
Food and beverage
distribution, transportation
and logistics, and financial
services
Employees
4,500
Web Site
www.grupomerza.com
Partners
SAP® Services organization
SAP’s Data Science
organization
Cisco Systems Inc.
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
Objectives
•• Analytic insight with little IT support
•• Insight into market baskets across products, categories, and stores
•• Less risk in wholesale customer loans
•• Efficient, effective IT operations
40%–70%
Resolution
•• Deployed SAP Lumira® software for data access from any source and the
SAP HANA® platform for real-time analysis
•• Deployed the SAP® Sales Insights for Retail analytic application to gain
point-of-sale insight and SAP Predictive Analysis software to calculate
loan risk
•• Completed the implementation project in eight weeks
•• Worked with SAP’s Data Science organization to define a retail analytics
strategy, optimize solutions, and train users
Benefits
•• Faster decisions with self-service data visualization
•• Deeper insight into how promotions and product assortment impact
market baskets
Read more
•• Better loan policy for wholesale customers
Faster processing of transactional data and report
delivery with SAP HANA
1 scorecard
To track on-time payments
on customer credit with
SAP Predictive Analysis
4 weeks
To deploy SAP Lumira
without consulting services
“With analytics tools from SAP, Grupo Merza is becoming a datadriven organization. With better data access and deeper point-of-sale
insight, we can see who our customers are and what they want.”
Alfonso Cedillo, CIO, Grupo Merza
2 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Retail and Wholesale Distribution | Grupo Merza
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Improving efficiency, insight,
and customer relationships
Consumers across Mexico know they can depend on
high-quality groceries, beverages, pharmaceuticals,
and more from Grupo Merza. One of the largest retail
and wholesale distributors in the country, the group
employs over 4,500 people to operate 19 wholesale
distribution centers and 152 retail stores, including
Merza, Mega Merza, Abarrotes Lagunitas, Cava del
Duero, and Super Covi, across 30 Mexican states.
To better manage its extensive and complex operations, Grupo Merza needed to improve analytical
insight and efficiency across all departments – from
the stocking of warehouses to transportation and
deliveries to crediting and invoicing.
It was also important that the group maintain close
relationships with and a deep understanding of its
wholesale and retail customers. That meant using
point-of-sale (POS) data to offer low prices and bulk
buying promotions to wholesalers supporting
commercial businesses and a convenient shopping
experience and competitive prices to consumers in
Grupo Merza stores. It also meant improving risk
assessment when offering credit lines to wholesale
buyers.
To achieve these goals and become a more datadriven organization, Grupo Merza knew it needed a
world-class IT platform and cutting-edge innovation,
leading it to partner with SAP.
4,500 employees
Across 19 wholesale distribution centers
and 152 retail stores
3 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Retail and Wholesale Distribution | Grupo Merza
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Enhancing and speeding analysis
of operations and customers
To satisfy demand, Grupo Merza must accurately
forecast and manage inventory, monitor and control
distribution, and align operations. In the past, data
was tracked and shared with spreadsheets, resulting
in data silos by department and outdated information. To ease data access and sharing across the
business and minimize reliance on IT, Grupo Merza
deployed SAP Lumira® software in just four weeks.
But maintaining a competitive edge requires more
than just making sure that shelves are stocked and
operations are in sync. To succeed, a retailer must
also know which offers and products are attracting
which customers and why. In the past, Grupo Merza
analyzed sales information by store or product
category at the aggregate level. Working with SAP’s
Data Science organization, the group leveraged the
SAP® Sales Insight for Retail analytic application
powered by SAP HANA® to tap into valuable POS
data and find out the impact of a given promotion,
the products that attract the most profitable
customers, and the drivers behind performance
fluctuations by store and category.
When selling to wholesale customers, a company
like Grupo Merza often needs to extend credit – a
service that benefits customers, but which can also
be risky for the business. The Data Science team
showed Grupo Merza how to use SAP Predictive
Analysis software powered by SAP HANA to develop
predictive models that assess the credit worthiness of
its wholesale customers and protect the bottom line.
4 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Retail and Wholesale Distribution | Grupo Merza
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Improving analytics to benefit customers
and the bottom line
With the SAP HANA platform, Grupo Merza is seeing
up to 70% faster transactional data processing and
report delivery. That means faster insight, decisions,
and results.
Business users at Grupo Merza can now access data
from many sources using SAP Lumira, desktop
edition. The simple interface allows graphical reports
to be created online and shared across the group
using SAP Lumira, cloud edition.
By gathering data from wholesale customer
accounts, SAP Predictive Analysis can determine
if earlier loans were paid on time and establish a
baseline to predict future behavior. A logistical model
classifies accounts according to the likelihood of
timely payments and then displays results on a
customer scorecard. This allows Grupo Merza to
better assess which customers will pay off credit and
establish loan payment schedules accordingly.
With SAP Sales Insights for Retail, Grupo Merza is
using POS data to compute product affinities and
market basket compositions, helping better identify
drag-along items during promotional sales and
improve product placement in stores. The group can
identify and monitor its most important products,
categories, and stores against key performance
indicators (KPIs), such as distinct buyers, unit sales,
profit, and revenue. It can also monitor how KPIs
such as average basket size, number of items per
basket, shopping frequency, and promotions impact
each other and quickly perform root cause analysis
of unexpected revenue changes. With this rapid
insight, Grupo Merza can better understand the
impact of each stock-keeping unit and adjust market
basket size, promotions, and product assortments to
increase revenue by giving customers exactly what
they want.
5 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
Grupo Merza
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Tapping into IT innovation to improve
business agility
In the cut-throat world of retail, Grupo Merza knows
that the right IT innovation will give it a competitive
edge.
To become a truly real-time business, it plans to
deploy SAP ERP powered by SAP HANA. This will
allow the group to combine transactions and analytics on a single in-memory platform, simplifying IT
and reducing total cost of ownership. To provide its
marketing and sales teams with the instant insight
they need to help ensure effective and meaningful
customer interactions, Grupo Merza also plans to
Studio SAP | 37387enUS (15/04) © 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
deploy SAP CRM powered by SAP HANA. And,
with the potential deployment of SAP HANA Cloud
Platform, it will have instant access to the full power
of SAP HANA, including flexible subscription models
to build, extend, and run applications on SAP HANA
in the cloud.
Together with SAP, Grupo Merza will continue to
nurture a deeper understanding of its business and
its customers that will drive efficiency, improve
customer relationships, and increase revenue both
now and in the future.
6 / 6
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