IBM > Case Studies > CarrefourSA's Rapid Expansion Strategy: Leveraging IoT for Retail Growth

CarrefourSA's Rapid Expansion Strategy: Leveraging IoT for Retail Growth

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Technology Category
  • Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
  • Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Applicable Industries
  • Consumer Goods
  • Retail
Applicable Functions
  • Human Resources
  • Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
  • Inventory Management
  • Retail Store Automation
Services
  • System Integration
About The Customer
CarrefourSA is a leading multinational retail group headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. The group employs more than 364,900 people worldwide. In 1993, the group opened its first CarrefourSA hypermarket in Turkey, and today operates around 500 stores across the country. In 2014, the company generated annual revenues equivalent to USD1.426 billion. The company set itself the aggressive target of USD 2.7 billion in revenues by the end of 2016 in Turkey. To achieve this goal, the company needed to win business from new customers, and faced the challenge of expanding its store landscape rapidly to connect with the prospects ahead of its competitors.
The Challenge
CarrefourSA, a leading multinational retail group, set an ambitious revenue goal of USD 2.7 billion by 2016 in Turkey. To achieve this, the company aimed to more than double its retail footprint by opening at least one new store every day for an entire year. However, the existing processes and systems meant it took an entire month to set up a new store. The company faced the challenge of expanding its store landscape rapidly to connect with prospects ahead of its competitors. The process of making a new retail store operational involved onboarding new employees, installing and connecting the point-of-sale systems, adding new delivery points to the stock distribution network, and more. The company relied on multiple different business systems to manage these business processes, which were complex and time-consuming due to limited integration between the systems.
The Solution
CarrefourSA, in collaboration with IBM Global Business Services, designed and implemented fully integrated business processes within just ten months, based on SAP ERP and SAP HANA solutions. By managing its operations from end-to-end in a single system, CarrefourSA was able to automate and accelerate many of the repetitive processes required to set up business systems for a newly built store. The company deployed SAP ERP with applications for finance, controlling, cost center accounting, profit center accounting, asset accounting, logistics material management, sales and distribution, in-store merchandise and inventory management, warehouse management, flexible real estate management and point-of-sale data management. To enable rapid access to the SAP solutions for more than 1,500 business users in Turkey, the company implemented SAP Portal and SAP Solution Manager software, with SAP Workforce Performance Builder software to help new users get up to speed with the new solutions quickly.
Operational Impact
  • With fully integrated SAP solutions driving its business processes, CarrefourSA has significantly reduced the time required to open the doors at its newly built retail stores. The company can now open new stores inside of a single working day, 96 percent faster than before. This has enabled the company to expand its customer base and drive towards its billion-dollar revenue goal. In addition to helping CarrefourSA convert new prospects, the SAP solutions are enabling the company to increase the value of its relationships with existing customers. The company can now perform near-real time queries on sales data for more than 150,000 products at hundreds of stores, which will help them to identify the best promotional combinations to drive their bottom line. The tight integration between SAP analytics and point of sale solutions enables the company to deploy markdowns and discounts at the touch of a button, and monitor their effectiveness precisely.
Quantitative Benefit
  • New stores can be opened daily—a process that previously required up to a month.
  • 96 percent faster opening for new stores enables CarrefourSA to increase its reach and win new customers.
  • 33 percent expansion to date drives revenues and contributes to the USD2.7 billion goal for 2016.

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