This LIDD Case study shares how LIDD’s supply chain consultants helped a grocery retailer sustain its rapid growth by investing in the right IT solutions to optimize supply chain operations.
The Situation – A fast-growing grocery retailer had reached the point where it had to make IT investments to automate business processes, get better control of inventory and enhance their reporting. Convinced it needed a WMS to improve its warehousing and distribution functions, it turned to LIDD for guidance.
Issues & Decisions – This client had many common challenges that arise from a confused application park. An application park is the portfolio of enterprise software used to run the business. Ideally, you should have a very clear idea of what software applications should support what business functions, resulting in a clean, manageable application park. However, most application parks are a mess of software with have overlapping functionalities and canyon-sized gaps. This problem occurs when you do not fully understand what problems different kinds of software solve.
The Results – We mapped out this grocery-chain’s application park and identified their functional deficiencies. It became apparent to the executive team that while there were glaring weaknesses in their warehouse operations, eliminating those weaknesses would not fundamentally address their most pressing business challenges. Those challenges required a new ERP system, as their existing ERP no longer addressed the complexity that sustained growth had created.
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