HUGO BOSS is a leading retailer dedicated to delivering exceptional experiences to both its warehouse workers and customers. Based in Metzingen, Germany, the international fashion icon aims to solidify its status as a global premium technology-driven platform, leveraging cutting-edge robotics in its expansive e-commerce warehouse in Wendlingen. Recognizing the need to adapt to industry changes, HUGO BOSS embarked on a digital transformation journey. Partnering with Westernacher, they implemented EWM Insights, a state-of-the-art digital warehouse management dashboard facilitating quick and easy access to crucial KPIs.
HUGO BOSS is one of the leading companies positioned in the premium segment of the global apparel market. With its two brands, BOSS and HUGO, the group offers collections in 132 countries at around 7,400 points of sale and online in 70 countries via hugoboss.com. With approximately 17,000 employees worldwide, the company, based in Metzingen, Germany, posted sales of EUR 3.7 billion in the fiscal year 2022.
Using robotics, the retailer operates a unique, tech-driven, fashion e-commerce warehouse in Wendlingen near Stuttgart, Germany, that measures approximately 27,000 m². Its corporate vision is to become the premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide.
Objectives
- Become the leading premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide
- Leverage SAP EWM insights to provide a quick overview of important KPIs necessary to operatively control a warehouse
- Develop SAP Analytics Cloud dashboard that can be accessed by users without logging into an SAP EWM system
- Ensure problems are recognized quickly so the right actions and decisions can be taken immediately
Challenges before digital transformation journey.
Facing rapid industry changes, HUGO BOSS, a customer service and tech-driven fashion retail leader, realized they must evolve business processes to meet demanding, omni-channel sales volumes. This meant further digitalizing, automating, and sustainably innovating around design, manufacturing, packaging, delivery, and robotics processes. Before their digital transformation, their monitoring relied on KPIs calculated in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets based on extracted data from extended warehouse management tools. Today, leading digital innovation and driving global sales fulfilment efficiency are top priorities.
Global challenges
- E-commerce fulfilment operations must be agile and able to scale up or down rapidly to meet the demands of changing seasons and trends.
- Fashion items, especially apparel, often have higher return rates due to issues such as sizing discrepancies, differences in color perception, or dissatisfaction with the product.
- Along with the need for the digital transformation of manual data and business insights processing, warehouse businesses require the use of robotic solutions on the shop floor to survive. Further, these solutions need to be managed by trained employees.
- Implementing sustainable packaging and fulfilment practices can be challenging while maintaining cost-effectiveness.
Business challenges
- Black Friday is a big sales event, and online retailers worldwide are now following this trend. In 2021, the high order volume was challenging and has shown that the transparency of the order situation in the warehouse should be increased.
- In response, the company held hourly escalation meetings during which teams had to report on order status, like how many orders came in, which items had been picked, which had been packed, and so on.
- HUGO BOSS was inspired to create a customized warehouse management dashboard solution.
Overcoming challenges with EWM Insights and implementation partner Westernacher.
The SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) dashboard, leveraging SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere, provides a quick overview of all important KPIs that are necessary to operatively control the warehouse. By showing bottlenecks in the intralogistics process chain, it gives the opportunity to make data-driven decisions immediately. HUGO BOSS easily interfaces with order management, logistic controlling, and e-commerce warehouses.
SAP Analytics Cloud is already a well-known front end for many other applications and users are familiar with the look and feel. Only SAP partners provide such a mobile and desktop solution and expertise for SAP Analytics Cloud.
Westernacher provided an out-of-the-box, Extended Warehouse Management data dashboard solution – EWM Insights. The solution package consists of more than 100 pre-defined ABAP core data services (CDS) views that are customized to meet customer needs. 28 defined KPIs were delivered in 5 different views on one dashboard – Overview, Outbound, Inbound, Stock and Efficiency, Shopfloor.
Greater efficiency and transparency with real-time insights.
HUGO BOSS warehouse control centers are responsible for the holistic monitoring and control of warehouse activities. They move millions of articles yearly and are running smoothly. Aided by efficient technical SAP solutions, control centers have quick access to real-time data and KPI figures. This helps managers make the right decisions at the right time for their location. With one-click, information analytics needs can be served on demand and are informing teams from the C-level to warehouse operations. This will help HUGO BOSS to strengthen its customer focus and become the world’s leading technology-driven premium fashion platform.
Business outcome
- Monitoring key metrics in real time, such as order processing times and picking accuracy, leads to more efficient order fulfilment processes.
- By identifying and addressing operational inefficiencies promptly, businesses can reduce overall operational costs.
- Efficient order fulfilment, accurate inventory levels and timely shipping contribute to a positive customer experience.
- Real-time insights enable businesses to address issues proactively, reducing the likelihood of customer complaints and increasing overall satisfaction.
KPIs
100%
Elimination of reliance on manual data collection and analysis
10X
Faster data-driven decision-making
100%
Transparency of warehouse bottlenecks
History won’t repeat itself.
Knowing they don’t want to experience such a challenging situation like “Black Friday 2021” again, hundreds of HUGO BOSS warehouse employees – from the shop floor to the control center – are now working with added efficiency and confidence.
With immediate information access through the new digital warehouse dashboard, employees can see the KPIs they need regarding their roles within order management and fulfillment.
Today, this advanced analytical capability is helping HUGO BOSS to offer a worldclass customer experience.
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