Supply Chain @ SAPPHIRENOW – Logistics Innovation at Liverpool with SAP Extended Warehouse Management

Yesterday there was a great presentation on deploying SAP Extended Warehouse Management by Jorge Echeverria, the Director of Logistics at Liverpool.

Liverpool is a Mexican retailer who, according to Mr. Echeverria, has been “part of the life of Mexican families for more than 160 years”. The company was founded in 1847 by a French immigrant who opened a small store in Mexico City that mainly sold fabrics and novelties brought from Europe (hence its official name: The Port of Liverpool).

Today Liverpool consists of multiple groups:

• Retail  (85 stores)
• Specialty retail (7 brands -26 stores)
• Real Estate (16 malls)
• Consumer Finance (2.6 million cardholders)
• Regal Forest (459 stores in 18 countries)

In its retail divisions, Liverpool covers 52 of the most important cities in Mexico through 85 stores and has a selling floor of 1 million sq. meters. 

Business Challenges

Mr. Echeverria discussed some of the business challenges that were facing Liverpool:

• How to increase in Order-To-Cash processing speed?
• How to avoid fragmented systems and broken processes?
• How to consolidate businesses processes in a single, localized platform with real-time Financials integration?
• How to improve High-volume throughput?
• How to improve Merchandise distribution cross-docking?
• How to Increased accuracy using Radio Frequency devices integrated with a system solution?

Objectives of the Implementation

The objective of the new warehouse management implementation was to “operate Liverpool logistics flows and processes with a technologically integrated system that meets the supply chain requirements in all locations and supports the strategic growth and plans of the company”.

The project goals were to achieve the following business objectives:

• Process standardization and performance evaluation of supply chain.
• Increase visibility in the information system of the supply chain.
• Increase the reliability and visibility of inventory.
• Operate the entire Liverpool’s supply chain in a solution of integrated information systems
• Measure operative processes.

Project

Liverpool started the selection process in 2009 and decided to evaluate and compare Manhattan, Red Prairie and SAP solutions for warehouse management. They eventually chose SAP EWM “because of its stability, data and processes reliability, and deep integration with other SAP solutions”.

Conclusions and takeaways

To date, EWM is already deployed in 5 regional facilities and the National Distribution Center for Big Ticker merchandise.

According to Mr. Echeverria, “the team is satisfied with EWM as it has lived up to the expectations raised during the evaluation phase. At this point of the project we are sure that the strategic challenges were correctly addressed with the EWM functionality deployed”.

He also stated that “SAP EWM integration with other technologies such as RF devices, mobile printers provide a lot of value”.

This was a great overview of SAP Extended Warehouse Management working in a complex Retail environment.