IMI SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS

In contrast to what many other retailers are experiencing, the gardening chain Plantagen has not been affected by the recession. During the second quarter of the year, the company’s net sales amounted to SEK 2.132 billion and profit to SEK 543 million, making the quarter the strongest in the company’s history. Because when times are tougher, interest in gardening, plants and other things related to one’s own home increases.

“Historically, we do better in bad times,” says Olav Fyldeng, CIO at Plantagen. “This has been the case ever since the financial crisis of 2008. At the same time, we’re competing with plenty of other hobby and leisure activities for consumers’ time and money, so it’s important that we deliver value and create a sense of joy with planting and working with flowers and plants.”

Plantagen’s first store was established in Norway more than 35 years ago and has since been joined by another 122 stores in Norway, Sweden and Finland. There is naturally also an online store as well that accounts for an increasing share of the company’s sales. Since 2016, Plantagen has been owned by the Swedish investment company Ratos, a recognized long-term player with a 150-year history of successful entrepreneurship.

The approximately fifteen hundred mobile phones that have thus far been sent out to Plantagen’s employees are equipped with the Agrippa Retail app, a cloud-based solution that manages and facilitates many activities in the stores, and which has been developed in collaboration with Plantagen. Olav and software vendor IMI Agrippa Solutions got to know each other back in 2016 when Olav was building an automated central warehouse in the fashion industry.

“We then introduced an app-based and user-friendly system for reporting deviations and errors in the warehouse, with both text and images,” says Olav. “By equipping the warehouse staff with smartphones running Agrippa’s software, errors and deviations could be reported directly where they occurred. For example, by scanning the barcode for a certain storage location, which significantly reduced downtime. This collaboration became a tremendous success for both parties and is the basis for the solution that has been developed for Plantagen over a number of years.”

Understanding of logistics and business systems

Together with Agrippa, Olav and his team developed the Agrippa Retail solution, which enables store staff to manage goods reception, inventory, product location, campaign viewing, product information supply, order completion, incident management and much more. Moreover, the phones can be used to inform staff, scan barcodes, make printouts and send images or videos.

“Many companies develop apps. What sets Agrippa apart from the others is that they have a unique understanding of processes, logistics and business systems. Those who come from the app side do not sufficiently understand the underlying processes, but focus more on an attractive interface,” Olav says.

25 percent efficiency gains

Plantagen’s various IT systems have thus far had their own user interfaces and overlapping functionality. Because of this, consolidation of the systems has also begun, resulting in a major positive impact on IT costs.

“In collaboration with us, the innovative and talented people at Agrippa have developed a solution where we have eliminated four out of six interfaces and gathered them on a single platform, and we will eventually consolidate the last two systems as well. Multiple systems can be merged because they have similar functionality. I see efficiency gains here of over 25 percent for a normal IT department,” says Olav, proudly declaring that he has reduced his own budget from SEK 84 million to SEK 59 million in two years by consolidating and eliminating systems that do not create real value. He points out that the highly competitive retail industry has taken a long time to change due to a previous extended period of constant growth and increasing profitability.

“The entire industry has continued in its old ways and has reacted far too late to the changed market conditions. There are tremendous opportunities for further efficiency gains, not only in IT, but throughout the supply chain.”