Coop Estonia is a market leader in the Estonian grocery market. The company has 18 regional cooperatives, which operate 320 stores, ranging from minimarkets to hypermarkets.
The organization used RELEX to pivot from a manual store-based model to an automated centralized model for replenishment. Coop Estonia used RELEX forecasting and replenishment to improve consistency and standards across all stores, resulting in high availability levels and reduced manual work in both stores and the central organization. High availability has also led to a substantial decrease in the number of stockouts and lost sales.
“Before implementing RELEX Solutions and adopting centralized supply chain management, our stores and cooperatives had multiple different systems and ways of working in place,” says Mika Ylinen of Coop Estonia. “These varying systems and ways of working caused major inefficiencies in our processes.”
By working with RELEX Solutions, Coop Estonia has achieved the following for products in scope:
- +98,0 availability | 2,2% increase in product availability
- 50,3% reduction in stockouts
- 75,2% reduction in estimated lost sales
- Increased availability while maintaining the same inventory level
- Freed up approximately 20 people for more valuable tasks through automated ordering.
Coop Estonia turned to RELEX Solutions for their forecasting and replenishment solution in 2019. RELEX was chosen as a vendor because of its vast retail experience, process experience, and customer-oriented business model.
“RELEX has been extremely reliable software,” says Ylinen. ”Through the years, the RELEX project and customer team have played a vital role in our transition.” The grocer uses the RELEX platform in most of its largest stores, and the rollout of smaller stores is in progress.
“We are very honored to be in a long-term partnership with Coop,” says Emma Aidanpää-Salmi, VP of Customer Success at RELEX. “We’re especially happy about the opportunity to continuously support them in executing their ambitious vision for high automation and intelligent business process planning. It has been exciting to be part of Coop’s journey, and we are looking forward to a successful continuation of the partnership in the years to come.”