Amer Sports wanted to produce just the optimal amount of products. It needed predictability – that is, data. The solution was a unique data platform that makes predicting demand and the supply chain more accurate and transparent than ever before. The result is a genuinely data-driven culture of operation, in addition to benefits worth millions of euros.
Amer Sports is a Finnish group of customer-focused sports equipment companies. Its internationally known brands include Salomon, Wilson, Atomic, Arc’teryx, Mavic, Suunto and Precor. Amer Sports sells its products to consumers in more than 30 countries through resellers and through its brand stores, outlets and online store.
Amer Sports needed better ways to manage its extensive network of suppliers, as predicting and managing the supply chain had been challenging in terms of procurement, production, deliveries and sales.
The company was aiming for a modern, uncomplicated analytics solution to ensure that the stores would not run out of products and to avoid overstocking.
Customer and sales data go together well
To improve the management and predictability of the supply chain, Amer Sports and Solita designed and implemented a new platform that combines customer data with sales data and makes it easy to analyse, visualise and share data. Data analysis revealed that it is possible to automate the prediction of demand by combining customer data with sales data from the ERM system. The data also shows how many items of each product are left in each store and when the stock will be sold.
Potential benefits worth tens of millions of euros
Using forecasts produced by the data platform, production and the logistics chain can be adjusted optimally to demand at an accuracy of 90 per cent. This can reduce the cost of materials by tens of millions of euros annually by minimising sales lost because of product unavailability and identifying new opportunities for additional sales.
For example, if the blue sports watches supplied by Amer Sports are selling particularly well in a sports shop in Milan, sellers and suppliers will be informed of this through the data platform. A seller can contact the store at the right time and offer more products.
Transparency and agility – locally and globally
Amer Sports’ data solution enables financial management processes and increases the transparency of self-service BI, offering easy, real-time access to information throughout the organisation. This brings data to the operational level from a hard drive collecting dust at the head office.
A better understanding of customers’ need
The new data platform is delivering exactly what Amer Sports was looking for: better customer knowledge. The data platform has taken the company’s ability to understand and predict customers’ needs to an entirely new level.
