Travis Perkins has upgraded its inventory management by deploying analytics software from SAS.
Working with CoreCompete, a SAS partner specialising in analytics, Travis Perkins has implemented software which can help it decide where to stock products so they are available across its 2,000 stores as quickly as possible.
The retailer – which sells over 200,000 SKUs including plumbing and heating products, as well as tiles, roofing and insulation – can now ensure these, often bulky, goods are available on short lead times by identifying which products are needed urgently and placing them in stores.
“Most range management solutions available on the market would not have been able to deal with the volume of products we stock or the complexity of our organisation,” explained Peter Brewer, supply chain development manager at Travis Perkins. “SAS and CoreCompete proposed a robust solution that could cope with the size and diversity of our business, and allowed us to layer sophisticated analytics over traditional range-management capabilities. We were particularly impressed with the purpose-built dashboards and user interface of the SAS offering.”
Travis Perkins used to manage its inventory using spread sheets, sifting through thousands of rows of data to decide which products to stock. But the retailer now hosts its stock data in a single repository and category managers can view inventory using the SAS Visual Analytics platform, ensuring accurate and quick decisions about which products to stock in each store.
Charles Senabulya, VP and country manager, SAS UK & Ireland, added: “This solution demonstrates how a large mix of products can be stocked in an optimal way in branches right across the country, where customers need to purchase products immediately. It has also enabled Travis Perkins to gain deeper insights into its supply chain, so it can better understand its relationships with suppliers.”