Henkel and CAMELOT: A longstanding, trustful relationship

Bastian Kunze, Partner for Supply and Operations at CAMELOT Group, explains how his company became one of Henkel’s most trusted partners

Within any partner ecosystem, trust between organisations is absolutely paramount.

For more than a decade, it’s that exact trust that has enabled Henkel and CAMELOT Group to form a strong and fruitful relationship. CAMELOT has enjoyed 25 years of successful supply chain consulting, leveraging industry expertise in life science, chemicals, consumer goods and industrial manufacturing.

Explaining the firm’s core mission, Bastian Kunze, Partner for Supply and Operations at CAMELOT, says: “We connect people, processes, and technology to enable our global customers during their supply chain transformation journey.

“We are able to do that because we combine management consulting capabilities with enterprise application know-how and digital innovation.”

Trustful relationship at heart of supply chain projects

CAMELOT’S partnership with Henkel began with a supply chain process and solution implementation using SAP APO technology.

Several more projects followed in the ensuing years, mostly in the area of demand, supply and production planning – but always with the aim of innovating Henkel’s supply chain processes.

“We have had to tackle various challenges,” Kunze adds. “These were things like improving the inventory situation or helping Henkel to bring their demand process to the next level. But everything is based on a long-term, trustful relationship. That was always the foundation.”

Recently, the partners tackled a complex supply and inventory project, which saw CAMELOT implement the DDMRP (demanddriven material requirements planning) concept and the innovative Supply Chain Avatar DDMRP module by Elixum. This further improved and positioned inventory throughout Henkel’s entire supply chain network.

Elixum: Home of the Supply Chain Avatar

Elixum is a global software company that was born out of the CAMELOT Group and, in Kunze’s words, ushered in a “new era of operations and supply chain management”.

Its flagship product, the Supply Chain Avatar, is a cloud-based software suite enabling organisations like Henkel to build and plan resilient, sustainable supply chains by combining the best of two worlds. One element of this is next-generation, advanced planning and scheduling functionalities; the other is AI-driven, cognitive decision support during that process.

“With the in-built Hypertrust Platform,” Kunze explains, “the Supply Chain Avatar solutions can be implemented and deployed on any system infrastructure out there in the market.”

Success breeds trust

One thing that clearly helps to build trust between partners is success – and that’s exactly what CAMELOT has consistently achieved. The firm’s proven, market-leading supply chain process experience, combined with deep technology knowledge and global delivery capabilities, has continued to make the difference for Henkel and similar clients.

With its latest project, CAMELOT has increased the visibility of Henkel’s inventory status and projection, using increased automation that facilitates faster decision-making.

Kunze concludes: “We were able to position the inventory in the Henkel network at the right place, with the right quantity, with an overall effect of lower inventories – achieving a greater supply chain resilience.” strategy of the company, which in our case is to create an amazing customer experience with our technologies. By doing so, we ensure that we are always aligned with our overarching goal, and that every step we take is working towards achieving that goal.”

Kirchner says that it’s important to put this indicator in place to ensure that momentum is not lost as progress is made. “Additionally,” he says, “ the truth is that people need encouragement, and seeing the North Star KPI rising is a clear sign that progress is being made towards the company’s vision. To achieve this, we reviewed our current service KPI and brought in the perfect order measurement.

The perfect order

The difference between the perfect order measurement and other internal data is that with the perfect order, Henkel is able to cast its net much wider, capturing data points from the customer’s perspective as well. By doing so, they are able to take into account the actual time of arrival; what the customer requested initially; and what Henkel have promised to deliver. “By measuring progress against these external data points, we can be sure that our customers will feel the difference,” Kirchner says.

Reimagining the customer-supply chain relationship – 360 degrees Henkel has a philosophy that “digital capability should overcome a purely functionalist view of supply chains”. Kirchner says: “Traditionally, supply chains are viewed as a linear chain of events that transform raw materials into finished goods, with the customer only at the end of the chain.

“However, Henkel believes that new technologies can enable a 360-degree view of the customer, putting the customer at the centre of all functions that interact with them.”

This approach requires a different set of technologies to ensure that everyone in the company has the same view of the customer experience. “For example,” he says, “service cloud technology allows for customer service interactions to be tracked and followed up on, providing insights into customer satisfaction levels.”

Digital capability, in this example, is an enabler to drive towards a new customer experience.

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Flo Group delivers OTM with excellence in client-centricity

As the leading OTM implementation partner, Flo Group’s CEO Michiel Keijzer shares how its expert consultants deliver customer-centric strategy and outcome

With circa 250 consultants globally, Flo Group is the market leader for Oracle Transportation Management System (TMS) implementation. With core teams in Europe, India, and South America, Flo is home to many senior experts with more than 15 years of experience driving knowledge around the Oracle product, which is helping support small and large scale businesses.

Built on a people-centric culture, Flo enables its consultants to develop and grow with echoing effects across its team and client base, delivering excellence and a like-minded approach to transport management.

To achieve this, Flo Group’s CEO, Michiel Keijzer, explained how Flo has created a templated approach upon which its consultants can build to support businesses operating globally.

“The template can subsequently have functionality and locations added to ensure the solution meets local needs where required,” says Keijzer. “We do encourage our clients to keep localisations to a minimum for ease of solution ownership going forward.”

In the early stage of Oracle TMS rollout, Flo is heavily involved in the process to ensure a successful execution, where consultants are able to get clients on board with the solution for their own specific use cases.

“Our consultants will develop the core solution and then support the global deployment for each regional roll out,” says Keijzer. “During the roll-out stage, we will work with the clients’ own teams as they become more familiar with the solution. After each ‘go live’ during a deployment, we will hand over to the Flo support team that offers 24/7/365 live solution support and is thereby able to support any timezone.”

This client-centric approach inherently puts Flo in a great position to meet and exceed customer expectations, which has been critical to its success and a leading component of its journey to Oracle Transport Management (OTM) stewardship.

Rechanneling data: from inside-out to outside-in

Kirchner discussed the difference between the inside-out and outside-in approach to supply chains, and where Henkel stands on this.

Kirchner says: “As the term ‘supply chain’ indicates, it is, in essence, a chain of events. We can visualise this as two opposing streams. The first consists of the material flow, which exists from the procuring of raw materials, to producing intermediaries, on to finished goods, and finally out to delivering those goods to customers.

“Then there is the information flow –and this streams in the opposite direction, from the demand of the customer, on to production and procurement.”

The traditional inside-out approach is where a company accesses the information it has inside of its company, and constructs its reality around that. Kircher expresses that as a company matures in the supply chain, they enhance their perception of their needs, and this is where digital capabilities come into play. “You begin to understand that you need to extend your visibility to the data you receive on both ends of your value chain.” Kirchner says: “In contrast, the outside-in approach acknowledges that a company is part of a much larger value stream that includes suppliers, distributors, customers and consumers.

“By taking these perspectives into account, we are able to make decisions that are better aligned with the overall value stream. Henkel believes in the outside-in approach, taking in the views and the voices of the customer, as well as data points from outside the company, to design and improve its supply chain performance towards customers.”