Transforming supply chains into the value chains of tomorrow

with purpose. Like no other player in the market, we offer a unique value proposition. One where expertise and technology converges.” Bluecrux focuses on distinct industry verticals, backed by the belief that specialised knowledge is crucial. It focuses on these main clusters:

Schoenmakers.

Founded in 2011, Bluecrux uses an ecosystem approach transforming the value chains of tomorrow. “The time of either providing advice or providing technology solutions is behind us,” says Managing Partner Anouk Schoenmakers: “We work with our customers to go from the initial ideation towards actual implementation and real results, combining consulting services with state-of-the-art technology.”

Across Bluecrux’s diverse customer base, it sees the same elements creating the rising complexity companies need to deal with nowadays:

1. The increasing speed at which business decisions need to be taken.

2. The growing uncertainty that businesses are facing.

3. The digitisation of technological progress that is needed.

4. The looming market disruption behind every corner.

“And while our answer to our customers’ complexities is always different, the elements that make up our offering are typically the same,” says Schoenmakers. “We connect a deep understanding of the problem with solutions

1. Pharma

2. MedTech

3. Healthcare

4. CPG

5. Specialty chemicals

6. Industrial manufacturing

“In our focus industries, we have the ability to help our customers to transform their entire value chain end to end,” says Schoenmakers. “At the heart of Bluecrux is the belief that innovation is born of collaboration. This requires a community approach, building a movement that is called The Cutting X. Where supply chains evolve and value chains are forged.”

Bluecrux’s transformational, collaborative, customer-centric approach is essential to Henkel: “No longer looking from an inside-out perspective, pushing one size fits all standards across the supply chain. Instead, we look through the customer’s lens.” Schoenmakers says: “We share the belief with Henkel that supply chains should no longer be linear, functional and siloed. Hence, we started a transformation journey together, to deliver real customer centricity.”

From vision to reality: crafting the customer CX program

According to Bjoern Kirchner, the first step of building a customer centric Supply Chain (SC) transformation programme at Henkel was to engage directly with customers and ask them about their experience. This was the ‘going broad’ approach.

However, with over 150,000 customers, it was not realistic to cover them all, so Henkel selected customer representatives and engaged deeply with them, performing value mapping and workshops to build a perception of what customers actually thought of the company: ‘going deep’.

The second phase was about creating ideas to fulfil different customer needs, such as innovation capability, quality, reliability and speed. Henkel then gathered teams across all functions to generate ideas on how to improve the customer experience, redesigning crucial touchpoints, such as shipment experience, track and trace, sampling and complaints processes.

Kirchner says: “We structured the CX programme into three areas, including the differentiators, which were the redesign of crucial touchpoints with customers, the fundamentals, which were the subsystems to enable getting those data points, and the efficiencies, which was about bringing new technology to capture a different efficiencylayers, such as process mining and optical character reading.”

He admits that the transformation was a complex undertaking given the size of the company, but it was powerful for both sides of the equation, and could partially fund new initiatives while continuing to contribute to the bottom line.

Henkel’s partner ecosystem

Such an undertaking could not be executed without the right partner ecosystem. Just some of the partners involved with Henkel’s projects include Blue Cross, VMware, Camelot Consulting, and FLOW Group.

“When looking for a partner to help with our vision of repositioning the supply chain, we needed someone who had experience not only in customer-centricity, but also in supply chain planning. Blue Cross, with its deep supply chain knowledge and customer centricity track record, was a great partner for us to work with,” he says.

Kirchner also talked about their partnership with Camelot Consulting, which helps them with their material master data governance process and quality control. “The other area of our partnership with Camelot is in planning capabilities, where they are implementing demand-driven MRP to drive customer-centricity and outside-in supply planning.”

FLOW Group is another one of Henkel’s key partners, and they work together in the logistics arena. Specifically, FLOW Group was Henkel’s implementation partner for OTM (Oracle Transportation

13.2% Organic sales development (Adhesive Technologies)

Management). Kirchner says: “FLOW Group’s expertise in implementation is crucial to our undertakings”.

Then there is Salesforce. Kirchner expresses that they are currently implementing Salesforce’s main application – the service cloud – in their customer service and technical teams. “We have been impressed with how professionally Salesforce has been running the program and are happy to learn from them. I believe it was a wise decision to work with a best-in-class company like Salesforce, and to listen carefully to their advice.”

Last, but not least, in Henkel’s pantheon of key partners is Fourkites. Henkel sees T&T capability as a basic customer requirement to shape customer experience. Fourkites is Henkel’s strategic partner to deliver visibility and transparency in logistics services. In the past few years, Henkel managed to cover a significant part of the deliveries with Fourkites’ T&T platform, and there is an ambitious plan to continue the roll out of T&T in the coming year.

The greatest challenges and lessons

Kirchner describes the biggest challenge in their current role as balancing the urgent needs of their supply chain team with the important task of transforming and maturing their capabilities in terms of systems, processes, mindset and people. Henkel needs to make sure that the performance and transformation sides of their teams work in-sync, and don’t develop things independently.

On a slightly philosophical conclusion – but one that has obviously served him well, as can be seen in his overseeing Henkel’s customer-centric Supply Chain (SC) transformation programme – Kirchner tells me that the best advice he has ever received is “to figure out how fast you can be in implementing change – and then go a bit slower – to make sure that people have enough time to absorb and digest it all”. And that’s how you turn visions into realities.