Case Study: Integrated Business Planning at Puma

Sports lifestyle is a dynamic business. Great things are demanded of the industry and the challenge is to have the right products at the right time to meet that demand instantly.

Things were no different for PUMA and its CEO, along with the senior management team, identified numerous operational challenges for the company. Overcoming these challenges required the evaluation of new technological solutions to increase visibility and integration and reduce complexity.

Prior to PUMAs transformation with Board, the company faced an extremely complex business setup, which had given rise to a plethora of ERP systems, spreadsheets, and other fragmented tools, whose results had to be consolidated at the HQ level. The digital transformation was initiated, with the aim of bringing in a fully integrated planning process to instill the flexibility the company was missing.

One of the most fundamental requirements for PUMA’s transformation was comprehensive standardization in planning, reporting, and analytics processes, which would allow the global organization to effectively collaborate across all departments.

After an extensive assessment of the market, PUMA chose Board, the unified decision-making platform, due to the software’s striking level of technological flexibility. Within the same all-in-one Business Intelligence, Planning, and Predictive Analytics environment, Board seamlessly combines data control and management, enabling the execution of reporting, analytics, and simulation on the same sets of data and with the highest level of flexibility.

Over 2,500 employees from various departments now use the Board platform to plan the entire wholesale business and the approx. 100,000 SKUs handled every six months.

PUMA began the implementation of its integrated planning process from the target setting stage. This was followed by the Merchandise Plan, which is looked after by PUMA’s Global merchandising teams. Based on the numbers coming out of the strategic plan for the relevant year, these teams focus on a specific season and take into account inline/non-inline products, age groups, and gender split.

Next, PUMA’s process continues with Conceptual Assortment Planning (CAP). Through an output screen developed within the interactive Board environment, these Business Units can check their tasks and seamlessly collaborate with the merchandising phase while remaining aware of business targets.

Once completed, next is the Range Plan. It allows management teams to evaluate the effectiveness of their ranges against the original plan and budget.

Demand-based planning is done at a national level. Members of the PUMA planning team have all the information they need, in compressed form. Suggested values for new items are calculated based on pre-generated article clusters. This eliminates the need for time-consuming searches and mapping reference articles.

The plan is regularly updated right up to the monthly rolling forecast, with the target figures continuously adapted to changes in customer demand. Board supports this by calculating the forecast values based on the current season’s sell-in figures and looking at cluster-based order trends of previous comparison periods.

Getting early and continuously updated information from the demand forecasts is crucial to the procurement planning team. The continuous forecast updates also mean the company can automatically adapt to any potential changes in the market demand situation.

In the final stage, the demands of both the Range and the Sales plans are combined. Board allows PUMA to check key metrics such as inventory levels and purchase orders, collating outputs from the previous steps into an automated final output, which is a proposal for the ERP system (SAP).

Using up-to-date data such as available stock, pending supplier orders, and pending sales orders, the Board platform determines the resulting net demand based on the planned gross figures. Based on complex computation algorithms, this is distributed on defined order dates or order placed dates (OPDs).

Board has addressed PUMA’s entire planning, analytics, and reporting needs. The transformation spans data control and management, overhauling planning processes from worldwide goal-setting down to specific local operational activity at the most granular level of detail. Board’s comprehensive workflow support increases process reliability and guarantees the timely completion of individual tasks.

Alongside integrated planning and analysis, PUMA uses Board for the marketing budget and to plan marketing campaigns.

PUMA is exploring new routes with Board

Despite historically being wholesale focused, PUMA’s e-commerce activities are growing rapidly. The management team is planning to extend the successful operational model it has implemented with Board to both its company-operated stores and the online business.

PUMA is also in the process of evaluating Board for its financial planning, which will complete its strategic and operational transformation by providing a truly unified approach. Board looks forward to continued success with PUMA across all aspects of the business.