Optimizing Inventory

As a producer of athletic footwear, apparel and accessories, PUMA North America Inc. relies on more than 80 independent sales consultants to make crucial business decisions daily based on data from orders, shipments and product availability. A cumbersome ERP system, however, was preventing the company from fulfilling the demand for its popular products.

In response, PUMA sprinted towards business intelligence and data mining capabilities from SPSS. "With SPSS, PUMA has completely replaced 90 percent of our ERP system reports, which were highly inflexible and required us to contact the vendor for simple template changes," says Karen King, a data warehouse specialist for PUMA North America. "Previously, it would take a day or more to create a report. Now, PUMA can obtain reports in less than an hour, and sometimes in as little as 10 to 20 minutes."

Thanks to the ShowCase Suite from SPSS, PUMA can arm its sales staff with information that drives decisions to optimize inventory and order management procedures. Designed for organizations using the IBM eServer iSeries (AS/400) computing platform, ShowCase Suite enables PUMA sales consultants to view inventory reports and identify which products are selling. If sales of a particular shoe model increase, PUMA can ramp up production of that shoe.

Likewise, it can shift inventory or close a store if performance is lagging. "Using  ShowCase Suite, we slice and dice the data in countless ways," says King. "I have approximately 1,400 scheduled reports, 1,200 dynamic reports and 500 document postings within ShowCase Enterprise Reporting alone."

The Daily Show

With daily data updates from PUMA's ERP system and ShowCase Suite, King says she's automated 55 different Product Availability Reports that update daily by 10:00 a.m. In ShowCase Enterprise Reporting, users, including the PUMA Sales Force, can login and find availability of products in minutes. An "Image Library" also puts 6,000 PUMA product images at the fingertips of its sales force. "The Sales Force, once had next to nothing, are now nearly self-sufficient, pro-active, and valuable assets to PUMA North America and our customer base," says King.