Welkoop

THE GOAL 

Welkoop sells products for gardens and animals. Based in the Netherlands, it has 149 retail locations, an online shop and around 1,500 employees. Originally established for the agricultural market, it now mainly focuses on consumers.

Welkoop’s immediate need was to optimise and automate the company’s business process organisation and tracking. The existing system was felt to be inadequate because it involved many disciplines, the necessary data was not centrally available and, being a manual process, it was prone to errors.

Welkoop wanted to create a high-quality folder which could contain all the necessary data – and it wanted a solution within two months. It turned to low-code and no-code solutions expert CLEVR and the close collaboration of the two companies led to the development of a CLEVR Promotion Manager application.

THE APPROACH

Welkoop saw a future based on low code, so CLEVR was its ideal partner. Based on CLEVR’s application expertise and Welkoop’s knowledge of its business, they were together able to develop the Promotion Manager application. This led the way for other retail organisations to adopt similar systems.

The implementation of the Promotion Manager benefits many departments involved in the promotion process – from marketing to category management and promotion managers. As many communication systems as possible have been automated to minimise errors.

Promotions are now automatically transferred from the Promotion Manager to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the POS system and the online shop. The demand planning department also works with the Promotion Manager to ensure the right products are in store at the right time.

THE RESULTS

CLEVR’s expert Mendix developers and extensive knowledge of the retail market have greatly supported Welkoop and this successful collaboration has resulted in the needs of the business being converted into effective IT solutions.

A further improvement that Welkoop notes is the insights it has gained from its promotion data. This is now centralised so the company can better plan what to do in the future based on past results. In addition to consolidating its data, Welkoop now also has a digital marketing calendar. From planning to results, the entire process is centrally visible.

Several years on, CLEVR and Welkoop are still working together. As Welkoop wants to focus on optimising its business, it has outsourced operational activities as much as possible. The management of the Promotion Manager – which has been updated over the years – therefore rests entirely with CLEVR.

Welkoop is currently working on a major project to better support its business processes through IT. The first step is the phased implementation of a new ERP system. All processes from purchasing to in-store sales will be optimised and automated in turn.

Ultimately, success comes from teamwork and it is the shared vision, common goals and co-operation of these two companies that has led to such a successful and sustainable collaboration.

CUSTOMER QUOTE

“We keep each other on our toes. At the start of our collaboration, CLEVR proved it could do this translation, which immediately created trust. CLEVR has also built up a lot of knowledge in the retail market, which we also benefit from"

Carel van Rijsewijk, ICT manager, Welkoop