Automation Hero September 2019: Peer Dahlgren of Proffsmagasinet

Peer Dahlgren, Purchasing Manager at Proffsmagasinet, has improved both service levels and inventory turnover thanks to automation, despite more than doubling the products in stock. This is why he is EazyStock’s September Automation Hero.

Name: Peer Dahlgren
Title: Purchasing Manager
Company: Proffsmagasinet

Congratulations Peer! Can you please tell us a little about yourself, Proffsmagasinet and the work you do?
Thank you very much! I work as Purchasing Manager for Proffsmagasinet. We are an eCommerce company, selling tools online, that has experienced strong growth year-over-year for the past 5 years, and we all working hard to constantly improve our business and our work processes. Our ambition is to be as data-driven as possible in our daily tasks and business decisions. By automating certain processes, we get more time for other qualitative work. I have been with Proffsmagasinet for more than two years and have been involved in implementing EazyStock and automating our purchasing process. I also work on automation with our logistics flow, pricing, product and order administration.

What “red flags” made you realize that you needed to invest in automation?
Red flags are usually KPIs such as poor service level or low inventory turnover, but I also wanted to fix our “soft” red flags. These “soft” red flags include “human factor” errors and time spent on manual processes in combination with deteriorating key figures. Large administrative workloads or repetitive tasks are not a sustainable model for a growing business, even if you are careful or analytical. As the complexity increases, the larger the amount of data to be handled is, and demand changes, deviations or dependencies can easily disappear in the “noise” of large data sets. In addition, people have a need for work that is varied, to evolve and learn in order to perform and thrive. Through automation, we gained higher quality in all our business processes – both automated and non-automated – and created a more creative work environment.

How has your work changed since implementing EazyStock?
With EazyStock implemented, my team and I have adapted large parts of our work process; we are now working more qualitatively in risk assessment and more are more proactive in minimizing obsolescence and increasing inventory turnover. We also have more time for further development of our processes where we can take small steps daily towards a more efficient product flow. The focus has shifted from ad-hoc problem solving to being able to plan, prioritize and further develop.

How has automation with EazyStock helped Proffsmagasinet?
We have managed to significantly increase our inventory turnover and service level since implementation, despite the fact that we have more than twice the number of items to administer. Today, we have a well-functioning purchasing process where we serve our end customers with higher availability while simultaneously reducing our average inventory costs.

Which other tools for automation are you using today?
We are just getting started with a PIM system to automate our work processes when enriching and handling product data and our pricing. In addition to this, other smaller parts have to do with the order flow.

What do you think about the future of Automation?
Our focus is on creating better value through automation. We are currently looking at automation for our product flow. For example, we want to add better delivery estimates by making data available throughout our supply chain – from suppliers to all our warehouses – and all available delivery options to our end customers.

Thanks for your thoughts and wise words Peer!
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