Rexel Ireland improves inventory accuracy and streamlines processes with Dynamics 365

Rexel (XPAR: RXL) is a global energy products and services distributor, providing comfort, security, and energy efficiency solutions and services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers in 32 countries. Rexel Ireland is the largest electrical wholesaler in the Irish market, with a network of 24 branches around the Republic of Ireland. Each branch consists of a store with a warehouse where business-to-business (B2B) customers can pick up a comprehensive range of wholesale electrical products, from lighting, cabling, and accessories to solar electricity and electric vehicle charging solutions. Rexel Ireland relies on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Finance for a more accurate and up-to-date view of inventory, streamlined processes, improved analytical capabilities, and deeper insight into business operations.

Amping up unreliable inventory levels and stale financial data

Rexel Group has been engaged in a modernization initiative for several years, focusing on streamlining business operations through automation and digital tools. To support its parent company’s efforts, Rexel Ireland identified an opportunity to improve product inventory accuracy and embarked on a search for a new inventory management solution. As Eoin O’Mahony, ERP manager at Rexel Ireland, explains, it was difficult to accurately confirm stock levels in the company’s previous Oracle enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. “When electricians call in an order or come to a retail outlet to purchase an item, we need to ensure it’s in stock,” he says. “We couldn’t always do that, and visibility and stock accuracy were two of the main areas customers were concerned about when we surveyed them.”

Financial reporting capabilities were also in need of an upgrade to allow managers to make faster, more informed business decisions. “Our goal is always to get real-time data, and that was sometimes difficult to do with our previous solution,” O’Mahony says.

Dynamics 365, a cloud-based, scalable, flexible ERP platform, was in limited but expanding use at other Rexel business units. For its 24 locations, Rexel Ireland chose to implement Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management.

Along with fulfilling the original goals of improving inventory accuracy and expanding reporting capabilities, the Dynamics 365 platform was easier to administer. “With Dynamics 365, we can manage many of our services centrally,” says Laze Janev, Dynamics 365 Solution Architect at Rexel Ireland.

Improving inventory accuracy with master planning and handheld scanners

Among those centrally managed services are warehouse processes at the company’s new Distribution Center in Dublin, which serves its nationwide network of retail outlets. Using the Warehouse management module in Supply Chain Management enables management of all inbound and outbound inventory, simplifying order replenishment for individual branches, because products are now delivered to the Distribution Center instead of to 24 separate locations. “Previously, we had to have individual purchasing and selling,” says Janev. “Our new Distribution Center transformed our business by allowing us to centrally manage operations and replenish supply in retail outlets for the entire region.”

O’Mahony agrees that Warehouse management has been a game-changer, adding, “We have an agreement to dispatch orders to our branch network within 48 hours to ensure stock availability for our customers and prevent any lost sales, so it’s vital that we can quickly turn around stock. Dynamics 365 helps us do that.’’

Before it becomes stock, however, a product is just raw materials and potential. Material requirements planning (MRP) capabilities in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management help optimize inventory planning, determining the raw materials and capacity that are available now and balancing them with future needs to calculate requirements and generate planned orders.

After products are in stock, salesclerks working at retail outlet trade counters use a custom Power App on handheld devices to scan an item’s bar code to easily add any of the company’s 12,000 SKUs to a sales order in Dynamics 365. When the sales order is ready, a packing slip is automatically generated. The Power App also counts stock and provides real-time information on inventory levels. The user-friendly app and its integration with Dynamics 365 give salesclerks a more efficient—and far more accurate—way to manage inventory. Accuracy is critical, because stock is not replenished if it is not accurate, leading to lost sales. “Product inventory accuracy is highly important for our business and our customers,” says O’Mahony. “With Dynamics 365, inventory accuracy has increased significantly.”

The company plans to launch an e-commerce website on the Dynamics 365 Commerce platform, including a B2B portal for customers to purchase renewable energy products. In addition to providing a more convenient shopping experience for customers, the new services will boost inventory accuracy even more. “The website and B2B portal will help our customers manage their accounts more easily and provide better visibility into our products and the stock offering we currently have,” O’Mahony says.

Saving time and resources

As inventory accuracy has gone up, the time it takes the company to complete its twice-yearly stock counts in the retail outlets has gone down significantly. “Previously, we’d have to close the stores for a full day and into the weekend to do stock counts,” says O’Mahony. “We’ve reduced the time it takes to complete the counts by at least half since implementing Dynamics 365.”

It isn’t only the human resources at Rexel Ireland who are saving time. MRP capabilities rely on Planning Optimization, the master planning engine for Supply Chain Management, which calculates master plans more efficiently by running them outside of the main system. “Master planning used to take up to four hours, and other systems and operations were blocked as a result,” Janev says. “With Planning Optimization in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, we can now execute master planning in two minutes, without blocking systems and operations.”