16/03/2018 | Hardis Group
France and Southern Europe's leading online retailer of bikes, parts and cycling equipment has chosen Hardis Group's warehouse management software (WMS) to efficiently manage its e-logistics processes and support its growth.
Hardis Group, a consulting firm, digital services company and independent software vendor, has been helping specialist online retailer of bikes and cycling equipment Probikeshop to optimize its e-logistics operations since 2011. Deploying Reflex WMS, hosted in Hardis Group's private cloud, has brought improvements to numerous processes. The software is easy to learn, making it particularly suited to this highly seasonal business which requires temporary staff to handle peaks.
A robust and scalable WMS to support growth
Probikeshop, France and Southern Europe's leading online retailer of bikes, parts and cycling equipment, sells over 55,000 products on its e-commerce site. It picks orders received from all over Europe in its single 30,000m2 warehouse in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in France. It employs 170 people, increasing to 220 in high season (from May to September), during sales and for Black Friday.
In 2011, when reinternalizing its logistics on a 9,000m2 site, Probikeshop started to look for scalable warehouse management software that could support its growth (50% to 70% a year from 2005 to 2015). After consulting several software vendors, it chose Reflex WMS. Integrating all the expected features to manage e-commerce flows as standard and capable of managing an extensive portfolio of products (30,000 products at the time), the solution also impressed Probikeshop teams with its user-friendliness. "We needed a solution that temporary workers could quickly learn how to use when supporting our teams at peak times", says David Pasqualon, method manager and project manager at Probikeshop. The solution was rolled out within a few months.
A new warehouse and migration to the Hardis Group private cloud
At the end of 2015, Probikeshop logistics teams chose Hardis Group again when it came to moving the logistics platform to the current site, which was three times larger. "We were pleased with the regular updates made to the WMS and the support from Hardis Group teams", says David Pasqualon. With Hardis Group's help, it took just four months to configure and deploy Reflex WMS in the new warehouse. The solution has improved numerous logistics processes: automatic identification and calculation of storage locations (up to 80,000 parts received per week), multi-order collection and sorting (up to 7,000 packages a day at peak times), real-time perpetual inventory, etc. "What makes us different is that our website only displays products which are in stock. This means that we need to quickly restock to avoid losing e-commerce sales. Real-time perpetual inventory also makes our stock levels more accurate without any hold-ups", explains David Pasqualon.
In 2016, the company hosting Reflex WMS was no longer providing satisfaction in terms of quality of service, prompting Probikeshop to move to the Hardis Group private cloud. "We now have a single contact reaching far beyond hosting as Hardis Group's ongoing monitoring means it can anticipate any problems or performance dips that could affect our logistics performance", adds David Pasqualon.
Over the coming months, Probikeshop teams will work with Hardis Group teams on upstream order scheduling. The aim is to analyze and group orders according to their characteristics (textiles, small parts, complete cycles, etc.) in order to adapt picking, sorting and packaging methods and systems according to these criteria.