The Pulse -- January 2005

Adidas-Salomon Gains Edge in Retail
The No. 2 sports apparel and equipment maker in the world, adidas-Salomon Canada, uses the IBM eServer iSeries platform to gain a competitive edge in its market. Because Canada is the only adidas-Salomon location that houses all of the company's brands, each with independent marketing teams and sales forces, the company needed an IT infrastructure that could handle the overarching supply chain applications. IBM eServer iSeries 810 system powers adidas-Salomon's operational and back-end warehouse management applications, core data processing applications and an internal sales portal. Retailers can view inventory levels in real-time and track order status via a Web portal. "It's imperative that our customers be able to place and track their orders 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so downtime is not an option," says Paul Leone, VP, Supply Chain - IT/Logistics, adidas-Salomon Canada. "With our iSeries server, we've never experienced unscheduled downtime..."

Brach's Sees Spike in Seasonal Sales
Chalking up record Halloween and holiday candy sales, 100-year-old Brach's Confection's Inc. reports a 15 percent spike in fourth-quarter, year-on-year seasonal candy sales. Brach's CEO Terry O'Brien attributes the company's double-digit sales growth to its renewed focus on "fundamentals", including improved product quality, fresh new packaging, a new management team and a hard-working sales force. "The market rewards quality and innovation, and it's extremely gratifying to see the changes we've been putting in place over the last 18 months pay off with a 15 percent boost in sales," says O'Brien.
The company also announces a strong uptake for its new Splenda-sweetened, better-for-you versions of eight top-selling traditional candies. "Brach's has a 100-year history of satisfying this nation's sweet tooth with fresh, delicious candies -- and, with retailers embracing products like our new better-for-you line of our traditional favorites, we're more confident than ever that we'll be filling America's candy bowls in the century to come," says O'Brien.

Kohler Cleans Up Hiring
Kohler Co., one of the world leaders in products for the kitchen and bath, will utilize software and professional services from Recruitmax, a global provider of workforce management technology solutions, to optimize the company's hiring process. Recruitmax's Corporate Edition for strategic hiring will allow Kohler to continue to acquire talent, reduce hiring time and costs, and provide valuable workforce analytics on a global scale.
"Recruitmax offers a global solution that will enable Kohler Co. to source top talent in today's competitive environment," says Tanya Lulloff, manager, Strategic Staffing for Kohler Co. "This robust technology will facilitate Kohler Co.'s ability to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver results through value-added processes."

IP Cuts to Compliance
In continuing International Paper's (IP) tradition of being the premier packaging solutions provider, it established the Smart Packaging business in 1999, offering customers a full suite of RFID/EPC-enabled products and integrated services. IP recently announced a variety of Core Compliance solutions for businesses looking for bare minimum compliance or full integrations. Offerings start with a basic system for customers with small volumes to tag. A verification station can be added to ensure RFID tags are read after applied. For customers wanting to gain supply chain benefits from RFID, dock portals can automatically check shipments. For those requiring high volume tagging, IP provides powered conveyors and automatic tag applications. If some want to integrate a solution to legacy application, IP offers platforms that interface through a variety of protocols. To give customers enterprise control over serialization, a centralized server is installed.

Campbell Brings TPM to Boiling Point
The Campbell Soup Company in North America announces the successful go-live of CAS' CPWerx software for Trade Promotion Management (TPM) as part of a Customer Investment Program to improve working relationships with retail and wholesale customers. "Having redesigned our trade funds program, we needed to implement a flexible tool that allowed us to optimize promotions, execute payments and predict and measure our effectiveness over time," says Paul Williams, Campbell's director of IT. CPWerx's Business Planning capabilities allow Campbell to consolidate planned and actual volume and spend for annual and seasonal promotions; while Promotions Management helps sales and marketing groups design, manage and evaluate TPM activities related to work plans, fund assignment, program analysis and simulations. CPWerx also contributes to Campbell's Sarbanes-Oxley Act readiness by delivering a defined process and system to report finances associated with trade spend. 

Will the Sears/Kmart merger create an entity powerful enough to compete with Wal-Mart?

"With 3,500 stores, it's easy to be blinded by the massive scale of the newly formed retailer," says a Yankee Group report "Kmart's Acquisition of Sears: It Will Take More than Scale to Unseat Wal-Mart". "However, significant barriers must be overcome before this acquisition can be called a success. Sears Holding Corp. must align the capabilities and goals of merchandising, the supply chain and IT. Neither retailer has proven capable of doing it. Those failures don't bode well for the future." Meanwhile, "Wal-Mart has created and maintained a culture that eliminates business process ambiguity. One only has to look at how Wal-Mart introduces new technology to see the power in alignment of goals and objectives."