La Mote is an independent business division in the Orkla Group, one of Norway’s largest publicly traded companies. La Mote markets and distributes textile products such as socks, underwear and tights to convenience stores in Norway, Sweden and Finland.
When you sell 1500 different products to 6000 different stores in 45 sales districts across three countries, this naturally generates huge amounts of information to keep track of. This is every day life at La Mote, and since it experiences a constant demand to adjust to the market and optimize business processes, being able to access concrete knowledge in only a few minutes is a must.
TARGIT is fast and easy
La Mote used to struggle with static paper reports, and decisions were often made on a questionable foundation. The beginning of a future with structured data did however start five years ago when La Mote implemented a data warehouse. To begin with, the company implemented a Canadian data warehouse. However, when the division was introduced to TARGIT BI Suite later on, they quickly decided to replace the analysis tool. Tom Romanich, Director of IT- and business development, explains the change of systems: “TARGIT is much easier for our employees to use. At the same time, the solution is much faster and provides us with many more options for analyzing data.”
La Mote only spent a week implementing TARGIT BI Suite which now collects information from the industry solution TeamTrade, from the finance solution SAP and from the company’s pay roll system. All employees in sales use TARGIT on a daily basis to analyze their own sales. Marketing, logistics as well as top management are also frequent users of the solution that provides them with quick access to exactly the information they need.
Cost reduction of 1 million dollars
TARGIT BI Suite has made a huge difference for La Mote. Tom Romanich explains that TARGIT allows the employees to see connections in data that they did not see before, and he calls attention to two very specific examples: One product area has increased revenue by 40 percent partly due to the fact that TARGIT shows in which geographic areas and during which time periods, the products are selling the most, and with that the company can adjust to market forces. In another instance, the use of TARGIT has reduced sales discount related costs from 16 million NOK to 10 million NOK (from 2.6 million dollars to 1.6 million dollars). “With TARGIT, we have optimized the time for discounts and the level of price deduction. With this insight, we have improved our routines, so the sales people only start a discount period when it’s necessary,” Tom Romanich says.
Motivated employees
The introduction of TARGIT BI Suite has also created a very positive atmosphere amongst the employees, and La Mote is clearly experiencing that the employee motivation is increasing by virtue of the fact that they can make their own analyses and thereby obtain the needed knowledge. TARGIT is also getting credit for the faster and better training of new employees: “The employees improve their competencies faster because they quickly get a solid understanding of products and markets, when they can play around with the figures in TARGIT. Our operations are advanced, and the many complicated processes are now much easier for the employees to understand.”
