Successful
SAP S/4HANA Implementation
at beeline Group

Following a major four-year project, the beeline Group has successfully completed the migration of its merchandise management system from an in-house solution to SAP S/4HANA. Throughout this challenging project, the consultants at CAS AG were able to provide significant support thanks to their in-depth knowledge and experience with SAP CAR. “There aren’t many who understand retail processes as well as the specialists at CAS AG,” says Patrick Jüstel, Head of IT Applications at the Beeline Group, praising the Hamburg-based consulting firm.

With the new SAP-based merchandise management system—known internally as “beeOne”—the market leader in fashion jewelry and accessories in Europe and the U.S. was able to significantly improve the management of its tens of thousands of sales displays at its retail partners’ locations. Replacing the old system, which was characterized by numerous system disconnects, SAP S4/HANA now enables the beeline Group to map its processes end-to-end, achieve significantly improved business transparency, and manage its product carriers using the push principle. The more than 2,500 employees who stock the sales displays in the 22 countries where the group operates no longer have to manage inventory themselves.

The implementation of SAP S/4HANA presented significant challenges for the beeline Group. As a result, the European leader in costume jewelry had repeatedly faced performance issues with its SAP systems when managing its very large number of retail locations. The project also revealed that modules of the SAP CAR retail-specific planning and allocation solution were not sufficiently coordinated with one another and caused significant problems when working together.

With the help of the business specialists at CAS AG, the beeline Group was able to resolve the issues with the SAP modules without straying too far from the SAP standard. For example, CAS AG successfully used SAP tools to develop a new interface between the SAP modules “Assortment Planning for Retail” and “Allocation Management for Retail,” which seamlessly supports the beeline Group’s processes. “Working with CAS AG, we were able to create a stable, standardized, and automated interface that allows us to efficiently plan and manage our product lineup, even for many new retail locations,” says Patrick Jüstel, praising the consultants.

In the standard SAP system, the interaction between these two SAP CAR modules was previously not suitable for the beeline Group. This was particularly evident when the costume jewelry experts brought a retail company on board as a new partner. A new partner of the beeline Group sometimes brings 2,500 sales outlets or more with it. For these stores, the product assortment and optimal quantities must be planned efficiently as a unified whole, while still being tailored to each individual store. However, this was precisely what could not be achieved with the rigid logic that SAP provided in its Allocation Management for Retail and Assortment Planning for Retail modules. In particular, with its “Assortment Planning for Retail” module, SAP provided more of a rough framework than a ready-to-use solution at the time of its introduction.

With the support of CAS AG, which has already provided significant assistance to numerous retail companies in implementing SAP CAR, the beeline Group was able to implement the SAP CAR modules in a way that aligns with its processes and seamlessly integrate them with one another. Patrick Jüstel is very satisfied with the work of CAS AG: “We have overcome major challenges together. The consultants at CAS AG always take a solution-oriented approach, and our collaboration is characterized by a high degree of trust and respect.”