Abudawood pursues supply chain excellence across five key markets with Slimstock

Formally known as the Ismail Ali Abudawood Trading Company Limited (IATCO), Abudawood is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise with over 130 facilities, 260,000 stores covered, and a 4000-strong team. Through nurturing long-standing partnerships with more than 50 leading manufacturers, including Proctor & Gamble, Quaker Oats and Ferrero, Abudawood continues to build upon its core strengths in providing localised market services for world-class brands.

As a trusted supplier to the region’s most prominent retail brands, including Panda, Danube, Othaim, and Carrefour, Abudawood has clear supply chain goals: achieve sustainable growth through elevating customer experience and delivering world-class service.

Abdullah AbuSido, Director of Business Applications at Abudawood, explains: “By integrating all elements of our business, we can harness the strength of our global operation to better serve the needs of customers and partners in every corner of every market. However, as a large but nimble organisation, we continually invest in our supply chain to create agility, flexibility, and scale advantages.”

Synchronising plans across the supply chain

Following a detailed tender process, Abudawood selected Slimstock to support its global supply chain transformation initiative. Focused on replacing the existing labour-intensive planning process with a more automated, integrated, and holistic approach to supply chain planning, Abudawood will adopt the award-winning Slim4 platform to synchronise supply chain plans across its global operation.

Explaining the decision, Abdullah AbuSido states: “Slimstock have a proven record for helping other FMCG brands in the region. With its robust implementation processes, we are confident Slimstock can deliver huge value to our organisation. Furthermore, Slimstock’s local presence in the region and ability to communicate in the local languages of our key markets was a key factor in our decision to form an alliance.”

A roadmap for improvement

By adopting the Slim4 Platform, the global conglomerate will enhance visibility throughout its end-to-end network, fostering more effective collaboration. Furthermore, Abudawood will use Slim4’s powerful assortment management, demand planning, promotion management, shelf-life management, replenishment, and order optimisation capabilities to drive efficiency gains throughout the planning process.

The initial phase of a transformation project, implementing the Slim4 to support the business operation in Bahrain, is already well underway.

“Capturing best practices and utilising this insight to drive performance across the entire organisation is critical for creating a better customer experience. With the rapid adoption of the Slim4 platform in Bahrain, we will work with Slimstock to develop a blueprint to accelerate digital transformation in our other markets,” concludes Abdullah AbuSido.