Autonet increases availability by 7% amidst accelerated growth

AUTONET Group is one of the most prominent suppliers within the auto repair segment in the Central and Eastern European region. Founded in 1996, the company now supplies customers in 3 countries (Romania, Hungary and Slovenia). With over 160,000 articles delivered from stock across a network of 5 distribution centers and over 70 shops, customer satisfaction is the main objective for the team.

For more than 20 years, AUTONET has established itself as the largest supplier of auto parts in Romania. With a customer-focused team of over 1500 professionals, the business strives to offer greater value amidst the ever-increasing market pressure that comes as a result of expanding assortments and competitive pricing. Currently, AUTONET is using Slim4 across all their locations. In total, the business offer over 1,000,000 unique articles, of which, more than 160,000 are delivered from stock.

Exponential Growth

In addition to AUTONET’s extensive supply network, which extends across 3 countries, according to Zoltan Bartha, there is another great challenge when it comes to inventory optimisation: “Our product portfolio and network are continuously growing. Since the start of the Slim4 project, we have increased new product location combinations by 50%. Our team was already doing a great job but with such growth, their tasks would have been much harder. As a result, we needed to adopt a more agile working methodology with a different inventory strategy for every single article in every single location, all in one system and all with the same team”.

After an extensive comparative analysis, AUTONET chose Slimstock’s inventory management solution, Slim4. The return on investment was obtained within the first year and more importantly, it paves the way for the long-term development plans.

Availability Increase

Slim4 has brought a lot of benefits to AUTONET, including the reports and visibility required to maintain control, as well as the management by exception approach which has delivered efficiency, focus and greater productivity. Compared with our previous system and in tandem with AX ERP, Slim4 is adding more value to the planning and purchasing department by dynamically managing most of the business rules and giving the users a comprehensive overview of the past demand and future forecast. The system is also highlighting SKUs of interest and potential problems such as the future risk of out of stocks while the user still retains the flexibility to integrate their own way of working and preferences.

Long-term Partnership

Given that Slimstock, a Dutch-owned company, did not have many local customers, nor did it have an office or a local team at the time, choosing Slim4 was a risk. However, according to Zoltan Bartha, it was one of the most rewarding decisions the business made: “the personal and continued support has been great.”

With help from Slimstock consultants, all the required specific business rules have been successfully translated into Slim4. This has resulted in a robust yet dynamic daily system. Zoltan goes on to add: “The dedicated consultants at Slimstock were experienced with our industry profile and challenges and were able to propose and deliver the solutions we needed. We have complete confidence that Slimstock will be able to meet our requirements for the long term.”