Lyco

Lyco, the UK’s leading lighting company, has transformed its supply chain to enhance customer experience. Following the rapid adoption of Slimstock’s supply chain planning platform, Lyco has achieved outstanding results, improving working capital by 20% while maintaining exceptional product availability.

Supporting 1000s of customers across many industries, including hospitality, leisure, education, health, construction, and facilities management, Lyco strives to offer the latest innovations in lighting. Rob Sparling, Supply Chain Manager at Lyco, explains: “What sets us apart is our focus on providing the latest products from around the world at the best prices and a level of service that is second to none.”

After being acquired by the Spanish company EfectoLed, Lyco has seen significant growth across its product assortment, introducing many new product lines from its new parent company and its subsidiaries. To maintain its unrivalled service level standards as its product catalogue continues to grow, Lyco needed to adopt a revolutionary approach to supply chain planning.

Results

After exploring several potential solutions, Lyco opted for Slimstock’s award-winning supply chain planning platform, Slim4.

By helping the lighting specialist to navigate supply-side disruption, capitalise on market trends, and uphold its commitment to superior customer service, Lyco has achieved impressive performance improvements across its top-performing product categories:

• 20% reduction in working capital tied up in stock while maintaining high levels of availability
• 20% increase in stock turn
• Improved operational agility

Solutions

Investing in technologies that empower people

As a long-standing technology evangelist, Lyco previously utilised Demand Solution software to support its supply chain processes. Explaining the need for a more advanced planning platform, Rob Sparling, Supply Chain Manager at Lyco, states: “With our old system, it took over two hours every day just to update. We then had to review each item manually. By leveraging Slimstock’s advanced planning capabilities to automate supply chain workflows, our people have more time to focus on value-added activity.”

Lyco took advantage of the standard BC Connector to seamlessly integrate Slimstock with its existing Microsoft 365Business Central ERP. Soon after Go-Live, the lighting specialist could see the business impact of Slimstock’s AI-powered platform.

“We can quickly consolidate orders based on dynamic service level parameters and ABC classes with just a push of a button. Not only is our process far more efficient, but we now manage a much broader assortment with fewer people,” adds Rob.

Shifting mindsets

Before Lyco set the supply chain transformation project in motion, the lighting supplier struggled with high levels of slow-moving products, increasing the risk of obsolete stock. Therefore, a key focus of the transformation was to shift the planning team’s mindset to make more strategic purchasing decisions.

“In the past, our planning team had to make decisions based on gut feel; they would draw up a list of our top items and manually analyse the sales history to determine the optimal order level. Unfortunately, this was hugely time-consuming and often resulted in high levels of excess stock,” explains Rob.

With the addition of Slimstock’s platform, Lyco now has access to the detailed demand insights required to support effective data-driven decision-making. The Supply Chain Manager adds: “Furthermore, the training provided during the implementation has helped elevate our team’s knowledge. We are now far more commercially aware. But more importantly, by making smarter orders, we have increased our stock turn by 20% across our A-class items.”

Increased Responsiveness

For Lyco, creating flexibility and agility amidst shifting market conditions is critical. With the Slim4 platform, Lyco is far better positioned to identify opportunities and risks.

Rob explains: “Slim4 automatically alerts us to exceptions that require our attention. As a result, we are far more responsive to situations where demand is much higher or lower than expected. By providing us with granular demand insights, we can get closer to the pulse of our customers. By helping us rebalance our inventory, we have reduced our working capital investment in stock by 20% while maintaining high levels of availability.”

Next steps

The future of the business looks promising. Eager to pursue further improvements, Rob highlights the importance of training: “The knowledge sessions with Slimstock’s consultants are fantastic, and we look forward to taking advantage of their academy to keep our team up to date with the latest industry best practices and developments in Slim4.”