RELEX Forecaster Took Forecasting into a New Era at Farmos

Farmos, a leading cleansing solution provider in Finland, the Baltics and Russia, implemented the Relex Forecaster –system during the spring of 2010. The usability and multiple forecasting levels of the system supported Farmos’ process change in forecasting.

Farmos is a leading Finnish producer and marketer of washing, cleaning and hygiene products and industrial chemicals. The company is also active in the Russian and Baltic market and it runs production sites in Finland and Russia. Altogether Farmos employs approximately 250 people.

At the outset of developing a sales forecast process, Farmos aimed to develop current working methods and achieve a successful system change. Farmos’ business manager Jussi Pullola commented: “We wanted to make the internally dispersed sales information to support production planning. It became clear in the very beginning of the development project that the current ERP-system wouldn’t allow us to reach our target state in flexibility and usability of sales forecasting.”

Having reviewed many system providers, Farmos finally chose RELEX. “Even in the very first demonstration RELEX seemed so intuitive and easy to use, and this opinion hasn’t changed after I have used the system myself. I have been highly satisfied with our choice”, assesses Jussi Pullola and continues: “What’s essential is the RELEX system’s support for forecasting different group levels. We now do forecasting in customer and product group levels, from where the system takes forecasting corrections to product-customer group level. This was a major change in our previously product-led way of thinking.”

The system project with its integrations and trainings was compactly completed – moving from system decision to full-scale production use took only 4 months. “In transforming the whole forecasting process changing the actual working customs has proven itself to be a greater challenge than the IT-project. Getting people to change what they do is hard especially since also the way of doing things and responsibilities are different in the new process model. In order to make the change into a success, the system in use needs to be flexible and easy to use, and it has to automate unnecessary work phases – and that’s exactly what RELEX has been like”, finishes Pullola contentedly.