Swedish Mobile Operator 3 Picks RELEX’s Solution for Purchasing and Store Replenishment of Mobile Devices and Accessories

Swedish mobile operator “3” has chosen RELEX’s solution to manage and optimise replenishment of their stores and central warehouse.

The co-operation between 3 and RELEX began with a joint pre-study. As part of the study, Helsinki-based RELEX identified several development areas within 3’s existing purchasing and replenishment processes and was also able to suggest concrete changes to processes and system support to better meet 3’s key challenges.

The contract with 3 represents another milestone for RELEX. The Finnish company is Europe’s fastest growing supply chain planning, forecasting and replenishment systems provider and is rapidly becoming established as the leader in its sector.

RELEX was able to provide a flexible and adaptable solution that met the needs of 3’s complex, multichannel operations, including sales in own retail outlets, on-line, and via resellers. As RELEX’s solution already encompassed the necessary functionality, there was no need for expensive customisation work.

“Mobile devices are typically bundled with an airtime contract. The life cycle of mobile devices is very short and their value is high,” says Fredrik Östman, 3Sweden’s Supply Chain Manager. “Therefore it’s of vital importance we ensure that the devices really are in stock when a customer visits one of our stores while, at the same time, we minimize our inventory risk.”

“We evaluated different candidates and chose RELEX. RELEX offered a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that could be adapted to our special requirements. The alternative was building a totally customised system from scratch. During the pre-study we came to trust RELEX, finding that they had best practices built into their solution that met our requirements and smart functionality that we may not have been able to think of in the initial phase by ourselves. This fact, combined with RELEX’s impressive track record for fast implementation, their high level of expertise in supply chain optimization, and their commitment to their customers, left us confident that we made the right choice“ concludes 3Sweden’s Fredrik Östman.

The next step is to finalize the specifications and integration work before the end of Q2 2012 and then roll out the solution immediately after the summer holidays.