PriceSmart Inc. is the largest operator of membership warehouse clubs in Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia, serving about 3 million customers with 54 clubs in 12 countries and one US territory. Wayne Sadin, PriceSmart EVP and CIO, shares insights into their partnership with RELEX and the process of successfully building an integrated supply chain to support their growth and customer service goals.
Transcript
Hi there. I’m Wayne Sadin. I’m the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of PriceSmart, which is a member-driven retail organization that operates 54 clubs and growing in 13 countries. Well, technically, 12 countries and one US territory, serving about 3 million members with about 12,000 employees. The process of buying is central to what we do.
Our buyers are the heart of our company. So, every single item has to be bought thoughtfully and carefully and stocked at the right time, at the right price and in the right condition. We built a system within our company twenty-eight, twenty-nine years ago to do forecasting. It hasn’t evolved.
So, the buyers are stuck with email, telephone, Excel. And we realized, as we wanted to reinvigorate PriceSmart and bring more technology and process to match the growth of the company, we needed to do something to make the buyers’ experience better.
We want to have fewer stockouts; we want to have lower costs, and we want to have an easier supply chain to get rid of all the supply chain disruptions or minimize them. We wanted to create that member experience, and so we needed a solution that was as sophisticated as our business, our consumers, and the world around us.
Why was RELEX the partner for us?
We went to a couple of trade shows, and so we went to the RELEX booth, a number of us, and we said, “Tell us about how you handle fresh.” And we got a terrific dissertation. “How do you handle reverse bill of materials?” When we talked to RELEX, the answer to everything was, “Let me explain how we do that.” And we found nobody that came close to RELEX. And the ability not only to use the sophisticated technology but apply it in a way that made sense to the people who run our company – the buyers, the logistics people, the club operators.
Our goal is to take the knowledge of our twenty and thirty-year senior buyers, build that into the algorithms that RELEX supports, and then use that to let us grow the company.
We spent enormous amounts of time with RELEX, having meetings with dozens and several hundred people all together were part of this evaluation. And then they were, tasked with helping deliver. And then we put together a sophisticated team from IT, from the business, with a PMO in the middle supporting this initiative. And that’s been the success model for us.
The business folks have recognized this as a business transformation with the technology help, and also the process guidance from RELEX. You can say, “I appreciate this, but we’ve seen this and this and this as well. Would you like to consider these other alternatives?” And some we say “yes” and some we say “tell me more” and some we say “doesn’t work in our business.”
But it’s been a terrific partnership so far between IT and the business, between parts of the business that may not have talked to each other, but now have to in an integrated supply chain. And between our company and RELEX.
