Recently EyeOn had the opportunity to help Pieter Pot in their exciting mission – through sharing our knowledge and experience in forecasting and planning . Martijn Bijmolt is co-founder of Pieter Pot and shares his experience.
What is a circular supermarket?
“Pieter Pot is Europe’s first online package free supermarket that delivers groceries to consumers’ homes in circular packaging – currently glass mason jars, in the near future custom lightweight Pieter Pot jars. We focus on bringing convenience: minimize effort at affordable prices, while being the most sustainable option.
Our aim is to help save up to 20 million kg of CO2 and 3 million kg of plastic waste on an annual basis. This equals the yearly emissions from 80 million car km and enough plastic to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools every year. We do this by growing from the 4.000 customers we currently serve to more than 100.000 by 2023. Scaling up the operation with this speed is challenging. So we reached out to Eyeon for help.
The challenges
Before we got in touch with EyeOn, we operated in silos which were barely communicating: finance/MT created the long-term budget and forecast, marketing drove the short-term sales and product sourcing and production was scheduling based on historic orders. The result was that our financial projections were always off and our inventory low on stock. This is where EyeOn stepped in.
Forecasting and planning improvements with EyeOn
EyeOn showed us the fundamentals of Sales and Operations Planning and explained the Stadtler model, which really opened our eyes. We immediately starting implementing elements from the Stadtler model which we were missing:
- A mid-term S&OP forecast
- A short-term demand planning
- A short-term transport planning to share with our distributor PostNL Food
- Mid-term supply planning to share with our product suppliers
- Upgraded Material Requirements Planning with adjusted buffers
- A bi-weekly demand meeting
The results are tangible and very exciting:
- Alignment in growth between MT, finance, marketing and operation
- Supplier confidence and discounts on growth trajectory
- Minimal out of stock items
- Improved financial planning
- Better grip on mid-term operational scaling
We greatly appreciate the support from EyeOn in setting us up for growth and we are looking forward to working together in the future.”
Pieter Pot founders Martijn Bijmolt (left) and Jouri Schoemaker (right).