case study
Streamlined operations with
IBM STERLING OMS
Founded
1890
Headquarters
Mexico
Industry
Heathcare
Number of Locations
1500
Abstract
Multi-country & multi-brand omnichannel commerce transformation using IBM Sterling OMS (OMoC – Order Management on Cloud) suite including Call Center / Customer Order Management (COM) and Store Engagement (SOM). This new order management architecture is the cornerstone of Femsa’s growth in the Latam region.
About FemsaSalud (CruzVerde )
Femsa Salud is a Mexican healthcare company that operates a network of pharmacies and clinics across Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador. The company is part of the larger Femsa group, which has operations in various industries such as beverages, convenience stores, and logistics. Femsa Salud’s pharmacy stores offers prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, personal care items, and health services such as flu vaccinations and blood pressure testing, through over 1,500 pharmacy stores under the brand names Cruz Verde, Maicao, Yza, Fybeca and Farmasanitas.
Femsa Salud’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of its customers by providing high-quality products and services that meet their needs. The company aims to achieve this by leveraging its expertise in the healthcare industry and investing in innovative technologies that can enhance the customer experience. The company’s goal is to maintain and extend its leadership position by enhancing its online and digital capabilities.
IBM Sterling OMS SaaS & Perfaware Strategy and Execution
- Femsa selected Perfaware for the IBM Sterling OMS expertise it needed to execute a multi-region & multi-brand OMS rollout that integrates and aligns with their Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) based ecommerce plans. Our experts worked with the client and the SFCC partner to present a sound strategy in mid 2019 with a phased approach for rollout, leveraging landed and offshore consultants and local bilingual experts in Santiago, Chile. The teams made considerable progress before the COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect
- The trust gained from co-located teams in the initial months of the program eased the transition to collaborating remotely during the pandemic. To support the company’s consolidated digital transformation efforts, we recommended establishing a reference OMS implementation to give each Femsa brand more creative and business flexibility, while managing governance and efficiencies that result from a shared back-end architecture. The inherent API driven and open architecture of Sterling OMS would give each Femsa “enterprise” (brand & country combination) the ability to focus on its unique business ensuring faster time to market
- Perfaware helped Femsa Salud plan the rollout of the Order sourcing and fulfillment capabilities in several phases, starting with nearest-store based delivery, to supporting inventory transfers between stores, and now including DC to store transfers. This has allowed Femsa to greatly increase the inventory available to be sold on their online stores
- Perfaware enabled Cruz Verde and Maicao CSRs respond intuitively to customer queries by enhancing out of box Call center screens to deliver capabilities such as order browsing, customer service, catalog browsing & order capture, returns, appeasements and customer management
- Perfaware also implemented pharmaceutical specific innovations such as complex insurance plan based pricing for Fybeca in Ecuador as well as pay by link for easing over the phone payment concerns. Perfaware also designed, developed and deployed custom services in Sterling OMS to enable integrations between Femsa’s custom mobile store application and the homegrown POS for order fulfillment, “save the sale” order capture etc
Business Challenge
Femsa Salud (formerly Socofar) wanted to stay ahead of the competition when it came to digital commerce in Latin America. While most of their stores and in-store inventory depths were small, their ambitions were big. They required an eCommerce and an OMS platform that provided them the flexibility to meet diverse business needs across brands (Cruz Verde, Maicao, Fybeca, Yza) and geographies (Chile, Colombia, Ecuador & Mexico). They had chosen a leading SFCC integration partner to strategize and execute on the eCommerce plans. Their vision for OMS had to be achieved without compromising on the stability and scalability while containing operation costs harnessing a single solution instance across 4 enterprises and 1000s of fulfillment locations.
Digital transformation and omnichannel commerce enablement for a Multi-country multi-brand health and wellness retailer
Femsa Salud also had to determine the fulfillment strategy to use as each store has unique challenges. The OMS solution would be required to accommodate each store’s unique capabilities – including ability to to do backroom pick operations, receive customers for Click-n-Colelct, delivering goods to consumers home, and/or delivering goods to another nearby store.
Another layer of complexity was around managing fulfillment of restricted prescription medication and complex pricing rules pertaining to insurance plans and loyalty. The new OMS architecture would need to afford Femsa more flexibility and control over its order servicing , fulfillment structure and pricing and work seamlessly with third-party vendors for payments, same-day delivery etc.
Results
Femsa Salud has a robust and flexible order promising and fulfillment system that works seamlessly with other best-in-class systems (ecommerce engine, payment gateways, delivery systems, and so on).
Femsa’s choice of Sterling OMS and Perfaware for driving their customized solution has helped them meet unique business needs across its brands and countries.
Having capabilities delivered remotely early on in the Covid lockdown allowed Femsa to cater to their customers and avoid significant revenue loss.
The implemented solution enabled Click-n-Collect (BOPIS) in over 500 stores in Chile, Colombia & Ecuador.
The new innovative platform provides faster iterative capabilities and as an example they could easily pivot from a single delivery partner to integrating with a 3PL delivery hub that makes home delivery within 45-60 minutes possible for the majority of their customers.
The solution is future-proof, modular, collaborative, and extensible —and with the help of Perfaware, has continued to scale the business to new heights in the years after the initial implementation
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