Kao outsmarts the growing demands of e-commerce by automating the return-order process – BearingPoint client success story

E-commerce trends induced by the global pandemic took online purchasing to the next level of development. This expansion led to significant changes for all online sales and logistics processes, including an increased need to optimize customer return-order processes.

“With BearingPoint at our side, we were able to streamline and reduce a lot of manual work in a cumbersome internal process! Setting the bot solution live led to happy users and even more satisfied customers!”

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In its recent client story, BearingPoint shows how it supported Kao, one of the leading global manufacturers of hair care products and cosmetics, in leveraging innovative technology to upgrade its return-order tasks.

Staying competitive in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market requires strong interconnectivity, real-time data transmission and reliable processes. In the past, managing an end-to-end process for return orders was labor-intensive and involved many employees, multiple IT devices and coordinating access to various software systems. Even when all these needs were met, the process often generated high costs and human errors in data entry along with strong dependencies.

The Kao Group aimed to leave this scenario behind and leverage innovation to gain efficiency. The company needed a better way to handle its return-order tasks, which at the time required a multi-step processing of documents and the input of data into SAP each time a request was received.

Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint worked with Kao to analyze the company’s existing processes to understand how its warehouse movements and activities – such as goods receiving, put away, storage and shipping – were translated into SAP system return-order data. A technical “to be” process was designed, which covered future workflow steps in detail, transaction loads, business rules, error handling, risks, dependencies and unknown exceptions.