Good morning, welcome to this special webcast from SupplyChainBrain and Logility. Before we get started, here's a quick housekeeping note. We will have an audience Q&A session at the end of the presentation, and audience members are encouraged to submit questions throughout the presentation by clicking on the Q&A box in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. Also, the webcast will be recorded, and the replay link will be made available to everyone on today's call. I will now turn the call over to Karin Bursa, Executive Vice President of Logility. Karin, take it away.
Great. Thank you. Thanks so much, good day to everyone. I'm pretty excited that we've got the opportunity to really explore this topic today. Thank you for carving out some valuable time on your calendars to talk about transformation. As many of you know, Logility is automating the digital transformation of many supply chain operations. Today we've got the opportunity to talk about one in particular, and that's the efforts that have been underway with the Husqvarna Group and their digital supply chain transformation. I am confident that you're going to pick up a few new ideas, a little bit of inspiration, and some good tips and techniques to think about as you continue on your path to transformation or continuous improvement. This webcast will in fact be available on demand after today's live event.
I'm sure you're going to want to share it with some of your colleagues. You'll have that opportunity. One of the questions that I get quite often is what exactly classifies as a transformation? What level of supply chain change constitutes transformation? How pivotal is it in changing the way our business thinks and acts and performs its planning process? I think if you look at this very simple diagram, it gives you an appreciation for that. You are looking to take a significant step change in transforming how business is done. This is going to involve people, process, technology, and data, and it will have to be reinforced time and time again across your business as you institute new behaviors, new ways of doing business, new ways of thinking.
In today's world, when we think of transformation, we typically hear from the customers that we're working with two views. The first is internal, and in an internal transformation, these businesses are focused primarily on improving collaboration, communication, and visibility across their functional operations. Many of these businesses are global in nature. They don't see the partners that they're coordinating and collaborating with on a regular basis, but they're all working against the same business plan and breaking down those process silos, data silos to keep their team, their organization on the same page, so that as they work to satisfy their customers and work with their suppliers, they're doing it in a highly digital and coordinated effort. The two type of transformation we hear about quite frequently and work with customers to achieve is an external-focused transformation.
This tends to be a bit more demand-driven, meaning understanding what the customer, the market, the omni-channel environment needs and how we, as businesses, can respond to that need in the most efficient and effective way possible and drive innovation. In these external-focused campaigns, we typically hear that there's a strong effort on replacing inventory with information. That's going to accelerate the turns and help us align and synchronize our business. We're focused on customer outcomes. In those situations, it's easy to measure the impact, the benefit of the alignment that is often achieved. Now, the interesting factor is you can't do an external transformation without bringing along an internal transformation. It's just the focus of the business at that point in time. Keep that in mind as you look at your opportunities in your business and prioritize some of those initiatives as well.
When we talk transformation, it's typically a significant step change in the way business and planning is done, and then that drives a new platform on which to drive continuous improvement efforts across the business. With us today to discuss a digital supply chain transformation, and the one that's occurred at Husqvarna Group, is Anna Lindh Fogelström . She is a Group Supply Chain Planning Manager. Anna's got over 13 years with Husqvarna. What is really exciting about Anna's background is she brings a very unique perspective to our discussion today. In her background, she has had roles in finance, in sales, and in supply chain.
When you think about having a very comprehensive view of what the market needs, what the investment required to satisfy that need and operate in a profitable manner, and how to work with customers and supply chain to coordinate and do that in an efficient and effective way, Anna's been there, done that, and is bringing a great perspective to our discussion today. Anna has been responsible for forming and leading the Husqvarna's newly established Logility Excellence Center. She's got that in her credentials as well, in establishing a global team to support operations in 30 -3 5 different countries around the world. She's going to tell us just a little bit about that as we progress through today's conversation. Anna, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, Karin, for the introduction and also for giving me the opportunity to talk about the journey we are on within the Husqvarna Group. I'm very much looking forward to today's web call.
Excellent. We know you have some very insightful tips to share with our audience today. Before we get to that, let's learn a little bit about our audience. Thank you so much for registering for today's event. We always try to take this opportunity to really survey what you're feeling out in the marketplace and what some of your priorities are. One of the questions you were kind enough to answer as a part of the registration process is around what your top business priority is. Where are you focused today? The responses are as follows. About 29% of our audience said they're focused on reducing supply chain operating costs, 22% better business visibility, 20% aligning inventory investments to boost service, and then 14% in mitigating supply chain risk, and 8% reducing lead times, and then 7% on improving top-line revenue.
Anna, I would say, we always see an interesting combination of these responses. The mix is a little different, I think today with a return focus on supply chain operating costs, but visibility is almost always at the top of the list. Any surprises here or insights that you have from looking at this result?
No, not really. I'm not surprised by seeing supply chain cost being on top of the list. Looking at the total cost base of most companies, supply chain is a big portion of that cost base. Reducing your supply chain cost is typically a very good opportunity to improve your bottom line. I would also say that looking at where we are in the global economy, where many of us operate, with new distribution channels, such as online, which is a reality also for us, that of course, leads to an increased complexity of your supply chain, and with that comes increased cost. I think managing an efficient supply chain where you can actually also have good control over your cost is a vital component if you are going to grow your business profitable. Business visibility is, of course, also very high on our agenda.
To me, that's really about how you work in your organization across functions and teams and so on. It's also very much related to data. One aspect of that is, of course, how you make data available to the whole organization. In my experience, and I'll come back to that a little bit later on, I think that it's even more important to think about how do you make sense of that data? How does that data give you valuable insights about your operations, and how do you make sure that people trust the data? I think this is very well aligned to what I would expect in terms of priorities for businesses.
Great. Thanks for those insights. I think one thing that you've hit on here is that these are interrelated, right? As we drive.
Yeah.
Put priorities in one of these areas, frequently, we're pulling along some benefits or value across the board because it is certainly all about balancing and evaluating the trade-offs and the investments required, really to service our customers well, in a competitive and differentiated way. That's great perspective. Another question that we asked as our audience registered for today's event, Anna, is, so if those are your priorities, what strategic action is going to help you to transform your supply chain? What are you doing? Where are you spending your time, and how do you expect to get that value proposition? At the top of the list with 29% is leveraging the Sales and Operations Planning process and doing that more effectively. 26% is managing and optimizing supply and production constraints.
At 13%, optimizing inventory investments network-wide, 13% improving that forecast accuracy, and 10% say that they're establishing or formalizing demand planning processes. Then 9% came in with other priorities. I know Sales and Operations Planning is near and dear to your heart and this initiative for Husqvarna. No surprise, I assume, at seeing it at the top of the list. Your thoughts, Anna?
No, I'm actually very happy to see it at the top of the list. To me, the S&OP process and a well-established S&OP process is the foundation, and it's a prerequisite for being able to deliver a very efficient supply chain. I think this is also something you need to keep in mind, when you are investing in new technology to support your S&OP process. That you really need to have the process in place and have the true collaboration in place to also really benefit from any new technology you may invest in. Looking at the other points, I think they are also, of course, very closely related to your S&OP process. If you get your S&OP process right, you will have a positive impact on the other areas as well. The question around constraints, that's something we are also now discussing at Husqvarna.
Of course, you won't have a feasible supply plan. That's really key if you're going to balance. You're meeting your customer expectations and your operating costs. Having a feasible supply plan requires you to have a good view of your constraints as well. I completely agree to what we are seeing here.
Excellent. That's good insight. We've had a couple of questions already about Sales and Operations Planning and integrated business planning. Are they the same thing? Is that happening at different levels? Are we considering financial as well as volumetric information? Of course, the answer to that is yes. We'll go into more detail and give you some more insight as we progress through the discussion today. As we start that discussion, Anna, I know that you're going to give us some background on Husqvarna, and I think most of our audience is going to be really familiar with the consumer brands that Husqvarna brings to the market.
Certainly, if they have gardens of their own or lawns of their own, chances are they've got some Husqvarna equipment that they're using on a regular basis. Many may not be aware that Husqvarna's been around for 330 years. Give us a little insight into the portfolio today.
Yeah. As you hinted to, we are actually one of the oldest companies in the world. Our core purpose is passion for innovation. There's actually a reason why we mentioned this here, because it's very closely connected to the topic of today's conversation, and that being transformation. The slide you're seeing here is also one of my favorite slides, not only because it shows all the different products we have had in our product range during the years, but it illustrates also quite well how our ability to reinvent our business has actually kept us in the market for more than three centuries. We started out as a rifle factory in Sweden in 1689. Today we are a global leading producer of forest and garden equipment.
We are a European leader in watering products, and we are a global leader in cutting equipment and diamond tools for the construction and stone industries. If you're looking back at our history, the common thread is really about innovation. This, of course, follows us also into the future, where our transformation and journey now continues with initiatives around digitalization, battery, the whole shift from petrol to battery, and robotics. Going from manual to autonomous mowers and so on. What we are also seeing, what's becoming a very important part of our whole offering, is the services and solutions combined with our products. Looking at Husqvarna as an organization, we are organized into three divisions, and we sell our products under two core brands, Husqvarna and Gardena. Many of you may also be familiar with any of our supporting brands.
We have a range of supporting brands for specific markets. Looking at some numbers, we are a truly global company. We have, as you can see on the slide, major production facilities across the globe in Europe, in North America, and in Asia. We have sales in more than 100 countries. Last year, our net sales amounted to 42 billion SEK. That sales is dominated by Europe, closely followed by North America, and then we have a smaller portion in the rest of the world. We have, from a people perspective, around 13,000 employees in 40 countries. Something which can be quite interesting to know is that in terms of the number of SKUs we are producing, purchasing, selling, and distributing around 10,000 different products and more than 120,000 spare parts to 25,000 customers worldwide.
Looking at our customers and our distribution network, the biggest portion is they are dealers or retailers who in their turn then sell our products and our solutions to the end user. We are also seeing a growing importance on the online business, and that of course, also have an impact on our supply chain and how we handle this new distribution channel. Adding a few specifics for the business we are in to the numbers I just mentioned, I hope that also will give you a better sense for the complexity of our supply chain. Because we really want to be the market leader in the segments where we operate. To manage that or to achieve that, of course, we need a supply chain which is transparent.
It needs to be a reliable, agile, and also a sustainable supply chain if we are going to meet our customers' expectations and requirements and balancing our costs. That, of course, goes for all companies today. Looking at the market we are in, the forest and garden market, that are representing approximately 85% of our total sales. That market is characterized by very strong seasonality and weather impact. As you can see on this picture, the larger part of our sales take place in the first two quarters of the year. If you combine that with a wide product assortment and broad customer target groups that, of course, want to be served in the channel of their own choice, that's what's driving the complexity of our supply chain.
Summarizing our challenges, managing a global supply chain with sometimes very long lead times, you remember our manufacturing footprint, while supporting a seasonal weather-dependent demand. That is one of our main challenges, together with providing unique products to different customer groups in a channel or in an environment, in an omni-channel environment globally, while at the same time making sure that we are not losing out on synergies and flexibility.
Yeah. Anna, I think you've outlined some pretty significant variables in the planning process. I think you said customers in over 100 countries, seasonality around the globe, new product introductions, new innovations in your product portfolio, spare parts planning, all of these factors kind of coming together. I'm assuming that part of your S&OP initiative has been around the ability to evaluate multiple scenarios for specific channels, for new channels, as a part of this transformation initiative. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, definitely. I think it's the ability to evaluate multiple planning scenarios is very important. The need to do that, of course, looks a little bit different depending on the product group you're talking about. Because we have products where the demand is quite stable if you look at it from the perspective of what will be the total demand over a full season. Of course, in terms of scenarios, the question is more then around when will the season kick in?
How do we best prepare for an early or a late start of the season? In other cases, we see demand which varies significantly, not only during the season itself, but also between seasons for various reasons. Weather, of course, being a key driver for those variabilities. The question is then which products are concerned and how strongly will they be impacted by this variability in demand? There, of course, scenario planning is a very helpful thing in that process.
Absolutely. That's great context. Help us understand some of the things that were happening in your business where the team identified a need for transformation.
Yes. Yeah, looking at the complexity of our supply chain, you also need to understand that in the context of where we were with our planning ability. We were driving a lot of our planning on Excel, and we had very little system support. We realized, of course, that this is a major risk for us as a Group.
Right.
We were facing a number of challenges that we had to address to make sure that we are operating an efficient supply chain. Those challenges were very much centered around not being able to deliver according to our customers' expectations, while at the same time having excessive inventory levels. We have a very fragmented IT landscape within the group. I'll come back to that later on, but that, of course, put a hindrance to our supply chain visibility. Being in a seasonal business and all this together, putting us in a situation where it was really tricky to have an efficient decision process, of course, was a big risk.
We also looked upon this from our ability to serve new channels, and we saw that we had some work to do there to be prepared to deliver and serve those new channels than being online as the main channel. We had to address those challenges. What you can see here on this slide is really the building blocks of the journey that we kicked off about five years ago and that we are continuously on. One key point or the key turning point for our digital supply chain transformation was really the establishment of a new S&OP process. Having our platform in place for collaboration across functions and the selection of a new planning tool, and we did that choice back in 2015.
The decision to invest in a new planning solution was very much based on the understanding that we had to create the foundation, which was based on common processes and harmonized data across an integrated end-to-end supply chain if we were to succeed with our digital transformation. Looking at where we are today, five years later, we have, with the implementation of Logility, established common planning processes across the group or across this bigger portion of the group. We are today covering approximately 80% of our total demand and inventory in one global platform. We have, of course, gained a lot of learnings, developed a lot of competencies throughout this journey. I would like to mention a few of them here, and I'll dig deeper into them later on.
One of the key learnings is actually the synergies you create by a close collaboration between IT and business when you undertake an implementation of the size that we have done. Another learning is around the importance of having clear structures and definitions in place for both your master data and your transactional data, and how it's really important to work in a structured way with change management to drive the different behaviors you want to achieve in the organization. In the end, actually generate the benefits that you're expecting to come out of the investment you have done.
Congratulations on the success to date. Thank you for mapping out what your priorities have been in these different time horizons. I think that this shows that progression over time in where the team has been focused and as the process is rolled out and what some of those key learnings are. For your Sales and Operations Planning process, I believe you have colleagues that certainly are in supply chain and operations and sales and in finance that participate in your S&OP process. Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
It is.
When you look at that diverse group, right, that have their perspective on the business, what area of this transformation journey would you say that you perhaps underestimated? If we think about people, process, technology, and as you mentioned, the master data or the data to drive and fuel that better decision-making. Is there an area that you'd say you underestimated when the project began?
I would say that we had already from the start, I think we had quite a good understanding of on a high level, which areas would be a challenge for us. Maybe we didn't realize exactly how challenging they would be because the overall effort with implementation we have done was much, much bigger than we initially estimated. If I should mention one area that has been particularly challenging, and I think that's maybe something which is a little bit easy to forget about. It touches upon data and performance, both in terms of establishing business requirements on system uptime and data availability, and the measures required to meet those requirements.
That is based on the situation we are in. We have a fragmented IT landscape. We are pulling data through that IT landscape. We are in a global application. We have users all over the world. How do we satisfy the requirements from this global user community in terms of data availability and so on. That has been quite a hard puzzle to piece together throughout this implementation journey.
Absolutely. I would say, probably over the course of that time, your data has increased as well as you've added new channels.
Yes.
Into the mix. That creates yet more data to be managed or really harnessed for those insights and planning synchronization across the business.
Yeah. Coming back to where we are today, where actually were a year ago, when we closed our implementation product, we closed that in December 2018. We had a solution up and running on two continents. Another area where we realized that we needed to continue to work on also beyond our implementation, that was change management, which is another very important area. We realized quite early on that we need to continue to drive the change management journey. At the same time, we knew that managing a continuous improvement process for a global application can be quite difficult if you are at the same time having operational responsibilities. In order to keep the momentum going and to manage the transition from implementation to benefit realization, we decided to establish an excellence center around our Logility solution.
I'll share with you a few of some information around how we are working within the Excellence Center. We are a cross-functional team, and we consisting of both business and technical resources. I would say that this is really the key success factor for our Excellence Center. I had just the other week a conversation with a friend of mine, and he was quite frustrated because he was trying to come up with some business requirements for an application. He said that, "I don't understand the workings of the tool. I'm completely in the hands of IT." By having business and IT in the same team, we are in our Excellence Center, bridging that exact gap. That, of course, then means that we have a more efficient way of working. We speak both languages.
We speak both the business language and the technical language. We are developing and driving the improvements of our solution, both from a business and technical perspective, which is very valuable. In the Excellence Center, we also have a global process and solution ownership, and our responsibilities include providing our divisions with the process and solution expertise around our Logility solution. We are in the lucky position that many of the people who are involved in the implementation are also part of our Excellence Center. We are supporting the divisions in their user adoption journey, and we are working on making sure that what we actually defined and implemented through the project, that we are staying true to that we protect our global template, and that any improvements we are driving is in line with our global template.
Continuous improvements includes both looking at the solution we have in place today and how we can work with that and making sure that we are using that to its full extent. It also involves exploring and understanding what additional benefits we can gain from new functionalities. Here we are working very closely with Logility in this process. In addition to this, we are driving the daily support and maintenance of our Logility solution, but I think it's also key to point out that we are not responsible for the day-to-day operational planning. That lies in the hands of our divisions. If the change management journey and continuous driving user adoption was one of the arguments for establishing the excellence center, I would like to talk a little bit around our user adoption journey, because user adoption is key to success.
To manage the people side of the implementation, change management has really been a key focus area from us from early on. Already in the very early stage of the project and throughout our design phase, we identified four areas where we recognized that this is a big change in the way we are working. These will be the areas where we need to put some extra focus and address as part of our change management activities. The first one is around the global process and solution. We are coming from a situation where we have had quite a fragmented way of working. Each function, each planning team, has been used to setting up their own way of working, and now we're putting them into the same platform and into the same global planning platform with common processes across the group.
This, of course, means that everyone who's part of the Logility solution needs to align to those new ways of working within our global framework, and that's a big change. The second part is around the planning organization and the ownership because the new planning processes we have established as part of this implementation also calls for new roles and responsibilities, new capabilities. Examples of that being central demand planning. That's something we have not been doing before. We have specific inventory planning planner roles, which I have not had before. This is changing the responsibilities in the organization. I think you need to be also aware of it's also changing, or it could change the power balance in your teams. This is something you need to be aware of. Data quality and integration is on this slide as well. I've already touched upon that.
We are having a fragmented ERP system landscape. We are receiving data from approximately 40 different source systems into Logility. The data we are receiving requires, of course, and that data is of very high quality. I think we are seeing now something which we have not seen before, how important that quality is, and that you need to particularly do an effort as part of your implementation, but you really need to have a stable process to continuously work with your data quality also after a project closure. Last but not least, one of the key areas that will drive benefits is with working with Logility is the management by exception process.
That was a completely new process to our planners because they used to pull the plan together themselves. Now we're suddenly asking them to trust the system to put that plan together for them and instead focus their time on deviations, exceptions to the plan. This is a lot about trust. Trust in the system, and that takes time, but the value of actually coming through and working according to this process is huge.
I would say that that is something that we do hear often, Anna, is that it takes the user community a period of time to begin trusting it and to maybe remove the human bias that has been part of the planning process in the past. I'm sure you've got some insights there. A couple of things you mentioned. I think you said that there are 40 source systems. We've had several questions that are coming in around, do you have multiple ERP systems? Are there multiple systems?
I think you've certainly addressed that. Good enterprise information that's coming together to fuel that planning process. I think, as you said, good quality data. What I would say is decision quality data, right? Data that can be an indicator of future needs, future demand, production, distribution needs, financial goals for the business to be balanced as well. You've also said your global team, right? 30 to 35 countries.
Yep.
Approximately how big is the planning community, your users across that planning process that your center of excellence is helping to support?
We have approximately around 160 users in the solution on a global scale.
Okay. I hear.
It's truly a global solution.
Absolutely. I think you've hit all of those crucial areas, right? People, process, technology, how work gets done, the focus or the outcomes of the planning scenarios that are evaluated as a part of that process. Take us through a little bit about that change management and the waves of focus that you and the team have been helping to lead.
Yes. Looking at what we saw as changes, that of course meant that we had some real change management challenges ahead of us. Already when we started talk about the project as being a real business transformation, and I really want to point out to that. We were very clear on that this initiative is a business transformation initiative. It's not an IT project, it's a business transformation, and that we had to be very mindful about how we're managing the people side of change. I realized that one big challenge, when it comes to change management itself, it's really that it's very often considered to be, I would say, a fluffy topic, which is sometimes tricky to grasp and to really make tangible. What is it that we really talk about when we talk about change management?
For us, it was therefore very important to follow a very structured approach to change management, to prepare the organization for the changes that were coming. We adopted an approach built on the ADKAR model, and the work was driven in four different tracks, and that's what you're seeing here on the left-hand side of this picture. Those focus areas were leadership and ownership. You really need to have leaders who is taking responsibility for the change and who's taking responsibility for the outcome of the change, basically your business case. You need communication and engagement. Throughout the journey, you need to keep people informed, make sure that they understand and know what's happening. You also need to train them and support them in getting ready for actually embracing the change. Last but not least, you need to measure the change.
What you're seeing on the right-hand side is actually how we measured the change, because we were doing regular change readiness assessment surveys throughout the whole implementation. By doing that, we were able to see at what pace the organization went through the different stages of the change curve. Actually, what you expect to see in this change curve is that different teams will be at different stages in terms of how committed they are to the change at different points in time. We followed how our different teams went from being informed, via prepared and involved, to being committed to the change. This structured approach really helped us to understand. Where are we, where do we have our challenges when it comes to change management, and what are the things that we need to address as part of this journey.
Yeah. Anna, I really like this chart. I like the way that you present it. I know you have a number of different stories that reinforce that different groups in the organization have been at different steps along the way. I really like this progression towards commitment. One of the questions that come up frequently, and certainly we've got a couple of questions here today on, is how did you keep your executive management, or how did the executive management team stay engaged through this process? How did they help reinforce this transformation initiative, getting the organizations on the same page, relying on automation that's coming from the Logility platform, the improved data and insights that are driving the business?
Give us a little feel for what that was like or what that's like today and how that executive team helped reinforce the priority around this transformation initiative.
Yeah, I think already from the outside, this has been a very high-profile project for us already from the outside, and we have had very good sponsorship support throughout the whole journey. I think one key thing is that has helped us beyond the project is the way we work with change management during the project, that the realization that this is important, that has kind of built up in the organization. To mention a few concrete things, the establishment of our Excellence Center, I think is an excellent sign of support from our executive management, because this way of working, of having business and technical resources in the same team, is a new way of working for the group. The willingness to invest in the team shows the importance of the work we are doing.
It's a strong signal to the organization that this is really important as well, that we are now driving the benefits and driving adoption and so on. In the day-to-day operations, I really would point to that each manager is really important. That goes back to the leadership thing as well. You need to have managers setting clear targets and expectations on the team that basically Logility is the way we work, and also to close the doors to the old way of working. Where we are seeing where that is happening, that makes a huge difference to the user adoption and the speed of user adoption.
If it's something I would really, really want to point to is to have clear targets and clear expectations, because that's where we're seeing that it's really helpful, and that's how your management can support you in this journey in the best way.
Very good. That's great feedback. I think that it underscores that not every, as you said, IT initiative, this hasn't been just an IT initiative for Husqvarna. This has been a business transformation initiative. I think that is critical to really embracing and moving towards that involved, committed stage here in that change curve.
Yeah. Looking at us where we are today and what we actually have created, I started out by saying we were looking at creating a foundation for our digital transformation. Logility is really very important. The implementation of Logility here is really an important step for us. We have that foundation in place now that will enable us to operate our business very differently from what we have been doing before. Looking at what the components of that, call it platform for growth, is it's a lot centered around visibility. Going back to business visibility being a high prioritized area for the group, which is me as well. I keep coming back to our fragmented IT landscape. We have integrated 40 different ERP systems into one global platform.
What that actually means for the business is that today we're not spending the time on trying now to compile data from different sources and trying to come up with a number that everyone could agree on. Actually, we can spend the time on looking at the numbers we are pulling out from the system and see what does those numbers really tell us. That's saving a lot of time and making sure we are spending our time on the things that adds value. That goes across teams, it goes across geographies, it goes across functions. For example, in having finance and supply and sales looking at the same numbers, because now we can transfer our plans, we can communicate our plans both in quantity and value. It, of course, facilitates the discussion between those different functions.
Increased visibility is certainly one of the key benefits for us. That goes hand in hand a little bit also with the reduced risks, because coming from the heavy usage of Excel files, that meant that we were not only spending a lot of time on planning, but we also ran a process which was, of course, an error-prone process, a high risk of mistakes. I have an example from our planning team in North America. They were using 15 different Excel sheets every month trying to translate the demand coming from sales into net demand for the factories. Today, they are managing that process in Logility, and the Excel files are gone. An area which we have started to tap into, that's the area of advanced analytics. I talked about measuring change as being important.
It's also important to measure the performance of your supply chain. We were not in a position before where we could, for example, measure forecast accuracy. The feeling for the quality of our forecast, that was more based on a gut stomach feeling than real facts. Today, we are measuring forecast accuracy, and we are measuring bias, and that gives us a lot of insights into the areas where we need to improve and how we're going to drive that process forward. Last, but of course not least, we are in the beginning of our journey. We are in a much better position today to address the supply chain challenges I talked about earlier on. We can do planning on a much more granular segmentation of our wide product assortment than we did before.
We can differentiate our service levels based on customer group. We can do that across our whole network. This, of course, means that supply chain planning for us today can be used much more as a strategic lever for delivering on our targets in a way that we have not done before. I reached out to the business to just get a little bit more, what do they see as the real advantages about planning with Logility and the processes we have established. What you're seeing here is very often the things that they are mentioning. Improved supply chain visibility is rated very high. We have one process, we have one information flow where integrations are today replacing emails and Excel, and we are looking at the same numbers. That creates a visibility that we didn't have before.
We have inventory levels driven by segmented service levels rather than experience-based coverage time, and we optimize our safety stock levels across our whole network. Another area which comes up, which is also very, very high on the agenda, that's automation. That's because we have automation high on the agenda, both for our supply chain planning, but also for our supply chain execution. Looking at the planning part, where we used to have a manual process, we are now doing automated updates in a much more timely fashion than we did before.
The alerts enable us to be proactive, and we have, with Logility, introduced automatic order release. All of those things, of course, drive automation and make us quicker in response. Demand planning is another area where the different levels of aggregation linking the planning process to our financial forecast, having the statistical modeling supporting our planning process are also key advantages that we are seeing and which the business is really benefiting from in their planning process.
Annie, you've given us a number of really great examples here, both process improvements. You mentioned automation a couple of times, tapping into additional data sources, or in reality, bringing data across the enterprise together into a single version of the truth for your Sales and Operations Planning process. The identification of bias as a part of that process, right? Human bias that gets introduced because they want to do the right things. They want to have inventory available, and maybe they knew that the trust in their spreadsheets in the past was not quite as warranted. The opportunity to eliminate that bias in a more automated planning process, I think is huge.
Yeah.
Will continue to offer some improvements across the organization or as business continues to change and transform, to rebalance as your channels change and perform differently as well. When you think of this, and we've got a couple of questions here about key metrics and inventory. One of the questions that's often asked, and you've answered it in part, I think, as you've talked about segmentation. You've talked about segmentation, both from a demand or a channel perspective, a customer perspective, but you've also talked to it around inventory and supply. Have you been able to adjust inventory or rebalance inventory across the global needs as a part of these benefits that you've seen to date?
Yes, we have. As I mentioned earlier, this is actually one of the key advantages we are seeing around safety stocks because coming from a situation where you typically apply the weeks or months of coverage, we are today in a much greater extent applying segmentation, and that has allowed us to adjust our safety stocks. We're seeing examples where we have either reduced our safety stock levels at the same time as we are actually maintaining our service level or vice versa, where we have maintained the service level or increased the service level, or we have the same safety stock levels with an increased service level. It's clearly a great benefit.
I think this is going back a little bit to what you talked about, bias. I think this is also a process which takes some time. It has a lot to do with trust and maturity. I think we're getting better day by day here. When you see that the system is proposed to something and it's actually delivering, and we actually see that it works in reality as well. That's when you start switching and start trusting and can actually dare to adjust your safety stocks.
Absolutely. Confidence is a huge factor, isn't it? When you're confident that multiple scenarios have been evaluated, that the data is good, that we're all looking at it from a consistent perspective and across a consistent set of goals for the business. It changes the conversation. I think you can become much more proactive, I think you mentioned that a couple of times, versus perhaps the firefighting that happens when you're not confident in the plans that are put in place, right? You're focused on shorter or more tactical responses versus being proactive to what's happening across the organization.
Yeah. I think it's just to conclude, I talked a lot about advantages that we're seeing with implementation itself, of being able to plan and having advanced technology to support us in our planning process. I think another key part of this and a positive outcome of what we have done is that we have an increased understanding within the group of the capabilities that we really need to develop to continue this digital transformation journey. Going ahead to secure that capability to maintain and drive the process development of a digital and automated supply chain, that's also a challenge that we need to continuously address on the journey ahead.
That's great insight. I also think that it's important that the initial project may be over, but the transformation continues or the continuous improvement process continues. It's not uncommon for us to hear from Logility customers things like, "We didn't know what we didn't know. As we got more insights or greater visibility, we asked new questions, and we're able to evaluate new scenarios for the business." I think that's an exciting thing as well, is that you're opening the door. I think one of your slides actually had something about evaluating new opportunities for the business, and it's like peeling back those onions, right? As you gain confidence in the planning process, as the business community changes the way they think, measure, and respond to market opportunities, you've got the opportunity to be that much more proactive and more responsive and evaluate new opportunities for the business.
I think that's one of the really exciting things about these transformation initiatives. Just a quick overview for any of the folks who joined us today who may or may not be aware of who Logility is. Logility is solely focused on these digital supply chain platform provision of services and technology to help drive transformation. The bottom line, the goal is to help our customers make better decisions faster each and every day. To do that across tactical horizons, operational horizons, and of course, strategic horizons for the business. I'd like to thank Anna for sharing a little bit about her journey, and leadership with the Husqvarna Group today. We've had a number of questions, Anna. We could probably stay on the line for another 30-45 minutes.
I want to respect everybody's time today, and we'll address some of these maybe via email, in follow-up, to thank the folks who have joined us today. Anna, as you think about this initiative as a whole, and if you were in the audience today listening to the journey that Husqvarna's been on, what one piece of advice would you want to leave with the audience? If you could encourage them in their transformation, what would it be?
I think my key learning from the journey I've been on to for the last years is that transformation is really about people. IT will for sure play an important role in your digital transformation, but the work of implementing and adapting to the change, that's the people thing. Of course, as part of that, your leadership is crucial. You need to have leaders who can help the organization understand what you're doing, why you're doing what you're doing, and you need to be persistent. True change takes time, but it's really rewarding when it happens. Don't forget the people. I think that's my advice.
I think that's good advice. I think your people can be your secret weapon as well. They know your business, and if you can put better decision-making, better foundation for decisions in their hands, they're going to do some interesting and creative things and help take your business rapidly into a point of greater and greater competition. I think that's great advice, Anna. Thank you for sharing that. I'd like to just congratulate you and the entire Husqvarna team on all the progress that you've made.
I'm sure that at different points in time, this may have seemed like a daunting task, especially as you think of your 40 different systems and bringing the data together and motivating the different teams along that journey. You really have achieved some impressive results across the organization, so congratulations to you because I know you've been living and breathing this for a number of years now as a part of helping Husqvarna make this digital supply chain transformation.
Thank you.
You are most welcome. These webcasts are a part of Logility's ongoing commitment to educating supply chain practitioners on a variety of important transformational opportunities for their businesses. I'd like to thank SupplyChainBrain for hosting today's event, and I'd like to thank once again Anna Lindh Fogelström for sharing her success, her experience, and her insights with us today as she has led the global supply chain transformation initiative at Husqvarna Group. Until next time, I'm Karin Bursa with Logility, and I'd like to thank you for joining us.