TECH FOR GOOD: L’ORÉAL AND GLOBE GROUPE INNOVATING TO ENSURE A NATIONAL MERCH OPERATION WITH AMBITIOUS CSR OBJECTIVES

THE COSMETICS INDUSTRY, A LARGE CONSUMER OF PLASTICS

Today, plastic packaging, which has a strong presence in the cosmetics market, is at the heart of public concerns. Brands must offer more responsible solutions in line with changing environmental needs. According to Iri, in 2019, 82% of French people want to buy fewer plastic packaging products. To adapt to these changes and develop a more responsible offer, L’Oréal wants to reduce the proportion of plastic in its packaging and chooses to distribute its new references without blister packs. A big step for the cosmetics giant and its many ranges. But what to do with products on the shelves? To complete its process, the brand then decided to carry out a deblistering operation on all the references concerned, in more than 600 Megastores.

GATHER TO BETTER DIVERSIFY

To guarantee the operational excellence of this operation, GLOBE GROUPE capitalizes on the historical strengths of its subsidiaries: GLOBE, the expert in shopper marketing and commercial transformations, TechSell, the specialist in salesforce and merchandising, and GLOBE Factory, the professional logistics and event production. With a major novelty to support this challenge: GLOBE Inventory. A unique technology on the market, 100% internalized and developed by GLOBE, to meet three major challenges:

• Streamline the traditional processes of Merchandising deployment;
• Reduce the carbon footprint of merchandisers;
• Guarantee the deblistering of more than 1 million products in record time.

STEP 1: PLACE DIGITAL INNOVATION AT THE HEART OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The keystone of this operation, GLOBE Inventory is an application designed and developed by experts from the GLOBE subsidiary to maximize logistics performance in all aspects:

• Deployment: a database of all the references has been imported so that the teams can scan the products concerned. The app can then tell what to do with each of the scanned items. By taking into account the category, the seasonality, and the content of the packaging, GLOBE Inventory sorts its own data to allow the merchandiser to save considerable time on each decision-making.
• Monitoring: to ensure centralized monitoring of the operation, the app allows teams to certify their presence and department managers to certify the passage of teams.
• Environmental responsibility: GLOBE Inventory geolocates each intervention and allows merchandisers to distribute their teams to strategically chosen points of sale. The carbon footprint of each trip is reduced to its maximum.
• Inventory: thanks to real-time data loading, the application is able to centralize and report information in record time and provide an inventory status of all stores on D + 1.
• Merchandising: this tool is also used to extend this operation, intended to carry out merchandising installations for new brands’ collections, taking into account customer requests and their database.

STEP 2: RECRUIT AND TRAIN THE RIGHT TALENTS

Human resources are a significant element in successfully carrying out this operation. A recruitment campaign was orchestrated by TechSell with the GLOBE GROUPE pool of stakeholders (+16,000 profiles available). Thousands of technicians, pilots, and merchandisers have been included in this adventure.

Hand-picked teams were trained to ensure the operational excellence of the program. Each profession has its own training, for an irreproachable performance.

For GLOBE GROUPE, it is essential to ensure that the operation is properly understood for each person involved. And beyond their simple understanding, the group makes every effort to increase the skills of its talents, professionalization, and expertise. Blank assembly workshops, team buildings across France (Paris, Lyon, Marseille), tutorial videos, e-learning modules dedicated to POS relationships, assessment of prior learning … Campus, the integrated training department of GLOBE GROUPE, has developed a complete dedicated off and online training course.

For this campaign, 100% of the workforce were trained, ie no less than 3,000 people.

STEP 3: DEMAND A MILLIMIETRE ORGANIZATION

Deblistering more than a million products in 18 months is an ambitious challenge. Since July 2020, the Merchandising teams have been visiting each Megastore and supporting L’Oréal in its CSR approach. The organization is essential and it is by putting this criterion at the heart of the operation that it runs smoothly.

Such flexibility and quality of service would never have been possible without the know-how of GLOBE Factory, an expert subsidiary of the group’s event logistics, which was able to meet customer needs from picking to material transport.

Quality control is required for all logistical elements leaving the platform, in order to leave no room for error when installing the devices once in the field. Each batch must be certified as compliant before being sent to the teams. GLOBE Factory’s logistics hubs, strategically placed in France, allow fast and efficient transport to points of sale.

Seamless communication between the field and the project team is essential for this type of operation. GLOBE Factory provides a hotline available 24/7 to assist teams during installations, generally carried out at night.

Once removed from the packaging, the plastic blisters are sorted, thrown in the dumpster provided for this purpose, and then recycled.

This national project owes its success to digital innovation. The development of the GLOBE Inventory application allowed GLOBE GROUPE to meet the challenges of its three audiences :

– For the brand, more than 580,000 products released in 2020 and even more for 2021, the L’Oréal CSR operation is a success. The digitization of merchandising has enabled real-time visibility of the state of stocks as well as of process monitoring;

– For retailers, it is the guarantee of a competent team that performs an efficient and seamless service. The use of the GLOBE Inventory application has empowered the stakeholders. Results: less solicited department managers and optimized point-of-sale time.

– For Merchandising team, smart data allows them to reduce their trips to focus on stores in their sector. It is a reduction of the carbon footprint and an improvement of their well-being at work.

From now on, GLOBE Inventory is mandatory on all Merchandising programs. This gave rise to an assured desire to continue GLOBE GROUPE’s digital investments to support the transformation of traditional marketing and sales professions and to anticipate the needs of New Retail.