Driving Digital Transformation: Kramp’s Journey with Manhattan Active® Omni

“How can we flatten the peak?” This was the question Kramp, one of the biggest suppliers of spare parts and accessories for Europe’s agricultural sector, presented the audience of Manhattan Exchange with. How the company is responding to this challenge was explained by Mirko Schuurman, Director Digital Transformation at Kramp, in Barcelona recently.

Founded in 1951 as a family business in Varsseveld, The Netherlands, Kramp today employs more than 3,200 people and offers over 500,000 products – their own brands as well as well-known international brands – to more than 60,000 customers across Europe.

Self-developed ecommerce platform

With a focus on delivering spare parts to wholesale dealers and individual farmers, Kramp is at the forefront of digital innovation with its self-developed ecommerce platform. In 2001, it was the first company in the industry to open a web shop. Nowadays, it comprises product configurators as well as several online services and the ecommerce business turned over €809 million in 2022, with 133,000 visits per week and an average basket spend of €328.

In line with its vision “Empowering you to move forward”, and with a high degree of customer intimacy, 700 experts in 24 sales offices and 11 distribution centres across Europe make sure that 95 percent of orders are on time.

The company's strength is its local presence, which enables customers to do business with a local partner who knows the market, speaks their language and understands their needs. Quick deliveries are extremely important to Kramp. In the Netherlands and Germany, spare parts are distributed at night, other countries next-day delivery is possible, while in countries without distribution centres, customers receive their orders within two days.

Volatility of orders

The big challenge however is the volatility of orders over the full week: for example, each Tuesday at 4 pm is the weekly peak. To ensure the most efficient operations and customer satisfaction, it was the team’s goal to flatten the peak and to create an IT solution that could efficiently manage fluctuating orders flows.

This meant the transformation from a legacy ERP system to a modern, cloud-based IT landscape. The evolution includes shifting to Manhattan Active Omni, leveraging the solution’s extended capabilities.

To optimise its warehouse network design and the distribution centre efficiency, Kramp had to decide between a mesh, a central, or a central and regional structure. The company opted for a central and regional approach, which would best support the desired logistical improvements:

• Fast movers will be shipped from local distribution centres
• Not urgent orders will be delivered weekly
• For more efficiency, the source with the earliest delivery time will be picked
• Track & trace as well as item visibility throughout the transport chain will be improved
• Direct shipments from manufacturers and express transports from central distribution centres will also be possible

Spring program

After establishing the business architecture vision, the team planned the migration strategy and the supply chain consolidation, such as reducing air freight. High-level designs including value mapping and impact assessment helped them to determine the deployment strategy. The plan is to migrate warehouse by warehouse to the new IT solution. Once implemented, the new setup will ensure business continuity, provide a scalable foundation, empower the employees to consistently deliver high quality, and enable improvement and innovation. As the program named Spring impacts various organisational functions, it will be supported by effective change management to ensure successful execution.

“By building future proof business processes and a technology platform as a foundation to stay successful together, now and in the future, Spring improves time-to-market, innovation, transparency, scalability and is easy to use,” Mirko Schuurman commented as he summarised Kramp’s ambitious IT program.