Le Delas presentation

Le Delas is a prominent operator of the Rungis wholesale food market, which is number 1 in the world.  Its business model is brick-and-mortar, cash-and-carry.

Management embraced a very ambitious strategy:

• Shift product-range to upper hand and increased perceived quality, both in products and services
• Shift customer base from shop owners and resellers to gastronomic restaurants
• Expand sales to new geographic distant areas
• Decrease the sales dependency on physical customers

Our mission

Our mission was to power the new strategy with ad hoc use of technology, and influence the creation of a new organization. The new strategy meant, in fact, moving “from brick to click” and adopt an internet-based model of sales development.

Our action

We structured a 4-project program:

1. CRM,
2. markcom platform,
3. ecommerce platform,
4. legacy systems update.

Each project of the program had two facets: technology and target operating model. The challenge was to manage the ramp up of each technology component alongside the evolution of the business model and of the workforce. We tackled that challenge as a side-by-side exercise with the CEO and his closest executives.

CRM project – We made the CRM evolve gradually with the hiring of the new sales force. The starting point was to carve out from the main ERP a unique customer database that was going to be pivotal for the entire system.

Markcom platform – Technology selection was key, for Le Delas had specific needs to enhance the product database. We designed special business process for data enrichment. The marketing staff documented in excess of 10.000 data sheets and took 13.000 product pictures.  A must-have feature was the ability to use the platform to push content online, or to print, with real-time sticker-price adjustment.

Ecommerce platform – This key-stone of the brick-to-click strategy could not be put together before previous projects had reached significant milestones. We hired a e-marketing manager and organized his team around the back-office features that we developed. The new manager gave us tough requirements, such as multi-channel ordering capability and high speed of display.

Legacy system update – We design the system to ensure full interoperability with the legacy system, notably supply-chain, billing and order processing. Real-time capability was essential. For instance, a price change in the legacy system should cause an automatic, real-time update system-wide, up to the web site and the sales pamphlet to be printed.

The result

Real-Time capabilities gave Le Delas a key competitive edge. The entire platform generated revenue from day one. Sales have kept growing year after year without cannibalizing store sales.