Ta-Ta
In a very competitive environment within the retail industry, we co-created custom software and applications to connect systems and cut down on manual labor, improving efficiency and freeing employees to focus on business strategy.
Ta-Ta Holdings is one of the biggest companies in Uruguay and includes different business units: Ta-Ta Supermarkets, BAS Clothing Stores, Multiahorro Home Center, WoOw e-commerce platform, and San Roque Pharmacies.
More than 60 years ago they opened doors in Uruguay, driven by improving the quality of life of all Uruguayan families. Since then, they have been able to grow their business with solid foundations and today they are present in the whole country with their business units. They believe in innovation, attention to detail and continuous improvement to provide their customers with an experience that exceeds their expectations and transforms customers into life-long ones.
We had previously worked with them on another initiative, so they already knew our technical expertise and our collaborative way of working. We also shared some key values such as a commitment to positively impact people’s lives, being customer-oriented, having a growth mindset, and promoting innovation and tech to enhance efficiency. As such, they decided to partner with us again when this new opportunity arose.
Ta-Ta Supermarkets alone handles more than 1000 suppliers with a huge number of SKUs; this implies a lot of data to be entered and maintained daily: prices, descriptions, images, etc.
As the business was growing, the data entry process became a bottleneck that eat up critical working hours and brainpower, while adding very low value to the process and staff.
With this context in mind, Ta-Ta aimed to:
- Simplify this process and reduce completion time.
- Improve the quality of work output.
- Reduce friction in the process through system integrations.
After deeply understanding their needs, their business objectives, and the overall process and workflow, a web portal has been developed, including 2 different modules: Suppliers & Administrator.
The web portal enables suppliers to add new products to be offered to Ta-Ta or to maintain existing ones on their own while implementing some data quality controls to reduce issues in the following processes.
This web app consists of two modules interacting with each other:
- Suppliers can add and keep track of their entire offering in a single place. The portal allows them to get rid of unnecessary paperwork and tedious communication methods that were slower and harder to sustain in the current environment.
- Administrators can easily review information provided by suppliers, and do things that were tedious and cumbersome before, instantaneously, like requesting data changes, managing payments and completing critical workflows.
They can book meetings as well, and keep control of administrative workflows like Invoicing, Supplying, and Payments. On top of that, the new software was seamlessly integrated with their ERP, Oracle, the WMS, Manhattan, and other management systems.
After launching the product, based on analytics and customer feedback, we worked on improving user experience (UX) and data visualization.
The new software has supported their business processes, from data entry to employee collaboration.
Those were the core benefits of this implementation:
- Productivity: suppliers perform tasks that Ta-Ta staff used to do, so Ta-Ta employees can reallocate time to core aspects of their job.
- Employee satisfaction: time assigned to manually entering data was cut down, allowing employees to focus on job functions they care about. Smoother procedures lead to a happier workforce, resulting in higher productivity and revenue.
- Enhanced supplier satisfaction: coordination between Ta-Ta and suppliers has been improved as well, reducing time-to-market for many initiatives, out of stocks, among others.
- Reduced risk associated with manual work and lack of quality controls.
- Customer satisfaction: Ta-Ta staff has more time to focus on activities that deliver results for clients, increasing customer satisfaction.
- Agility: a software developed to easily adapt and deploy as business needs evolve.
After 4 years of implementation, we have both seen that the project will be in a state of constant flux so staff augmentation would be most beneficial, so the engagement has recently changed to staffing. Ta-Ta can keep using outsourced talent on an as-needed basis while directly managing workers, leading the project, and assigning priorities.
Different Modules developed for both suppliers & administrators, optimizing specific functionalities, ensuring efficient operations.
Management systems integrated, improving operational efficiency while enhancing collaboration among teams.
