Building in-house e-commerce fulfilment capabilities

The project

​The client is a leading manufacturer and marketer of hand-finished and contemporary jewellery.

Due to the lockdown caused by COVID-19, the client had to close 80% of their global stores. Consequently, they faced significant growth in their e-commerce distribution channel.

Implement assisted the client in working with a strategy to build up in-house e-commerce fulfilment capabilities in order to increase their overall distribution capacity and mitigate risks.

The scope of the project included project management across eight different workstreams as well as internal and external stakeholders to implement the strategy, focusing on the following key areas:

• Warehouse operations (layout and construction, processes, teams etc.).
• IT infrastructure and systems (network, configuration, reporting etc.).
• Logistics and supply chain (3PL partner setup, inventory management etc.).

The impact

The project team consisted of more than 25 members and was divided across multiple continents and countries. However, in less than four months they managed to implement the new warehouse setup.

The team carefully managed the various tasks with a clear focus on tight timelines, the critical path as well as the fine balance between remote or on-site collaboration mode. This way, they successfully achieved the following key milestones:

• On-time operational go-live to cover peak seasons, e.g. Black Friday.
• Increased fulfillment capacity by 130% in EMEA.
• Operational excellence was kept on at least the same level as the previous setup.