Hindustan Lever Network (HLN)

One of the fastest growing in India today is the company's arm in the Direct Selling channel. Several lakh consultants are already on it - everyone independent, trained and guided by HLN's managers who are experts. HLN has spread to over 1500 cities, 80% of the urban population covered, with 42 offices and 240 service centres across the country. It offers a wide range of customised offerings in Personal Care, Foods and Home. The Compensation plan for HLN partners provides new innovative ways of earning adequate income in addition to offering rewards like revenue sharing through the concept of Mother Depot and Just in Time System To rationalise the logistics and planning task, an innovative step has been the formation of the Mother Depot and Just in Time System (MD-JIT). Some C&FAs were selected across the country to act as mother depots. Each of them has a minimum number of JIT depots attached for the sake of stock requirements. The brands and packs required for the markets which the MD and JITs service in a particular area are sent to the mother depot by all of the manufacturing units. The JITs draw their requirements from the MD on a weekly or on a bi-weekly basis.

Leveraging Information technology

The customers of HUL are serviced based on continuous replenishment. It is possible because of connectivity of IT across the extended supply chain of around 80 factories, 2,000 suppliers and 7,000 stockists. This complicated network with its voice and data communication facilities has linked around 200 locations across the country, including the head office, branch offices, depots, factories and the key redistribution stockists. They have combined backend processes into a common Shared Service infrastructure, which supports units across the country. These initiatives have enhanced operational efficiencies and improved the service given to the customers and thus have brought us closer to the marketplace.

RS Net Initiative:

The RS Net initiative, launched in 2001, intended at connecting Redistribution Stockists (RSs) through an internet based system. It covers stockists of the Personal Care business and Foods & Home & Beverages in close to 1200 cities and towns. Together they account for about 80% of the company's turnover. RS Net is a B2B e-commerce initiative. It provides linkages with the RSs own transaction systems, enabling monitoring of stocks and secondary sales. It optimises RS s inventories and orders on a daily basis through online interaction on despatches, orders, information sharing and monitoring. The IT-powered system is implemented to supply stocks to redistribution stockists on a continuous replenishment basis. Now, the sales system gets to know every day what HUL stockists have sold to almost a million outlets across the country. Information on secondary sales is now available on RS Net every day. RS Net is a part of Project Leap. It begins with the supplier runs through the factories and depots and reaches up to the RSs. This ensures growth of HUL by ensuring that the right product is available at the right place in right quantities and at the right time in the most cost-effective manner. Leap also aims at reducing inventories and improving efficiencies right through the extended supply chain. RS Net has come as a force multiplier for HUL Way, the company's action-plan is not just to maximise the number of outlets but also to achieve leadership in all outlet. It has enabled stockists to place orders on a Continuous Replenishment System. This in turn has unshackled the field force to entirely focus on secondary sales from the stockists to retailers and activation of the market. It has also enabled RSs to provide improved service to retail outlets. Simultaneously, HUL is servicing the rural market and key urban outlet as a single concern.

Adexa iCollaboration suite

In 2000, HUL identified improved supply chain management as a critical business priority, It launched a comprehensive initiative, Project Leap, aimed at increasing supplier/distributor responsiveness, reducing inventory buffers and optimizing planning and scheduling. HUL chose the Adexa iCollaboration suite for facilitating centralized monitoring of the SCM, live customer /supplier collaboration, and integrating demand and distribution planning with production scheduling. With the aggregated view of data provided by the iCollaboration suite, HUL was able to combine sales and distribution efforts on the diverse product lines, which resulted in significant savings on the cost side for inventories and distribution. HUL updates inventory positions, shipments and customer orders on a daily basis with the help of these software packages and can get a pulse on the market at real time.

HUL s Turnover Compared with Competitors, 2006

HUL s Market Leadership across various FMCG Categories