Cuddle Up: How to Make Best Friends Forever... and Ever!

For thousands of years humans have formed bonds with animals. Scientists estimate this worldwide phenomenon first began some 15,000 years ago, literally 13,000 BC! And most agree on the first animal to be domesticated: A dog is a man's best friend!

And the legends of this interspecies nexus continue apace, in the most amazing ways. Take Eclipse, for example, a regular rider on the D-Line through Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. Eclipse leaves her house every day, all by herself, and takes the bus downtown.

She likes to meet her friends at the park, get some exercise, and maybe grab a little bite to eat. Everyone knows her these days: the bus drivers, regular passengers; even local police officers who patrol the 'hood. "She makes everyone happy," say the local denizens.

When playtime is over, she hops back on the bus and heads home, sometimes with her man-friend, Jeff Young. Eclipse, you see, is a black labrador, and a very special one at that! She even has her own bus pass, which remains affixed to her collar, so everyone knows she's legit.

It all started one day when Jeff was lagging behind. Eclipse knew the drill, and got all excited, so she just jumped on the bus without her pal. He came along on the next bus and was reunited. But before long, it became apparent that Eclipse could manage herself in this great big world.

So popular is this cute, furry friend, that some music producers booked her for a gig. Yes, Eclipse stars in a rap video, orchestrated by the King County Department of Transportation! The video was made back in 2015, featuring the catchy tune, Bus Doggy Dog.

Heartwarming stories like this never fail to bring a smile, even a tear of joy, to pet lovers everywhere. And there are many, many pet lovers these days: According to the 2019-2020 National Pet Owners Survey, two-thirds of American families own a pet. Two-thirds!

North of the border, according to petbacker.com, some 57% of Canadian households are owned by a pet (we know who the bosses are), 5.9 million dogs and 7.9 million cats... some of whom even live together! That's what any good business person would call an addressable market. 

Cuddle Points

One company addressing this pet-friendly market is Mondou. Founded way back in 1938 by Joseph émilien Mondou, the store was originally called J.E. Mondou, and was located on Place Jacques-Cartier in Montreal. 

In 1983, Mondou changed management and opened a store at the entrance of the Jean-Talon Market. Today, Mondou is a 100% Quebec-based family-run business with 66 stores in Quebec, and also serves Ontario via its web site, offering more than 6,000 items for pet lovers. 

And like any modern enterprise, Mondou realizes that customer experience is king. These days, keeping customers and their furry friends happy requires an immediacy that cannot be achieved with legacy software. As such, Mondou decided to go real-time.

The company chose to convert their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from ECC to SAP S/4HANA, a fully in-memory solution whose speed is unmatched. By implementing this ERP, Mondou would equip its employees with the fastest transactional system on earth.

Worthy of note? Their overall conversion project, from start to finish, took 7 months! Lyne Hervieux, SAP Practice manager at Mondou, explains their go-live was smooth and the project was delivered on-time and on-budget. 

Asked if there were any “a-ha” moments or “gotchas” Lyne’s answer was simple: “not really.” She said everyone was focused on the results and they appreciated the strong working relationship they had with their partner, Createch. Her advice to other customers is to work with a partner that knows your business and make the conversion to S/4HANA a business project. 

By embracing in-memory, Mondou can streamline business processes. Customers can receive highly relevant offers in real-time, while they're at a store, or even on the web site, bolstering customer relations. It also helped optimize the entire complement of functions necessary to procure, sell and deliver their wide range of pet products and services. 

Lyne Hervieux, SAP Practice manager at Mondou, explains: "We offer a rewards program that allows you to accumulate Cuddle points and save on your next purchases. We offer free services like the doggie wash, the pet scale, nail-trimming and the carry-out service." By leveraging SAP CRM via S/4HANA, she says: "The people in stores are very happy. It’s so much easier for them to use."

Hervieux notes that the immediacy of S/4HANA has optimized a whole host of back-office processes: "Because of all the maintenance jobs we had in ECC during the night, and because we were not able to execute all these jobs in the day due to user lock, there was a restricted period that users couldn’t work, between 10PM and 5AM.

"But now, in S/4HANA, the processing of all the jobs is so fast, that the maintenance period is shorter. Therefore, the team can start work at 3AM now. Warehouse people and managers are the first to appreciate this benefit." Point being, they come in earlier, and go home much earlier, and the rest of the company benefits from up-to-date information. 

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Hervieux explains: "We run Material Requirement Planning (MRP) for the stores with an automatic replenishment. We run MRP for the warehouses that we use to distribute over 6,000 products in our stores or through the website."

MRP dovetails with SAP Warehouse Management and Radio Frequency Mobile Data Entry, which enables real-time communication between warehouse employees and the WM system. This combination results in an optimal supply chain, which helps in a variety of ways.

Made famous by Dell in the 1990s and early 2000s, the concept of a just-in-time supply chain brings tremendous benefits. In this case, shipping and warehouse costs are trimmed; customers can get the products and services they want when they want; and waste is greatly minimized.

Hervieux continued: "We do retail promotions for stores and the website, complete with rebate agreements with our suppliers. We manage the loyalty program in SAP CRM, and reward cuddles points, that you can have per POS in stores or when you buy on the website."

In other words, thanks to converting to SAP S/4HANA, Mondou is now able to run highly sophisticated, multi-tier marketing programs that allow it to measure, and thus manage with tremendous granularity, a whole range of promotions. This gives the company great agility.

"Everything is so fast now in S/4HANA compared to ECC," said Hervieux. "For example, finance transactions were often slow in ECC, because the information was persisted in different tables. Now, a lot of that information is in the same table and it is so much faster. You believe it when you see it with your own eyes! Finance people are so happy. What more could you want?!"

And what advice does Hervieux have for other SAP ECC shops? "Be sure to have a good partner that knows very well your business and that can address any SAP challenge you may face. And be sure to make it a business program, not just an IT project. It is for everyone."

Now that Mondou is fully operational with their in-memory ERP system, you could argue that they're in the fabled cat bird's seat, from which they can genuinely... Eclipse their competition.