New ERP Smooths the Way for Skin Care Company

THE CUSTOMER

E.T. Browne Drug Company, headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is a long-standing proprietor of skin and hair care products. Founded in 1840, it is best known for its Palmer’s® brand, which includes the best-selling Palmer’s Cocoa Butter.

THE PROVIDER

SYSPRO is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider with a global footprint. Founded in 1978, it specializes in providing scalable solutions within key manufacturing and distribution industries.

“We focused on all the pain points we had identified during the independent ERP evaluation and worked to see how we could improve and correct them within SYSPRO,” says Pieter Goes, vice president of information technology and business intelligence at E.T. Browne.

Helping manufacturers and distributors gain critical insights across their entire organization is one of SYSPRO’s strengths.

“SYSPRO is a configurable software,” says Dawn Gorey, the software company’s director of consulting services. “There are a lot of different options and ways to set up those options. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution because you can customize it.”

Smooth Like Butter

With a nearly 200-year history, E.T. Browne Drug Company is one of America’s first skin care companies. Renowned for its Palmer’s brand, which includes the best-selling Palmer’s Cocoa Butter, the company’s products are sold in 100 countries and recommended by families from one generation to the next.

Committed to delivering high-quality, high-performing products, E.T. Browne chooses fair trade and organically certified ingredients whenever possible. This includes the use of natural, raw ingredients, some of which have a shelf life.

The company relies on essential functionalities such as expiry dating, lot control, and good habits such as effectively picking the oldest product and inventory first so as to cycle through it in the correct order. However, Goes admits it’s not always easy in their small production facility, where items sometimes get stocked in the back and workers have to move numerous pallets to gain access.

“We try to balance the efficiency of getting products picked versus making sure we cycle through all the inventory in a timely manner,” he says.

E.T. Browne’s primary peak of business occurs during the dry, winter months. When cold weather descends in the United States around November, orders from major retail partners increase as they build inventory to prepare for brutal cold snaps.

“At that point, product really starts moving off the shelf,” says Goes.

The company experiences a decent peak in volume from December through March, followed by a tapering off period. However, different product lines during the company’s history have caused peaks to occur at other points during the year. For instance, E.T. Browne offered an SPF rated lotion for a time, which caused an increase in summer orders.

“We have seasonality in skin care but the majority of our business is steady,” says Goes. “People like to use moisturizers year-round.”

Special promotions also affect demand. Sometimes E.T. Browne offers bonus sizing or specially priced bundles of their products. Retailers might decide to do a buy one/get one free promotion. These events typically prompt orders to increase and need to be forecast and projected correctly.

The skin care company needed to gain better visibility and control over its inventory and supply chain. The goal was to help predict demand and understand how fulfilling the anticipated sales pipeline would affect production schedules, as well as anticipate the peaks it needed to buffer.

JUST IN TIME

By upgrading its system and tapping into SYSPRO ERP’s additional capabilities, E.T. Browne gained better control over inventory and the supply chain, allowing it to predict demand, understand how fulfilling the anticipated sales pipeline would affect production schedules, and anticipate demand peaks.

Fortunately, E.T. Browne didn’t have to look too far for a solution. They had a long-running relationship with ERP software provider SYSPRO, having purchased their system in 1998.

“E.T. Browne went live in 1999 and has used the ERP solution ever since,” recalls Gorey. “However, we recently did a business process review to look for inefficiencies within the system that E.T. Browne was experiencing related to increased and incorrect inventory.”

Forecasting had always been an issue. “In the beginning, we used an add-on tool because SYSPRO couldn’t natively do what we needed it to do,” explains Goes. As the years passed, E.T. Browne admits to being guilty of not leveraging all that SYSPRO had to offer.

“Our staff didn’t always have the right understanding of SYSPRO’s capabilities and so they came up with manual workarounds,” says Goes. “They dealt with issues in a cumbersome manner outside the system that over the years they could have done within SYSPRO had we stayed aware of those improvements.”

By upgrading to the latest version of SYSPRO ERP, E.T. Browne was able to align its business to fully leverage SYSPRO’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities.

“We implemented SYSPRO’s demand planning and forecasting modules and E.T. Browne has seen a dramatic decrease in inventory while still having the correct inventory on hand when they need it,” says Gorey.

By leveraging the SYSPRO ERP’s demand forecasting and supply chain management capabilities, E.T. Browne in effect created a just-in-time inventory system. It’s a model that works well for them. The system significantly reduces the amount of raw material and product the company has to have on hand at any given time, which translates directly into increased profits.

At the same time, the manufacturer is still able to keep one month of expected demand, plus another month of buffer. “We can now do all of our forecasting natively in SYSPRO with their engine, so we’re able to better evaluate key markets and key customers, enabling our forecasting and capacity planning to be much more accurate,” says Goes.

SYSPRO provided a tool that makes information readily available to everyone in the company. “It’s easy to see and share and more intuitive to use,” says Goes. “As a result, we can achieve a fill rate of greater than 95% and we’re able to process our purchase orders much sooner, resulting in better supply.”

NEW MANTRA

Ultimately, E.T. Browne’s decision to upgrade to SYSPRO 8 2023 was all about requirements planning and requirements optimization. Accurate forecasting is vital to the skin care company. It involves determining current inventory, their needs for the future, their production requirements, and subsequently their purchase requirements.

“That’s where we’ve really been able to drive efficiencies,“ says Goes. “Having all of that information in one system, and having all the systems talk to each other and be aware of one another, drives much better results.”

There is always a bit of a learning curve when any new software is implemented. Gorey’s observation is that E.T. Browne has adjusted to SYSPRO 8 2023 well. She also notes Peter Goes’ quest for continuous improvement.

“He constantly looks at its new features and functionality to determine how E.T. Browne could harness them to give the company more efficiencies throughout the system, not just inventory,” she says.

For his part, Goes is more pragmatic. “The step we are now working on is adhering to the system,” he explains. “If the system tells us to do something, we can’t think we’re smarter than the system. We have to trust it enough to follow through.”

Goes believes this is a problem most organizations face when implementing change along these lines.

“People are used to doing things a certain way, and it’s just something you have to work through,” he says. “We work with our people so they are not afraid to make that change.” He considers change management to be the hardest part of the process.

“The technology can do more than what we have the capability of rolling out and actually trusting at this point,” Goes says. “So, we’re trying to take steps toward that.”

Having reduced inventory by 22%, which enabled the company to grow profits by 113% on revenue growth of 7% year-over-year, E.T. Browne is committed to staying the course with SYSPRO.

“Whatever can be done in SYSPRO is now being done in SYSPRO,” Goes says. “That has become our mantra.”

ERP Upgrade: Visible Results

The Challenge

E.T. Browne Drug Company, a long-established purveyor of skin care products, determined it needed to upgrade its ERP system to gain better visibility over inventory and supply chain management.

The Solution

Having relied on ERP software provider SYSPRO for more than a quarter century, E.T. Browne upgraded to SYSPRO 8 2023, fully leveraging the platform’s MRP capabilities to create a just-in-time inventory system.

The Results

Realized a 22% reduction in inventory with the downward trend continuing over the past 12 months. Gross sales are up 7.2% and net profit is up 4.6% year-to-date.

Next Steps

Leverage SYSPRO to manage emerging challenges such as the growing need to use recycled materials.