IMCruz and nationwide stock auditing: From one week to four hours.

Inchcape’s arrival to Latin America along with the Derco acquisition has increased the need of improving all process standards including the Stock Audit. The new challenge was to coordinate it nationwide in record time.

When a company the size of Inchcape lands in the Latin American market, besides making the news, it also ripples throughout every internal process.

IMCruz, the Derco representative in Bolivia, and therefore, Inchcape representative too, now had to relay the inventory status as a cross-section picture of the whole stock.

They could already count on Dipcones, a company specialized in auditing and counting stock. They knew the operation very well, and they knew how to handle IMCruz’s particular needs, but they were used to counting using printed spreadsheets, trying to match every unit they found with the expected inventory within their ERP. Then each and every one of these spreadsheets needed to be retyped for consolidation.

But this time around, they needed nationwide coverage and they needed it done fast. Upgrading to digital was imminent. It was high time for OSA Andes to take the wheel.

In an expertly coordinated operational deploy, IMCruz assembled a control board, lead by the Comptrollership Area, assisted by Dipcones, with representatives of the Retail and Import departments, and external comptrollers from Deloitte and KPMG. All of them summoned to tackle the first simultaneous nationwide stock count with OSA Andes.

“If we want to achieve a 100% of the stock within retail, imports and machinery, all of them counted and accounted for, for all 8 of the 9 Bolivian Departments in which we operate, in just one day? We have to go digital.”, said Ángela Saavedra, Chief Comptroller at IMCruz.

Good planning was key. They mobilized almost 150 workers, 49 of which were Dipcones auditors, and the rest chief officers for Imports and Retailers, and store and workshop managers, for a total of 43 different venues, considering all 36 of their retail stores.

“That day, everyone had their eyes on the process. We even had a huge screen wired right to the OSA Andes platform so we could track progress.” recalls Ángela. “Of course it was stressful, because it was something new. But everything went along smoothly.” adds Anagely, one of her team’s internal auditors.

Out of all stock counts, they faced only 10 mistakes, because of hardware errors, already sold vehicles and a couple trucks that stood idle during local political turmoil related blockages. The control board had their ‘Consolidators’ ready to solve every single problem that came to them so they could handle that in time effortlessly.

El resultado: The result: Bolivia showed off with a stock count deploy operation which had 100% of the stock audited nationwide in only 4 hours and 13 minutes.
Then they took 1 additional day to consolidate the inventory, write the report and send it to HQ.

This sounds even more impressive if you compare with other countries which recently underwent the same process and took between 1 and 3 weeks, due to the handwritten factor.

Inchcape was absolutely amazed with the whole roll-out, the quality of the planning, the clarity of the onboarding and training exercises , and with the whole retail and import teams’ synergy.

Many area representatives witnessed this process and realized how powerful the OSA Andes tools were when applied correctly. “I need to implement this!” cried out María Inés Carrasco, Chief of National Retail Department at IMCruz. (And we did, right after this!)

“Thanks to OSA Andes, we did everything quickly and broke the record! Its very simple, very easy to use for operators and executives alike.” adds Cinthia Carrasco, Internal Auditor at IMCruz.

Here at OSA we’re tremendously grateful for the level of professionalism everyone had for this successful endeavor. We’ll keep growing within IMCruz bringing our Stock Audit module to everywhere it’s needed!