Case Study: Amer Sports

Amer Sports is a global sporting goods company with internationally recognized brands including Salomon, Arc’teryx, Peak Performance, Atomic and Wilson. Its products are sold directly to consumers through brand stores, factory outlets, and eCommerce, as well as through trade customers in sporting goods chains, specialty retailers, mass merchants, fitness clubs and distributors.

Amer Sports had been leveraging the ReverseLogix returns management system for its B2B returns and had great success: Returns were faster, more automated, and the company has better visibility into its returns data.

As the company focused on growing the B2C side of the business, it resulted in many more product returns that were more complicated and time-consuming to process.

“Product are tried on, repackaged, or wrinkled, and that all has to be processed in a professional way,” said Kai Bahlman, vice president of warehousing at Amer Sports. “We had hundreds of thousands of units coming back that had to be processed fast. We needed to speed things up, and we looked for something to improve our processes for the customer.

Amer Sports’ winter sports distribution center in Ogden, Utah is a 300,000 square foot facility that processes the company’s B2C returns. Already pleased with the success of its B2B returns processes, the company turned to ReverseLogix for a B2C solution.

“Our decision for ReverseLogix was driven by the idea of having an end-to-end solution for the whole process flow, covering the needs of our consumers with a state-of-the-art returns process for our operational needs,” said Bahlman.

ReverseLogix is the only end-to-end returns management system (RMS) built for B2B, B2C and hybrid environments. It facilitates, manages and reports on the entire returns lifecycle for total visibility.

• Robust policy and rules engine is configurable and changeable to meet claims rules, policies, vendor entitlements and approval hierarchies.
  
  
• A branded, customizable and intuitive portal helps B2C or B2B customers initiate returns, check a status and receive notifications.
  
  
• A highly configurable returns processing module features guided workflows for receiving, inspecting, and grading product returns.
  
  
• Delivers real-time visibility and actionable insights across the entire returns journey.

“The RMS implementation was a good experience on the front end for our brands,” said Bahlman. “It was fast, efficient, and [our brands] got what they asked for. ReverseLogix shared their best practices with us so we could define our best-fitting process.”

“Within 2-3 days our agents were conformable with [ReverseLogix]…they were up and running, and things were working very smoothly,” said Scott Allington, inbound and return goods supervisor at the distribution center.

Happier customers

Amer Sport customers simply log onto a customer portal to get a return label and ship the return. “I’m sure it’s impacted customer service greatly with reduced call volume,” said Allington.

Scaling teams up and down

Thanks to its intuitive interface, employees have needed minimal training on the ReverseLogix RMS.

“Come busy season, I can train people without a lot of explanation,” said Hill. “They can get into the software and look at it and it will make sense to them. So I can bring in staff from other parts of the warehouse, train them up for the times we need them, and then let them go back to their normal duties.”

With ReverseLogix, Amer Sports now has a single platform that manages and automates the end-to-end returns process.

Faster returns processing

“I’d say [ReverseLogix] doubles the amount of returns we used to be able to do,” said Hayden Rice, returns specialist. “It’s a lot faster process so customers get their money back faster.”

By scanning a single tracking number, Amer employees can quickly manage the inbound process. The number is associated with the customer account, and a customer’s notes help employees pinpoint product issues. The RMS displays a product image so employees can avoid looking through product numbers.

The ReverseLogix RMS has also significantly increased the returns team’s productivity. “I can see what an individual processor is doing and keep track of their daily total, which is very helpful,” said Tyler Hill, returns lead. “I can also see our arrival queues and know which projects to assign to which people.”

Actionable returns data

ReverseLogix integrates with other supply chain software, centralizing and delivering powerful BI and data analytics. Amer Sports has gained real-time visibility across the entire returns journey and access to real-world insight to inform smarter business decisions.

“Before ReverseLogix, we had no transparency in the process at all,” said Bahlman. “Now with reports about reason coding, how often returns are happening and how many products are in bad shape, we’re getting control of the process. We can help brands decide what needs to be improved and reduce the number of returns in general.”

“I don’t know where our life would be without ReverseLogix right now,” said Allington