From its beginnings in 1950 as a modest soap factory in Amparo, Brazil, Ypê has built a legacy of quality and care that now touches more than 95% of Brazilian homes. Today, Ypê’s brand is woven into daily life, trusted for its detergents, surface cleaners, fabric conditioners, dish soaps and personal hygiene products.
Its commitment to helping families live better, healthier and happier lives remains at the center of every decision. “Our big vision is a company without friction. A company with a good experience for our employees, customers and stakeholders alike,” Ypê CIO, Geraldo Pereira, shared. “We are always looking at inventive ways to engage our consumers with high quality personal care products, and are leveraging new and emerging technologies to help us deliver the best goods at the best prices. And that means removing friction points that can impact our top and bottom line growth.”
Eliminating order-to-cash process friction
An area of business Ypê sought to improve was the order-to-cash process that runs on its SAP platform. With more than 22,000 B2B customers and 400 product SKUs, the order-to-cash process touches almost every corner of the business. Within this process lies the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) flow, where orders occasionally arrive with price discrepancies, creating exceptions that require additional processing. The added processing effort affected its general and administrative (G&A) costs and its On-time In-Full (OTIF) delivery rate. “OTIF is critical for our customers. When our products are ordered, there is no exceptions when it comes to delivering the goods on time, and in the quantity requested. It’s our brand commitment and reputation at stake,” Pereira explained.
Previously, resolving these exceptions required manual checks and handoffs, and the process lacked visibility for sales representatives and customers. The organization needed faster notifications and cleaner data for decision-making.
With an advanced degree in AI, Pereira understood the potential of intelligent process flows to increase efficiency, enhance order visibility and improve data hygiene, leading to faster processing, improved productivity and increased customer satisfaction. However, AI projects require large upfront investments, have long lead times to achieve results and require a multi-platform approach. SAP offered an AI solution, but Pereira needed a more holistic approach.
“We have four workstreams around AI. The first is increased sales, the second is no friction in the total experience for our employees and our customers, and then ESG and controlling G&A costs.” Specifically, Pereira noted, “The SAP strategy wasn’t good for us because the embedded AI only applies to the ERP, and our vision is AI across the entire enterprise for true impact.”
