Motea: full transparency with DeltaMaster – even down to item level

The online store Motea uses DeltaMaster as “software as a service“ (SaaS) for tasks including detailed contribution margin accounting, inventory evaluation, days-of-inventory analysis, and individual analyses for supplier negotiations. The solution is also used in marketing, customer service, and logistics. Millions of data records are evaluated from sources including Sage 6.0, Excel, and DATEV.

Motea is a specialist for motorbike parts and accessories. It has around 100 employees. Since 2003, the online store has offered customers everything they need when it comes to tuning, styling, and protection for motorbikes, scooters, and the like. Its range encompasses tens of thousands of products, from aluminum parts to multimedia items and windshields.

However, this extensive product range used to be hindered by a lack of analysis options. This made it particularly hard for the company to achieve transparent pricing, as David Harms, Head of Procurement and Controlling at Motea GmbH, explains: “Our ERP system has little in the way of functions for detailed analysis. We were only able to make simple calculations, such as revenue minus procurement costs. We were unable to automatically include supplier freight costs, customs duties, sales platform fees, or picking and packing costs.”

Motea needed software that would let it flexibly combine and analyze data from its ERP system with data from DATEV applications and Excel files. It opted for the DeltaMaster business intelligence suite from Bissantz & Company. Key factors in the decision included the suite’s high performance and flexibility regarding data connectivity and evaluation.

Implementation was performed by AHAG Consulting, which had already successfully supported Motea with designing and implementing a cost accounting system. The Bissantz partner introduced DeltaMaster in the form of a budget-friendly rental model, in which the solution is designed, developed, and provided directly at the customer’s premises but operated on AHAG’s servers. Therefore, Motea does not have to invest in its own hardware or IT administration capacities. Data is accessed using VPN. It is updated overnight, meaning that Motea always has prior-day data at its disposal.

Quick, transparent pricing

The most important use for the BI solution is item pricing. DeltaMaster delivers answers to key questions that are typical in retail, such as:

How much is earned from a certain item or a certain product group?
How much revenue was generated by which items and on which sales platforms?
What quotas were achieved and where?
For how many days were the top sellers available?
Which items were unavailable, why, and for how long?
How much revenue was lost as a result?

“What I like about DeltaMaster is the way I can call up pricing data easily, flexibly, and in great detail and filter it in all directions,” Harms explains. “This allows me to calculate selling prices far more precisely. For example, I can analyze which products generate the lowest margins for us because they involve many returns, for instance. Then I can decide whether to raise the margin or discontinue the product. Alternatively, I can filter to find the best-performing products. I can then enter into price negotiations with the supplier – or make inquiries with another supplier. That has already paid off many times in the very literal sense of the phrase, as I have been able to negotiate significantly improved terms.”

Analysis for procurement, service, marketing, and logistics

DeltaMaster is also used to map the entire materials planning process of the procurement organization in China. Product volumes and expected arrival dates can be called up along with information such as when, where, and how each product has performed. This information is used to forecast future replenishment requirements and calculate the right order date to ensure timely product availability.

The customer service team uses DeltaMaster to analyze returns and delivery times to establish whether the times stated on the website need to be amended, for example. Marketing uses DeltaMaster for customer-specific mailouts. Information including the model, type, and series of the customer’s motorbike is derived from unstructured data. The customer then receives tailored information on newly available accessories or price promotions, for instance.

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“DeltaMaster lets us achieve a lot with just a few clicks. We can immediately see where we have to take action. We can calculate our items reliably – for intelligently developed prices that we also use tactically.”

David Harms, Head of Procurement and Controlling, Motea GmbH

The benefits of user-friendliness

In addition to this new-found transparency, the user-friendliness of the business intelligence solution is another benefit: “With DeltaMaster, I can implement 99% of all new requirements or adaptations to existing applications myself. AHAG provides support for more complex applications.” This is important because Harms is not only responsible for analyses within his own department, but is also “the DeltaMaster man” for the entire company.

When other departments require evaluations, responsibility for development work falls to the Head of Procurement and Controlling. Reinforcements are on their way, though: “We are in no doubt as to the benefits offered by the flexible, multifaceted evaluation of our data using DeltaMaster,” Harms summarizes. “This is why we intend to increase our team so that we can invest more time in expanding our BI application landscape.”

In the future

The company intends to expand contribution margin accounting using DeltaMaster: Allocating the actual packing and order picking times to the respective items will significantly improve the accuracy of cost allocation. Additional evaluations of the discontinuation lists for Chinese products will also be implemented. The integration of time calculations is intended to allow picking and packing costs to be computed at the level of the individual items, while ABC analyses will enable optimized materials planning.

Highlights

Data analysis of 30,000 products, hundreds of thousands of listings, and various sales platforms, right down to individual item level
Analysis for procurement, controlling, customer service, marketing, and logistics
Improved pricing and margin calculation thanks to detailed contribution margin accounting
Optimized product availability thanks to supplier-specific inventory analysis

Motea GmbH

Specialist for motorcycle parts and accessories
around 100 employees
tens of thousands of products belong to the assortment

What our retail customers are saying

“Thanks to DeltaMaster, we have a uniform reporting system throughout every area of the company. This allows us to assess and compare the performance of our four brands.”

Christof Maendle, Head of the IT/Applications Development department, KAISER+KRAFT

“DeltaMaster is a phenomenal analysis tool!”

Harald Huber, Head of Accounting and Controlling, Media Markt Switzerland

“DeltaMaster returns results in seconds even when millions of data records are involved. The combination of standard reporting and ad hoc analyses is ingenious!”

Carlo Bearth, Finance & Controlling, Würth International

“DeltaMaster lets us achieve a lot with just a few clicks. We can immediately see where action needs to be taken. We can calculate our items reliably – for intelligently developed prices that we also use tactically.”