Big changes at Avnet Kopp for the better

31 October 2012 News

2012 has certainly been a most eventful year for Avnet Kopp. In January the company converted its IT systems to SAP, driven by Avnet’s SAP team in Europe. Over a six week period, some 30 people from Avnet EMEA were working at the Avnet Kopp offices, from SAP specialist to user support people.

Commenting on the progress, CEO Albert Kopp said “A major change like this is never easy, but it amazes me how successful the changeover actually was. Then came the harder part: taking our new training and operating on SAP. This proved to be a big learning curve, but the overall feeling amongst our staff is that SAP is an excellent system, and we will see many benefits of this going forward.”

The company then did some major changes to its inventory management. With the huge warehouses Avnet runs in Europe and additional access to global Avnet warehouses, Avnet Kopp came to the conclusion that it would make sense to source most of its products through these warehouses.

And thus the company shipped most of its inventory to these warehouses, and sold off some of its redundant stock to local distributors. It now still operates a smaller warehouse for very specific suppliers where it made no sense to channel these products through the Avnet EMEA warehouses.

“Again, it was a process of learning and there were some delivery shortcomings,” explained Kopp. “However, I am relieved to say that we have now largely overcome these teething problems. We ship from our European warehouse five times a week. Goods are delivered directly to customers without the delay of having to pass through a local warehouse.

“Just to add to all the excitement, we also moved offices at the beginning of September. Our new office borders the northern side of the Johannesburg Country Club in Woodmead. The Avnet Kopp team is now once again focusing fully on our customers and finding ways we can add value to our customer’s success.”

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