Sidem is a leading European developer and manufacturer of steering and suspension parts for the first-mount and replacement market in the automotive industry. They are the oldest brand in chassis components and they are rightly proud of that. Despite their blessed age, innovation is no stranger to them. They use 3D technology for their reverse engineering and their state-of-the-art production facilities employ the latest techniques and methods. Sidem knocked on Trendskout's door to offer their distributors the right products at the right time. Thanks to Trendskout's AI platform, they now push up-to-date data through in a scalable manner and no longer waste time running endless Excel tables.
The story of Sidem
Sidem products are available in more than 90 countries. From Central Europe, Sidem distributes all possible steering and suspension parts to their network. Well-organised, they manage this from a highly automated distribution centre. Distribution is only the last stop of a progressive production chain, led from Gullegem in West Flanders.
Because Sidem takes care of the complete vertical integration: from design to production. By realising as much as possible in-house, Sidem keeps the quality extremely high. From new technical innovations, to own forges to developing moulds ourselves. With extreme precision Sidem assembles every piece seamlessly. With a large stock of steering and suspension parts, they can serve customers relatively quickly.
Sidem's challenge: to put the customer's question before his
Internally, Sidem asked itself a simple question: how can we get customers to buy more and more appropriate products? A bigger purchase means more turnover. But that turnover is only recurrent if there is also added value for the customer. So in turn, those opportunities must be there with the end customer. Because without demand from the end market, they saddle their customer with a large stock and Sidem loses credibility. Which is absolutely avoidable.
"In the beginning, we had started with Excel. We analysed what the customer was buying and what they were not yet buying. We then put historical data next to that, often segmented by country. That way we knew which cars drove around in which countries. However, the results were not satisfactory. We soon realised that Excel was not going to provide the solution. Moreover, it was a lot of work and hardly scalable," says Filip Huwaert, IT Manager at Sidem.
Why Sidem chose Trendskout
"The opportunity detection we were pursuing we also wanted to push through to the customer portal. Such automation was an absolute requirement. So we quickly drew a line through the Excel story. Then we thought again and ended up with artificial intelligence," Filip continues.
"Then you have two options. Either you attract data scientists and mathematicians, but bringing those profiles in house was not feasible for us. Or you look for a solution with a low setup cost. That's how we came across Trendskout's platform".
"Trendskout's proof of concept in particular made an immediate impression. In that first phase, the data was already at least as good as our Excel. We delivered data and they immediately turned in an initial GAP analysis. That was not yet 100% correct, but then we knew that Trendskout's platform was the right solution for Sidem," says Filip from Sidem.
How Trendskout approached this case
"We initially had an introductory meeting. In it, we explained to Sidem the functioning of the Trendskout platform," said Pauwel Grepdon, co-founder of Trendskout. "Such an introductory meeting allows us to present all the analyses to be deployed and match them with the potential cases." "Around the selected cases, we organise a very concrete demo. Then we show from A to Z how the applications can be set up on the platform".
Pauwel and the team at Trendskout then prepared for the next step. "Setting up a proof of concept or trail around some specific cases started with an intake meeting. This allowed us to focus on the cases and map out the data architecture. Soon, we could then submit outputs to the client for evaluation."
If a positive evaluation follows this, the case can be put into production. All systems will then be seamlessly integrated. In this case, the ERP package on the one hand and the client portals on the other. Once the Trendskout platform is active for one case, Trendskout will look, together with the client, for other cases where the platform can provide added value. "That's the beauty of Trendskout. You pay for using the platform. It doesn't matter how many cases you use the platform for afterwards. You can experiment with it indefinitely," Pauwel concludes.
The results
The output of the platform for Sidem kept improving. Meanwhile, even more dimensions were added. Something that would have been unfeasible with Excel. Every quarter, data is now sent to the Trendskout platform and they then push the output to the customer portals. Now Sidem has a complete process that requires very little work. At 8 weeks, this process was fully operational. That's 80% faster compared to an in-house team of data scientist and also much cheaper.
Also get started with Trendskout
Want to see our platform at work with your own eyes? Looking for a solution like the one we built for Sidem? You can, we give personalised demos. All you need for that is a dataset of your own data. Book a demo and we'll explain it all to you.
