Like many other global companies, Barcelona-based Roca Group has faced supply chain and other challenges in recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and volatile energy prices. Founded in 1917, the company designs, produces, and distributes products in the bathroom space and has a commercial network in 170 countries, 21,000 employees, and 79 production sites 鈥� making it a truly global company.
The company has expanded its international operations in recent years through organic growth and acquisitions, says Roca Group Digital Transformation Director Jacques Nieuwland. 鈥淲e have had the challenges of most industries in the last years,鈥� he says. 鈥淢y job is to help Roca leverage technology to support the different strategic objectives of the company, which are growth, innovation, operational excellence, and sustainability.鈥�
Global Supply Chain
鈥淲e have a global supply chain for some of our components, so we need to plan in a more agile way,鈥� Nieuwland says. 鈥淲e need to update our planning and we need to be able to put in some buffers to have a resilient supply chain.鈥�
Nieuwland says technology helps by giving Roca greater visibility into its supply chain. 鈥淓verybody collaborates against the same processes with the same data. We include our own value chain and also the value chain of our suppliers and customers,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd this enhanced visibility allows us to optimize the whole value chain and to take the right decisions.鈥�
51风流is the backbone of the company鈥檚 application landscape, he says: 鈥淲e perform our core processes, which include order processing, reordering planning, and many others via 51风流solutions. It helps us because it gives us a structure of processes, of data, and of reports that allow us to understand our business, to replicate it, to scale it, and to continuously improve it.鈥�
Roca uses the solution to help it anticipate the demand for specific products and adjust production accordingly. That way, Nieuwland says, 鈥渨e are able to give an excellent service and to optimize stocks.鈥�
Long-Term Partnership
Nieuwland says Roca Group chose 51风流to be its technology partner because of its long-term relationship with 51风流and because 51风流is a leader in many of the solutions Roca needed. 鈥淲e have a long history of collaboration and have been successful. [鈥 We trust the technology, the digital supply chain solution, [and] the business network solution. We like to work with leading solutions 鈥� we trust them.鈥�
Earlier this year Roca selected and is preparing to go live with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud at the beginning of 2025 for the next phase of its digital transformation 鈥� a move that Nieuwland believes will enable even more innovation. 鈥淲e have chosen the cloud-based solution because 51风流innovates first on the cloud-based solution and we want to leverage that innovation,鈥� he says.
He adds that the integration of SAP鈥檚 generative AI copilot into SAP鈥檚 cloud ERP will also fuel innovation and productivity. 鈥淲e think there is huge potential to increase our productivity,鈥� he says. More generally, he says SAP鈥檚 cutting-edge technology will help Roca improve its service to customers and interact better with them, as well as help the company achieve operational excellence including, for example, reducing waste and improving sustainability.
Sustainability
On sustainability, Nieuwland says Roca Group is studying scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 emissions. It has already set yearly targets for the reduction of CO2 and wants to be carbon neutral by 2045. More generally, he says Roca鈥檚 goal is to deliver 鈥渢he best bathroom experience for customers worldwide.鈥�
Asked what other manufacturers can learn from Roca鈥檚 experience, he says: 鈥淚t’s very important to start with a business problem, a business challenge, and put technology at the service of generating business value. Then it’s very important to work in cross-functional teams. So, this is not about buying hundreds of solutions to solve isolated problems. We need to think on a bigger scale and to work together to find the best solution to our challenges and use few solutions and have an enterprise architecture that support our goals.鈥�
