Startup of the month: haidi

Today it is our pleasure to interview Romain Blaser, CEO and co-founder of Haidi.

Romain, to start things off, please give us a short overview about Haidi?

Haidi is a supply chain planning platform designed to solve end-to-end problems so companies can cope with dynamic and uncertain environments.

Typically isolated functions such as demand, inventory, and supply planning are connected under the same engine. Users can have a more comprehensive view of how every decision impacts the value chain.

Haidi is driven by artificial intelligence and simplicity. AI can balance efficiency, resilience, and uncertainty in simulations and generate an optimal plan for different time horizons. However, its adoption relies only on its explainability. This is why Haidi remains simple, to build confidence and trust to organizations and users.

Tell us a bit about the founding story of Haidi. When and how was it born?

Three main events triggered Haidi, born in the summer of 2020.

Some years back, I worked on the design of a supply chain planning process with a company having two manufacturing sites and a network of three warehouses. The process was defined, and the time came to select suitable software. It had proven difficult to find a solution that was implementable without too much impact on resources and lengthy projects.

In collaboration with a French boutique consulting firm. I was helping them develop and commercialize a preconfigured solution using SAP, minimising the onboarding time of potential new clients.

During my self-proclaimed paternity leave, I attended an MIT Course on AI during my newborn’s naps. I quickly came to the realization that AI is accessible and applicable to supply chain planning.

It is when the idea of creating a SAAS model for Supply Chain Planning for SMEs started

..and you moved forward together with a co-founder from there, right?

Yes, Pablo and I are the founders of Haidi. We met for the first time during a supply chain planning transformation project we worked together on for a client.

After some months of work, I decided to share my thoughts on Haidi. Pablo was immediately carried away by the idea. As soon as he had the opportunity, he joined me on this journey.

As you noticed, we both have similar backgrounds. I have 20+ years of experience in supply chain and have been a partner at a top consulting firm. Similar to him, with 6+ years of experience in consulting and excellent progression.

What makes Pablo and I “click” and why I am honoured to work with him is that we are 2 widely different personalities that match together to form a perfect SCM duo-brain. A very methodical, organized and thorough person mixed with me; a creative type, full of ideas and much more impulsive.

Let’s get bak to the solution itself: which probem do you solve for your customers?

What we offer to our customers is two things:

First, we offer an alternative to the duality: planning on excel sheets (with all the prone to error that entails) or embarking on a transformation journey that will compromise a huge amount of time, resources, and money. Usually, in these large transformations, the end-state vision is clear, but it is less obvious where to start and how to get there. In many cases, organizations face never-ending implementations because of software’s massive complexity. The result is limited impact, difficulty to scale up, and a big risk to go back to spreadsheet-based tools.

Second, focusing on SMEs, we offer them an intelligent way forward to navigate the planning complexity. While large corporations can embrace intelligent supply chain planning approaches that use data, AI, and analytics, most SMEs have yet to implement such approaches, leaving a serious gap in their planning capabilities. Haidi closes that gap by democratizing access to modern supply chain management software.

What would you describe as the secret sauce of Haidi?

At Haidi, we look for simplicity and effectiveness.

With only 2 data points, Haidi connects various supply chain functions to operate as one and creates the foundation to unlock new performance levels as the changes build momentum.

Who are typically your target customers? Can you describe us your ideal customer profile?

We have an objective and a passionate answer to that.

The objective answer is that any company requiring transport, production, or purchasing goods is a good fit. Concretely if they are SMEs or start-ups from 50 to 5.000 in headcount, we believe intelligent supply chain management software for SMEs is an untapped market.

The passionate answer is that we look for innovative partners who believe human judgment is better when supported by AI technology and strive to grow sustainably.

How does the implementation of Haidi work? What are the data sources you need and what needs to be provided by your customers?

The implementation of Haidi is fast and made in 3 steps to ensure maximum adoption of the solution:

1) On-Boarding: The new customer & a Haidi process expert define together the key decisions for their supply chain and identify the data mapping.

2) Fitting & Training: Haidi is fitted to key decisions agreed upon. Process is trained theoretically and run with Haidi to ensure a hand on approach.

3) Hand Holding: To ensure the process is followed, we don’t simply deliver a software and go home. We stay with you for three planning cycles to ensure maximum impact.

From a data perspective, we require only 2 data points to get started. Opening Inventory and Sales History makes the workload for implementation significantly lower.

Last but not least, it is crucial for the success of the project that management supports the will to change and improve.

We’re navigating through challenging economic times and the “supply chain crisis” is followed up by the threat of a global recession. Can planning solutions and specifically Haidi help companies through these times?

In these highly difficult times it is important to stay level-headed. Of course easier said than done. With Haidi you are able to confidently navigate your supply chain by gaining full visibility and the ability to simulate impacts of sudden demand changes or shortages of key materials.

Thanks to its AI capacity we can generate a demand plan considering various factors identified from previous crises. It will allow you to detect which products should be further pushed or slowed down. Once the demand plan is in place and validated by management, Haidi will propagate the demand across the entire network up to your suppliers.

While propagating the demand it is important to set buffer stock against variability. This is also a step that Haidi generates for you by considering demand and supply variability.

This entire process gives you the visibility you need to anticipate issues and use exception messages to easily detect actions required.

Haidi is not having a magic ball “yet”, but can certainly give you the confidence you need to navigate your value chain and make informed decisions.

Organizations’ supply chains are accounting for more than 90% of the greenhouse gas emission of the planet. Can Haidi also contribute to decreasing this trend?

Concretely Haidi helps organizations tackle the sustainability problem at the source and not the end of the value chain.

Haidi will help organizations to plan better ahead of time and directly impact the triple bottom line.

Planet

– Decreasing the consumption of scarce resources: Every product that is not transformed is having an impact.

-Limiting the transportation of unnecessary goods and focusing on the right stuff. From Containers to last-mile delivery

– Limiting the exponential growth of storage facilities eating up precious land

People

– Freeing up your employees from non-added value activities

– Allowing them to focus on what matters the most, thus empowering them

– Limiting stress and burnout

– In the long term reducing pressure on staff extracting raw materials

Profit

– Improving the top line by selling more of the right stuff

– Improving the bottom line by Procuring, Producing and Storing less of the bad stuff

We are at the beginning of the journey, but we can already clearly identify the trends and the impacts for the customers running with Haidi.

Are there quick wins or recommendations you have for SMEs that struggle with uncertain demand on the one hand but at the same time have to optimize working capital and deal with volatile delivery times on the supply side? Where to start planning?

The increasing uncertainty and the need to adapt to rapidly changing markets have proved that not taking any steps toward technology modernization is not an option. At the same time, there are so many capabilities to improve that starting a supply chain transformation can feel daunting. From Haidi we always give the same piece of advice to our customers:

1) Define your end goal and get started small, identifying an appropriate business opportunity. One problem at a time.

2) Stop creating multiple sources of truth, thus minimizing data reconciliation. Efforts should be focused on decisions and actions, not typing in data.

3) Understand your supply chain constraints and ensure you frame the right questions for the right horizons.

4) Improve coordination; break the silos between teams and review the plan regularly.

5) Last, establish a couple of performance indicators to measure and create awareness of the success.

Our last point for today: what if people are interested in tryig Haidi? Supply chain planning systems do not run by themselves. They probably need to be integrated to ERPs or some other tools so they can receive, read and send back data. How is Haidi able to do that?

As previously mentioned, Haidi can work with only 2 data points. Haidi is running on the cloud using the AZURE platform. We have engineered advanced API technologies which give us the possibility to connect with various ERPs such as SAP, Odoo, Dynamics and many others. Of course in some cases a good old flat file is perfect for the job. We even read PDFs for some specific needs.

Thank you for the interview Romain! As always in this series, the last words are yours. Anything else you want to tell our readers?

We are currently in the process of raising funds which would allow us to achieve our desired development rate for scalability. In other words, to primarily increase our dev, data science, as well as building a sales team.

You cannot wait to learn more about the future of Supply Chain? Check out our SCM Startups Handbook 2022 where you will discover hundreds of innovative supply chain solutions.

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