The Beauty of Precision: How Cosmetica Labs Transformed Supply Chain Planning with ketteQ

Managing supply chains effectively is critical for cosmetics manufacturers, especially when serving global beauty icons like L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido. For Toronto-based Cosmetica Laboratories Inc., managing rapid changes in inventory requirements, inaccurate forecasting, and manual workflows were creating roadblocks. These challenges drove Cosmetica to seek a smarter, more integrated supply chain planning solution to transform its operations.

That’s why Cosmetica selected ketteQ’s PolymatiQ™-powered adaptive supply chain solution, natively built on Salesforce and powered by AWS, to revolutionize its inventory management and enable next-level planning efficiency.

The Challenge: Outdated Systems, Rising Costs

As a make-to-order contract manufacturer, Cosmetica balances complex workflows, varying lead times for raw materials, material shelf-life constraints, and highly dynamic customer demand. Its reliance on spreadsheets for planning and inventory management led to key challenges:

• Excessive Inventory Costs: Overstocking strained cash flow and drove unnecessary expenses.
• Forecasting Challenges: Manual processes limited Cosmetica’s ability to predict demand accurately.
• Demand Sensing: Limited real-time visibility into customer orders and market shifts made it difficult to adjust production schedules proactively, leading to missed opportunities and inefficiencies
• Reactive supply planning: Tracking multi-level production recipes manually created challenging delays.
• Disconnected Workflows: Lack of alignment between operations and sales teams impacted responsiveness and diluted supply chain professional's productivity.  

The company needed a comprehensive and highly adaptive solution to synchronize planning, reduce costs, and improve delivery timelines—all while integrating seamlessly with its Salesforce ecosystem.

Why Cosmetica Chose ketteQ

After evaluating several options, Cosmetica selected ketteQ for its advanced PolymatiQ™-powered supply chain capabilities and Salesforce-native foundation.

“As supply chains become more complex, businesses must adapt to the next generation of supply chain planning solutions that offer automation, limitless scenario testing, real-time data, scalability, and enhanced collaboration,” said Mike Landry, CEO of ketteQ. “Like many manufacturers, Cosmetica has been challenged by a lack of synchronization between their manufacturing processes and raw materials orders. Our breakthrough solutions streamline workflows, improve demand forecasting, and reduce excessive inventory, making us the preferred choice. Additionally, our solution is built on the Salesforce and AWS platforms, which aligns perfectly with Cosmetica’s existing technology infrastructure."

The Impact: Smarter planning and improved Inventory Management

Cosmetica began its transformation with ketteQ by rolling out demand, inventory, and supply planning solutions. Early results highlight significant improvements:

• Reduced Inventory Costs: Optimized inventory levels, lower carrying costs and free up capital.
• Improved Visibility: Customer order status
• Improved Forecasting: AI-driven analytics ensure alignment between demand and production.
• Increased Productivity: Eliminating manual processes increases planner productivity.
• Faster Fulfillment: Streamlined workflows enable quicker, more reliable deliveries.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Seamless integration with Salesforce promotes real-time data sharing across teams.

Additional solutions, such as Control Tower and Order Management, will provide end-to-end visibility and workflow automation, balancing supply and demand while improving overall efficiency.
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What Cosmetica Has to Say

The results speak for themselves, and Cosmetica’s leadership has already recognized the value of ketteQ’s solutions.

• “ketteQ is truly the next generation of supply chain planning solution that has enabled us to take our supply chain operations to the next generation of sophistication and value delivery,” said Randy Auld, VP of Supply Chain, QA & Sustainability for Cosmetica. “ketteQ’s solutions rid us of a dependency on spreadsheets for inventory planning and enable us to work smarter in ways we could not work before and get the right level of support from a highly experienced team with an approach that is flexible,” Auld added.  

• “From the beginning we have known that we needed ketteQ to improve the scalability of our supply chain operations.  In just six months, we achieved what we believed would take a year: a 50% improvement in planner productivity.”
• “Upgrading to the Tokyo release was very straightforward and fast. Our user community quickly adopted the new capabilities, which are driving even greater financial and productivity results than we had seen before,” said Yasser Mahdy, Director of Supply Chain for Cosmetica
  

Salesforce: The Backbone of Integration

One of the standout features of ketteQ’s platform is its Salesforce-native architecture, which seamlessly integrates sales forecasts into supply chain planning. This connection eliminates silos, enabling real-time data sharing and cross-functional collaboration. Cosmetica, already familiar with Salesforce, saw accelerated adoption and immediate value from this integration. Teams now work in sync, with sales forecasts directly informing inventory planning, reducing disruptions, and improving responsiveness to market needs.

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A Partnership Driving Global Growth

The collaboration between ketteQ and Cosmetica marks a significant step in modernizing supply chain planning. By moving beyond spreadsheets and adopting adaptive solutions powered by Salesforce and AWS, Cosmetica is not only addressing immediate challenges but also building a foundation for sustainable growth.

As Cosmetica continues to serve global beauty brands with precision and agility, ketteQ’s innovative solutions ensure the company stays ahead in an ever-changing market.

To discover the power of adaptive planning, read The Definitive Guide to Adaptive Planning and see how ketteQ helps industry leaders optimize supply chains with AI-driven analytics, real-time visibility, and automation. Read the full Cosmetica case study here.