Harmonizing Operations Across 18 Cooperatives
Coop Estonia comprises of 18 consumer cooperatives operating approximately 320 stores across the country, ranging from hypermarkets to small village stores. Together they hold roughly 23% of the market share. As a cooperative made up of regional organizations, practices and tools have naturally varied over time, with product information and inventory balances managed separately. Coop Estonia noted that this made forecasting and replenishment inconsistent across the network.
Coop Estonia needed an approach that respected local preferences while centralizing key supply chain decisions. Achieving this balance was essential to maintain their customer-first cooperative model while improving operational performance.
Building a Foundation for Digital Transformation
Coop Estonia embarked on a comprehensive supply chain transformation, selecting RELEX in 2018 to centralize supply chain planning processes, beginning with forecasting and replenishment for stores. This initial implementation focused on store-level forecasting and replenishment with grocery ordering, which improved automation once foundations were in place.
Coop Estonia gradually expanded into fresh goods ordering, including ultra-fresh products like meat, milk and bakery items, which presented greater challenges due to wide assortments, high cannibalization, and varying sales volumes in typical supermarkets. Recently, Coop implemented DC forecasting and replenishment, completing the end-to-end supply chain automation to help improve availability and reduce manual interventions.
As Coop Estonia continued its transformation, they expanded beyond forecasting and replenishment to take full advantage of RELEX’s unified platform. They implemented promotion planning in 2023 to optimize campaign management and product selection, followed by price optimization in 2025 to enable store-specific, strategy-driven pricing. Because all solutions operate on a single data foundation, with RELEX managing the integrations, Coop Estonia benefits from seamless data sharing across business functions.
Throughout each phase, Coop Estonia emphasized doing foundational work, thoroughly implementing changes in manageable pieces. Each stage of their journey with RELEX was guided by their goal of replacing guesswork with data-driven precision and building a seamless, unified system that every cooperative could rely on. Coop Estonia maintains a strong commitment to RELEX best practices, continuously refining their setup to keep the system evergreen and adaptable to changing needs.
Operational Excellence Through Intelligent Automation
By unifying all cooperatives into one centralized platform, Coop Estonia achieved operational consistency and significant efficiency gains. Automated replenishment now saves 15,000 working hours monthly across the network. The system’s accuracy allowed store teams to trust the automated recommendations, freeing staff to focus on customer engagement and merchandising rather than daily manual ordering.
With RELEX fully operational, Coop Estonia has achieved 95.7% availability in stores across all cooperatives, with minimal intervention. They also reduced inventory levels by 4% in comparable categories while maintaining high availability, and increased DC availability to record levels following the distribution center implementation.
Ultimately, Coop Estonia centralized control over ordering parameters and business rules rather than allowing store-level modifications. Stores can provide feedback when quantities seem incorrect, and then central teams can make the adjustments. This approach maintains system integrity while allowing necessary human intervention.
“Our goal is to build a supply chain that works smarter every year, and RELEX has helped us make that possible,” said Kerli Rõõmus, Supply Chain Director, Coop Estonia. Their consultants brought the expertise and practical knowledge that we needed, worked with us as we redesigned key processes. Those improvements have made a real difference, giving us more control, better visibility, and a clear path to keep raising our service levels across all cooperatives.”
Coop Estonia continues to actively improve their supply chain operations and view RELEX as a strategic partner in this ongoing development. They actively seek opportunities to further enhance their processes and leverage RELEX solutions where they bring the most value. Plans include continuing to further unify the processes between forecasting and replenishment and pricing and promotions, implementing machine learning-based forecasting to improve accuracy, particularly for ultra-fresh products, and expanding supplier collaboration through forecast sharing to improve availability throughout the value chain.
Coop Estonia’s progress shows how a cooperative organization can modernize operations without compromising local service. By standardizing processes, improving data quality, and creating a central planning structure supported by automation, Coop Estonia has positioned itself for long-term, sustainable growth.