Groupe HEDIS: turning the order desk into a growth lever, from data entry to selling

Context: 370,000 orders to handle, when data entry holds growth back

Groupe HEDIS, a major player in hygiene product distribution (13 subsidiaries, €175M in revenue), handles between 300,000 and 400,000 orders every year.

Of that volume, close to 80,000 still arrive as emails (PDF, Excel, plain body text), creating an enormous administrative load for the order desk teams.

Facing an increasingly competitive market, leadership decided to stop letting its inside teams burn out on administrative work, and to equip them instead so they could shift back to selling and building loyalty.

Phase 1: the pilot — proof through use

Rather than a large-scale rollout, HEDIS chose to test the solution on a first subsidiary. Concrete results: the share of digital orders jumped from 22% to 54% at the pilot site.

The teams can now absorb heavy volumes or unplanned absences without strain. The rollout to a second subsidiary (Fichot) was completed in just two days.

« The only question worth asking is: what am I risking?
Nothing. The scope I am starting from is narrow. »

— Jean-François Le Rudulier, Group CIO

Phase 2: the order desk at the heart of the growth strategy

From the outset, leadership's vision was to let the role itself evolve.

« There was never any question of bringing in a tool to micro-manage. The intent was to give people tools they could grow with. »

The time freed up is reinvested in upselling, customer proactivity and retention.

The project also involves the HR teams in rethinking job descriptions towards inside sales, creating a new role: customer relationship manager.

Conclusion

HEDIS is not simply digitising its processes. With Catalog, the group is reshaping its own structure to make its commercial floors the spearhead of its future growth.

« We know where we want to go, and we have found the partner to take us there. »