About Fluidra

Fluidra is a global leader in pool and wellness equipment. Fluidra’s mission is to create the perfect pool and wellness experience, offering a wide range of products, devices, components, and services.

They currently have around 35 factories, operate in over 45 countries, and employ more than 6,000 people.

Case Overview

• Industry: Consumer goods

• Company size: 5k-10k employees

• Departments using Pipefy: Supply Chain, Data, Purchasing, Engineering, Marketing

• Processes: New Product Development, Products Registration, Supplier Management, Logistics Management, IT Helpdesk, Purchasing

Fluidra’s Challenges

Fluidra has more than 50 years of experience in the pool sector. They currently have a portfolio spanning 15 globally recognized brands. Developing and launching new products involves many departments within Fluidra, like Supply Chain, Engineering, Purchasing, and Marketing.

Previously, Fluidra used a project management tool to manage their new product development process, but it didn’t deliver the flexibility and visibility they needed.

One of the main problems Fluidra had was their previous tool not allowing different teams to run parallel processes simultaneously. One department could only start a step when another one finished, increasing the total time of a new product development cycle.

Also, the previous solution was inflexible and high-code, so the IT team needed to get involved when Fluidra teams required any changes.

The Solution for Gaining Autonomy

In February 2021, Fluidra’s Supply Chain Manager Dan Tipton found and chose Pipefy to centralize their new product development processes. He expected to gain efficiency in the process and autonomy over the platform since he always needed to involve Fluidra’s IT team for simple changes in their previous solution.

After training sessions with Pipefy’s implementation team, Dan and the Supply Chain team could standardize flows and connect the four departments — Logistics, Engineering, Purchasing, and Marketing — with basic automation triggers. One example of their automation is when the Engineering department develops a new product, the Marketing and Purchasing teams can automatically start to plan the product launch and buy the goods to start the production.

After seeing success with this primary process (which includes six parallel processes), Fluidra started to run more request flows with Pipefy, like air freight approvals and helpdesk ticketing.

The Impact: Control, Visualization and Speed

Data visualization is another improvement Fluidra has experienced. Managers can extract reports to measure process indicators, like days to complete each phase of the product development cycle and the total cost of shipping.

Besides the autonomy that Dan Tipton and the Supply Chain team gained, Fluidra started to collect great results after Pipefy’s implementation. Nowadays, leaders can better control their operations, and it’s easy to manage each request and follow up with team members, if necessary.

Pipefy has also positively impacted the Supply Chain team’s main KPIs, such as the time to create a new product and buy new goods. Six months after the Pipefy implementation, the total time to produce and launch a new product decreased 45%, while buying new goods decreased 66% — significantly improving efficiency.

Flexibility is Key for the Future

After solving a specific and complex problem and expanding to more processes, Pipefy is considered a one-stop solution for Fluidra. They experienced and valued the flexibility and autonomy Pipefy offered and wanted to expand its usage to open new opportunities.

Fluidra’s Marketing team is planning to add another process to the main product development flow, and their partnership with Pipefy can expand for more departments.