Customer Background

BAUHAUS, established in 1960, is a European DIY specialist in home improvement, gardening, and power tools. With over 280 stores across 19 countries, including more than 150 in Germany, BAUHAUS serves a vast customer base. The company employs over 20,000 individuals, focusing on providing a comprehensive range of products to meet diverse customer needs.

The Challenge

In response to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), BAUHAUS faced the challenge of ensuring conformity with CBAM requirements across its extensive assortment. The complexity was amplified by the need to coordinate among multiple affected BAUHAUS countries, each being responsible for country specific assortments. The required integration of multiple data sources led to significant challenges:

• Time-Consuming Reporting: Gathering accurate emissions data from various business units partners for multiple articles and manual reporting of each single article in the EU-registry were prone to labor-intensive work and delays.

• Duplicated Efforts: Overlapping data among BAUHAUS countries may result in redundant work, increasing the workload for suppliers and internal teams.

• Lack of understanding: Many suppliers lacked knowledge on calculating and providing the requested emissions data.

The target of BAUHAUS was to define efficient procedures that ensure high data quality and transparency.

The Solution

To address these pressing needs, BAUHAUS partnered with Prospeum to develop a tailored solution for procedures regarding CBAM. The collaboration focused on creating an automated, centralized system that could seamlessly integrate with BAUHAUS's existing infrastructure. Key aspects of the implementation included:

• Automated Data Collection: Prospeum’s platform streamlined the gathering of emissions data across all BAUHAUS countries, reducing manual effort of 30h per report (on average), as well as the reporting in the EU-registry (by an upload of a supporting XML-file), and minimizing the risks of errors.

• Centralized Management: A unified system was established to oversee CBAM data for all entities, ensuring consistency and simplifying oversight by allocating data automatically and displaying several analytical dashboards.

• Supplier Support and Training: Prospeum provided resources and guidance to suppliers, assisting them in understanding the requirements, calculating and reporting accurate emissions data to BAUHAUS.

The implementation process was collaborative, with BAUHAUS and Prospeum co-engineering the CBAM features to ensure the solution met specific regulatory requirements and operational needs.

The Results

The partnership lead to significant work flows that ensure high efficiency, data quality and transparency:

• Elimination of Manual Data Collection: The automated system eradicated the need for manual data gathering, streamlining the processes.

• Centralized Oversight Across All Entities: With a unified platform, BAUHAUS achieved consistent CBAM procedures, reducing the risk of discrepancies and ensuring adherence to all requirements.

• Automated Reporting for Extensive Assortment: The solution enabled automated reporting for over 300+ affected articles (referring to the start of the transition period), ensuring accuracy and efficiency.

• Significant Time Savings: Each report generation saves approximately 30 hours, compared to a manual approach, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

“Partnering with Prospeum has supported our approach to comply with requirements regarding CBAM right from the start. The automation and the centralized system streamlined processes empowering our suppliers with the tools they need.”

Oliver Koopmann, Head of Sustainability

Conclusion

This success story exemplifies how Prospeum’s innovative solutions can address complex regulatory challenges, delivering measurable business impacts. By automating and centralizing processes, companies like BAUHAUS can enhance efficiency, reduce operational burdens, and ensure adherence to evolving regulations.