2026
Lelas's Move to SAP Systems
Institutionalisation starts with data
A transformation case that handles procurement, sales, stock, finance and corporate decisions in cosmetics and fragrance within a shared framework of data and responsibility. Told from Gökhan Akdağ's management experience at Lelas; it makes no unverified module or ROI claims.
SAP Transformation
Cosmetics & Fragrance
Context
A company's growth rate cannot permanently exceed the capacity of finance, procurement, commercial teams and the board to read reality from the same data.
Where commercial growth meets corporate control
A company can grow in different cities, different sales channels and different countries. But beyond a certain point, the question growth faces changes: next to "How do we sell more?" comes "How do we manage this growth with the same discipline?"
In business models such as fragrance and cosmetics, where product variety, the supply chain, packaging, the commercial channel structure and stock movements all coexist, this distinction matters even more. What makes growth sustainable is not only creating demand; it is making the operation behind that demand traceable, its cost measurable and its management repeatable.
From this perspective, the transition to SAP systems at Lelas represents more than a technology acquisition: it represents commercial growth and corporate control meeting in the same management design.
The business context: in fragrance, scale multiplies operations
Gökhan Akdağ's roughly three and a half years of experience at Lelas brought together brand, sales, retail structuring and digital commerce perspectives. The career narrative highlights a retail scale of 17 countries and around 220 stores, one of the first retail fragrance concept efforts and an e-commerce operation built from scratch.
Having these topics together matters. When a brand grows in a multi-store or multi-market structure, it needs much higher coordination in product definitions, sales channels, prices, stock positioning, reconciliations and reporting timing.
To understand the SAP transition, one must first see the need to bind the operational realities of the company's different units to shared rules. The problem is not always "insufficient software"; most often it is the gap between the speed at which the company grows and the speed at which its processes mature.
An SAP project should be treated as a management model, not an IT investment
The classic trap of ERP projects is this: installing the new system is seen as producing a one-to-one digital copy of old processes. Yet moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system. Keeping an unclear product definition in a bigger database does not increase information quality.
That is why the management meaning of handling workflows under the SAP umbrella consists of three layers:
Data: Consistency of product, supplier, customer, location, price and financial definitions.
Process: Demand turning into an order, the order into a shipment, the shipment into an invoice and the invoice into a management result.
Authority: Clearly defining who transacts, who controls, who approves and who decides on exceptions.
An ERP system's screen can display these three layers; but designing them well is the organisation's responsibility.
Data and Process
Moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system.
End-to-end flow from procurement to collection
In the fragrance and cosmetics business model, the flow to be monitored from a management perspective is not only the moment of sale. An example process backbone:
Demand planning → product / packaging requirements → purchasing and sourcing → goods receipt → warehouse / stock → channel-based order → shipment → invoicing → collection / reconciliation → cost and profitability analysis.
This framework does not by itself mean "this SAP module was installed at Lelas". More important is connecting the handover points between the company's functions to a model of decisions and controls.
A delayed record in the process does not affect only one department. A late purchase confirmation affects the stock view, a wrong goods receipt affects the cost report, a wrong customer grouping affects commercial channel profitability and incomplete financial reconciliation can affect an investment decision.
Master data: the large corporate cost of small inconsistencies
In integrated ERP approaches such as SAP, one of the first conditions of success is a shared data dictionary. If the same product exists under different codes in different systems, if the same customer is classified differently by unit or if warehouse-location definitions are not standard, consolidated reports produce a false clarity.
Therefore, in the process architecture, owners must be defined for fields such as product card, commercial unit, category, channel, customer, supplier, currency, unit of measure, tax and financial account mapping.
For cosmetics and fragrance companies, packaging and product variant discipline also matters. A wrong match of different volumes and packaging attributes can break a wide cost chain from order to return. Batch / lot and quality traceability is also a design topic to be evaluated according to product and regulatory needs; it has not been verified that a specific batch or expiry-date module was installed at Lelas.
Purchasing discipline and supply visibility
A company's purchasing function is not just price negotiation. Being able to source the right quantity at the right time means balancing cash, stock, customer promise and operational capacity.
In an ERP transformation, connecting steps such as purchase requests, order approval, delivery, goods receipt, invoice verification and supplier performance are critical design areas. Through this relationship, management can approach not only "how much did we buy?" but also "which decision did we take with which assumption?".
As supply discipline matures, purchasing moves from a back-office job to a partner of commercial planning.
Warehouse and stock: unsellable product must be as visible as sold product
In multi-channel operations, a stock report is not just a table of physical quantities. The status of products reserved for orders, in transfer, in returns, in quality control or not yet ready for sale directly affects management decisions.
The basic principle here is to evaluate stock quantity together with status. A product may physically sit in the warehouse; that does not mean it is ready for sale in every channel.
In institutionalisation projects such as an SAP transition, stock accuracy is not only the warehouse manager's KPI. It is a shared responsibility in terms of sales promise, customer satisfaction, working capital, lost sales and financial reporting.
Channel, Country and Finance
The most important question is not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Multi-channel: retail, wholesale, distribution and digital commerce
Lelas's retail and international channel experience describes a management need that goes beyond a uniform sales operation. Store sales and the wholesale channel, international orders and digital orders can differ in commercial terms, price discipline, logistics requirements and collection cycles.
The aim of an integrated business model is not to eliminate these differences. It is to make them visible, auditable and comparable. When store profitability and distribution profitability are lost inside the same single indicator, the data may be collected but the manager is weakened.
Therefore channel hierarchy, pricing policy, order management, sales returns, discounts, payment terms and reporting bases should be defined within a shared framework yet in line with each channel's reality.
International growth: one system does not make every country the same
A brand's presence in more than one country requires currency, regulation, tax, distribution, stock visibility, report consolidation and channel performance to be handled separately in commercial management.
But "one system" does not mean "the same process in every market". The core competence is striking the balance between compliance with local requirements and central comparability.
For example, while countries face different currency and pricing realities, deciding with which shared definitions net sales and profitability will be reported is a question top management must answer before software installation. In the Lelas case, the commercial scale of 17 countries is the context for why such data and decision discipline matters; it does not mean SAP was rolled out simultaneously in all 17 countries.
Financial control: from revenue to contribution margin
A common misconception in growing businesses is automatically equating sales growth with economic value growth. Yet a company's real earnings cannot be understood without evaluating revenue, returns, trade discounts, channel costs, logistics load, stock financing and payment-term differences together.
Corporate ERP thinking aims to reduce the delay and disconnect between financial records and commercial activity. A sound analysis makes indicators such as net sales, gross profit, contribution margin, receivables ageing, stock carrying cost and the cash conversion cycle part of the same management discussion.
The most important question is often not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Bringing sales and marketing teams onto the same ground as finance
When marketing focuses on creating more demand, sales on higher volume and finance on cash and margin, teams can work with different definitions of success. This divergence is one of the main sources of corporate friction in fast-growing companies.
The real importance of a corporate ERP transformation for sales and marketing leaders is that campaign decisions are evaluated together with product availability, channel price, stock capacity and real margin.
A product for which demand is created but which is not available is wasted budget in performance marketing. High sales volume with weak collection discipline does not protect profitability. In a multi-channel organisation, growth teams should manage the shared company result, not their own metrics.
Management and Lessons
The strongest sign of institutionalisation is answering the same questions earlier and more accurately as the company grows.
The production, contract manufacturing and quality layer: scope is set by design
In the cosmetics and fragrance ecosystem, depending on a brand's business model, there may be different processes such as production, contract manufacturing, packaging supply, product formulas, quality control, batch tracking or costing. These are areas evaluated in sector ERP design when needed.
This case is particularly careful on one point: since it has not been confirmed which form of production and which SAP production/quality module was used at Lelas, these are not written as implemented applications. Designing ERP well requires defining scope according to the business model the company actually has, not copying another company's module list.
Authority and approval mechanism: the invisible side of institutionalisation
As important as the technical system is the design of accountability. Who takes a purchasing decision? Who can create a price exception? Who can exceed a credit limit? For what reason and with whose approval is a stock correction made? Who closes the financial period? How often does management see these exceptions?
When these are not answered, the company's control mechanism remains in people's memories. A good ERP transformation, on the other hand, makes processes transparent without erasing people's expertise and makes the reasons behind critical decisions recordable.
In a family business and in a growing professional organisation alike, this is the shared principle of institutionalisation: decisions should be understandable, repeatable and auditable independently of their owner.
Change management: the system is installed, habits are transformed
A significant part of the difficulties in transitions to broad systems such as SAP relates more to daily ways of working than to technical screens. People know the old processes; they usually expect the new one to be slower. This resistance cannot be explained by "staff don't understand".
User training should focus not only on transaction steps but on the reasoning. Why is it critical to enter a purchase record on time? How does correctly classifying a return affect finance? Which management report breaks when a channel is assigned wrongly? When employees understand the effect of the new order on the company and on their own work, the transformation can last.
The management task here is to make sure the technology team and process owners build a shared language.
Managing the transition: seeing risks in advance
Control headings proposed for an SAP-like corporate transformation should be handled with this logic:
Defining the critical process inventory and process owners.
Master data cleansing, de-duplication and clarifying data ownership.
Mapping integration touchpoints and data flows between systems.
Testing end-to-end business scenarios from purchasing to collection.
Separating user roles and authorisations.
Reconciling financial opening balances, stock and order records.
Setting up business continuity and rollback plans before go-live.
Classifying first-period error / support requests by root cause.
Connecting the process to a performance dashboard and regular management.
These nine items are given as a methodology checklist; they are not a historical claim that each of these stages was applied in the same order and form in the Lelas project.
KPI framework: how do we measure system success?
In an ERP transition, the software "working" is necessary but not sufficient for success. Indicators that management can measure include:
Order-to-shipment cycle time.
On-time, in-full delivery rate (OTIF).
Stock accuracy rate and stock turnover.
Goods receipt – invoice consistency.
Order and invoice exception rate.
Customer and supplier master data error rate.
Financial close and reconciliation time.
Days sales outstanding (DSO) and receivables ageing.
Visibility of channel-based contribution margin.
User training completion and process adoption rate.
Frequency of off-system manual work / Excel corrections.
The metrics here are a design and measurement framework. Since there are no verified before–after figures or savings/ROI rates for the Lelas SAP transition, no percentage of success has been invented.
Separating the scale of the career period from the effect of the ERP
The roughly 220 stores, 17 countries and e-commerce built from scratch mentioned in Gökhan Akdağ's Lelas experience carry great strategic importance. They provide a broad management context in terms of retail expansion, commercial reach and digitalisation.
However, none of these figures should be interpreted as a direct output of the SAP project or as the number of business units in which SAP was completed. The independent success of an ERP transformation can only be shown with measured business data in the relevant project reports.
Separating career achievement from the effect of a single technology project increases the credibility of the case narrative.
The real lesson from this experience: the balance between scale, standards and flexibility
The core idea that makes the SAP transition at Lelas meaningful is this: a company that wants to grow should not mistake standardisation for the enemy of creativity. The right process standard reduces the daily operation's dependence on individuals and opens room for commercial teams to make better decisions.
A central system does not force every market, store or channel to resemble each other. On the contrary, it should make it possible to read the cost, risk and performance of differences within a shared framework.
ERP does not answer all of an organisation's questions. But if designed correctly, it makes it possible to ask this question more honestly: is the place where the company grows really the same as the place where it creates value?
Gökhan Akdağ's perspective
"Institutionalisation is not about writing more procedures. It is about being able to build a shared reality about the company's money, products and commercial decisions. The real power of ERP emerges when decision discipline is built on top of this shared reality."
This statement is an editorial assessment written for this case; it is not a verbatim quote from a past interview.
Which companies can it guide?
This case is especially relevant for cosmetics and fragrance brands, companies managing multi-channel sales networks, manufacturers and commercial businesses facing data integrity problems as they grow, management teams planning institutionalisation in family businesses and leaders who do not want to see ERP projects merely as technology implementations.
Final word: The strongest sign of institutionalisation is a company being able to answer the same questions earlier and more accurately, not later, as it grows.
Related reading and contact
Related case: Zeki Triko's Transition to Nebim ERP
Frequently Asked Questions
What business need does Lelas's move to SAP represent?
The need to handle data consistency, financial visibility, order–stock–shipment coordination and corporate responsibility design within the same management framework during multi-channel, multi-market growth.
Is moving to SAP only an accounting project?
No. A corporate ERP approach addresses the relationship between procurement, product, stock, sales, shipment and finance. However, exactly which SAP modules were used at Lelas has not been verified.
What are the most critical ERP areas for cosmetics and fragrance companies?
Depending on the business model, product/packaging master data, procurement, stock status, distribution, channel-based pricing, collections, cost, quality and traceability may be priorities.
What is the most critical management decision in a multi-country ERP setup?
Creating comparable product, cost, sales and finance definitions at the centre while preserving local regulatory and channel differences.
What exact savings or growth rate did the SAP transition deliver at Lelas?
No verified savings or ROI value based on project-specific before–after measurements has been shared. The store and country scale of the career period is not presented as a result of SAP alone.
Who should own an ERP project?
Top management, process owners, finance and technology teams should own it together. Technical installation and the transformation of business decisions and employee behaviour are different but interconnected responsibilities.
More Works
(Gökhan Akdağ)
©2026
FAQ
01
What does GA Consulting do?
02
What is your approach?
03
How do projects progress?
04
What is your focus?
05
Which areas do you work in?
06
What value does it create for companies?
07
Which companies is it right for?
08
How long until a project delivers results?
2026
Lelas's Move to SAP Systems
Institutionalisation starts with data
A transformation case that handles procurement, sales, stock, finance and corporate decisions in cosmetics and fragrance within a shared framework of data and responsibility. Told from Gökhan Akdağ's management experience at Lelas; it makes no unverified module or ROI claims.
SAP Transformation
Cosmetics & Fragrance
Context
A company's growth rate cannot permanently exceed the capacity of finance, procurement, commercial teams and the board to read reality from the same data.
Where commercial growth meets corporate control
A company can grow in different cities, different sales channels and different countries. But beyond a certain point, the question growth faces changes: next to "How do we sell more?" comes "How do we manage this growth with the same discipline?"
In business models such as fragrance and cosmetics, where product variety, the supply chain, packaging, the commercial channel structure and stock movements all coexist, this distinction matters even more. What makes growth sustainable is not only creating demand; it is making the operation behind that demand traceable, its cost measurable and its management repeatable.
From this perspective, the transition to SAP systems at Lelas represents more than a technology acquisition: it represents commercial growth and corporate control meeting in the same management design.
The business context: in fragrance, scale multiplies operations
Gökhan Akdağ's roughly three and a half years of experience at Lelas brought together brand, sales, retail structuring and digital commerce perspectives. The career narrative highlights a retail scale of 17 countries and around 220 stores, one of the first retail fragrance concept efforts and an e-commerce operation built from scratch.
Having these topics together matters. When a brand grows in a multi-store or multi-market structure, it needs much higher coordination in product definitions, sales channels, prices, stock positioning, reconciliations and reporting timing.
To understand the SAP transition, one must first see the need to bind the operational realities of the company's different units to shared rules. The problem is not always "insufficient software"; most often it is the gap between the speed at which the company grows and the speed at which its processes mature.
An SAP project should be treated as a management model, not an IT investment
The classic trap of ERP projects is this: installing the new system is seen as producing a one-to-one digital copy of old processes. Yet moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system. Keeping an unclear product definition in a bigger database does not increase information quality.
That is why the management meaning of handling workflows under the SAP umbrella consists of three layers:
Data: Consistency of product, supplier, customer, location, price and financial definitions.
Process: Demand turning into an order, the order into a shipment, the shipment into an invoice and the invoice into a management result.
Authority: Clearly defining who transacts, who controls, who approves and who decides on exceptions.
An ERP system's screen can display these three layers; but designing them well is the organisation's responsibility.
Data and Process
Moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system.
End-to-end flow from procurement to collection
In the fragrance and cosmetics business model, the flow to be monitored from a management perspective is not only the moment of sale. An example process backbone:
Demand planning → product / packaging requirements → purchasing and sourcing → goods receipt → warehouse / stock → channel-based order → shipment → invoicing → collection / reconciliation → cost and profitability analysis.
This framework does not by itself mean "this SAP module was installed at Lelas". More important is connecting the handover points between the company's functions to a model of decisions and controls.
A delayed record in the process does not affect only one department. A late purchase confirmation affects the stock view, a wrong goods receipt affects the cost report, a wrong customer grouping affects commercial channel profitability and incomplete financial reconciliation can affect an investment decision.
Master data: the large corporate cost of small inconsistencies
In integrated ERP approaches such as SAP, one of the first conditions of success is a shared data dictionary. If the same product exists under different codes in different systems, if the same customer is classified differently by unit or if warehouse-location definitions are not standard, consolidated reports produce a false clarity.
Therefore, in the process architecture, owners must be defined for fields such as product card, commercial unit, category, channel, customer, supplier, currency, unit of measure, tax and financial account mapping.
For cosmetics and fragrance companies, packaging and product variant discipline also matters. A wrong match of different volumes and packaging attributes can break a wide cost chain from order to return. Batch / lot and quality traceability is also a design topic to be evaluated according to product and regulatory needs; it has not been verified that a specific batch or expiry-date module was installed at Lelas.
Purchasing discipline and supply visibility
A company's purchasing function is not just price negotiation. Being able to source the right quantity at the right time means balancing cash, stock, customer promise and operational capacity.
In an ERP transformation, connecting steps such as purchase requests, order approval, delivery, goods receipt, invoice verification and supplier performance are critical design areas. Through this relationship, management can approach not only "how much did we buy?" but also "which decision did we take with which assumption?".
As supply discipline matures, purchasing moves from a back-office job to a partner of commercial planning.
Warehouse and stock: unsellable product must be as visible as sold product
In multi-channel operations, a stock report is not just a table of physical quantities. The status of products reserved for orders, in transfer, in returns, in quality control or not yet ready for sale directly affects management decisions.
The basic principle here is to evaluate stock quantity together with status. A product may physically sit in the warehouse; that does not mean it is ready for sale in every channel.
In institutionalisation projects such as an SAP transition, stock accuracy is not only the warehouse manager's KPI. It is a shared responsibility in terms of sales promise, customer satisfaction, working capital, lost sales and financial reporting.
Channel, Country and Finance
The most important question is not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Multi-channel: retail, wholesale, distribution and digital commerce
Lelas's retail and international channel experience describes a management need that goes beyond a uniform sales operation. Store sales and the wholesale channel, international orders and digital orders can differ in commercial terms, price discipline, logistics requirements and collection cycles.
The aim of an integrated business model is not to eliminate these differences. It is to make them visible, auditable and comparable. When store profitability and distribution profitability are lost inside the same single indicator, the data may be collected but the manager is weakened.
Therefore channel hierarchy, pricing policy, order management, sales returns, discounts, payment terms and reporting bases should be defined within a shared framework yet in line with each channel's reality.
International growth: one system does not make every country the same
A brand's presence in more than one country requires currency, regulation, tax, distribution, stock visibility, report consolidation and channel performance to be handled separately in commercial management.
But "one system" does not mean "the same process in every market". The core competence is striking the balance between compliance with local requirements and central comparability.
For example, while countries face different currency and pricing realities, deciding with which shared definitions net sales and profitability will be reported is a question top management must answer before software installation. In the Lelas case, the commercial scale of 17 countries is the context for why such data and decision discipline matters; it does not mean SAP was rolled out simultaneously in all 17 countries.
Financial control: from revenue to contribution margin
A common misconception in growing businesses is automatically equating sales growth with economic value growth. Yet a company's real earnings cannot be understood without evaluating revenue, returns, trade discounts, channel costs, logistics load, stock financing and payment-term differences together.
Corporate ERP thinking aims to reduce the delay and disconnect between financial records and commercial activity. A sound analysis makes indicators such as net sales, gross profit, contribution margin, receivables ageing, stock carrying cost and the cash conversion cycle part of the same management discussion.
The most important question is often not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Bringing sales and marketing teams onto the same ground as finance
When marketing focuses on creating more demand, sales on higher volume and finance on cash and margin, teams can work with different definitions of success. This divergence is one of the main sources of corporate friction in fast-growing companies.
The real importance of a corporate ERP transformation for sales and marketing leaders is that campaign decisions are evaluated together with product availability, channel price, stock capacity and real margin.
A product for which demand is created but which is not available is wasted budget in performance marketing. High sales volume with weak collection discipline does not protect profitability. In a multi-channel organisation, growth teams should manage the shared company result, not their own metrics.
Management and Lessons
The strongest sign of institutionalisation is answering the same questions earlier and more accurately as the company grows.
The production, contract manufacturing and quality layer: scope is set by design
In the cosmetics and fragrance ecosystem, depending on a brand's business model, there may be different processes such as production, contract manufacturing, packaging supply, product formulas, quality control, batch tracking or costing. These are areas evaluated in sector ERP design when needed.
This case is particularly careful on one point: since it has not been confirmed which form of production and which SAP production/quality module was used at Lelas, these are not written as implemented applications. Designing ERP well requires defining scope according to the business model the company actually has, not copying another company's module list.
Authority and approval mechanism: the invisible side of institutionalisation
As important as the technical system is the design of accountability. Who takes a purchasing decision? Who can create a price exception? Who can exceed a credit limit? For what reason and with whose approval is a stock correction made? Who closes the financial period? How often does management see these exceptions?
When these are not answered, the company's control mechanism remains in people's memories. A good ERP transformation, on the other hand, makes processes transparent without erasing people's expertise and makes the reasons behind critical decisions recordable.
In a family business and in a growing professional organisation alike, this is the shared principle of institutionalisation: decisions should be understandable, repeatable and auditable independently of their owner.
Change management: the system is installed, habits are transformed
A significant part of the difficulties in transitions to broad systems such as SAP relates more to daily ways of working than to technical screens. People know the old processes; they usually expect the new one to be slower. This resistance cannot be explained by "staff don't understand".
User training should focus not only on transaction steps but on the reasoning. Why is it critical to enter a purchase record on time? How does correctly classifying a return affect finance? Which management report breaks when a channel is assigned wrongly? When employees understand the effect of the new order on the company and on their own work, the transformation can last.
The management task here is to make sure the technology team and process owners build a shared language.
Managing the transition: seeing risks in advance
Control headings proposed for an SAP-like corporate transformation should be handled with this logic:
Defining the critical process inventory and process owners.
Master data cleansing, de-duplication and clarifying data ownership.
Mapping integration touchpoints and data flows between systems.
Testing end-to-end business scenarios from purchasing to collection.
Separating user roles and authorisations.
Reconciling financial opening balances, stock and order records.
Setting up business continuity and rollback plans before go-live.
Classifying first-period error / support requests by root cause.
Connecting the process to a performance dashboard and regular management.
These nine items are given as a methodology checklist; they are not a historical claim that each of these stages was applied in the same order and form in the Lelas project.
KPI framework: how do we measure system success?
In an ERP transition, the software "working" is necessary but not sufficient for success. Indicators that management can measure include:
Order-to-shipment cycle time.
On-time, in-full delivery rate (OTIF).
Stock accuracy rate and stock turnover.
Goods receipt – invoice consistency.
Order and invoice exception rate.
Customer and supplier master data error rate.
Financial close and reconciliation time.
Days sales outstanding (DSO) and receivables ageing.
Visibility of channel-based contribution margin.
User training completion and process adoption rate.
Frequency of off-system manual work / Excel corrections.
The metrics here are a design and measurement framework. Since there are no verified before–after figures or savings/ROI rates for the Lelas SAP transition, no percentage of success has been invented.
Separating the scale of the career period from the effect of the ERP
The roughly 220 stores, 17 countries and e-commerce built from scratch mentioned in Gökhan Akdağ's Lelas experience carry great strategic importance. They provide a broad management context in terms of retail expansion, commercial reach and digitalisation.
However, none of these figures should be interpreted as a direct output of the SAP project or as the number of business units in which SAP was completed. The independent success of an ERP transformation can only be shown with measured business data in the relevant project reports.
Separating career achievement from the effect of a single technology project increases the credibility of the case narrative.
The real lesson from this experience: the balance between scale, standards and flexibility
The core idea that makes the SAP transition at Lelas meaningful is this: a company that wants to grow should not mistake standardisation for the enemy of creativity. The right process standard reduces the daily operation's dependence on individuals and opens room for commercial teams to make better decisions.
A central system does not force every market, store or channel to resemble each other. On the contrary, it should make it possible to read the cost, risk and performance of differences within a shared framework.
ERP does not answer all of an organisation's questions. But if designed correctly, it makes it possible to ask this question more honestly: is the place where the company grows really the same as the place where it creates value?
Gökhan Akdağ's perspective
"Institutionalisation is not about writing more procedures. It is about being able to build a shared reality about the company's money, products and commercial decisions. The real power of ERP emerges when decision discipline is built on top of this shared reality."
This statement is an editorial assessment written for this case; it is not a verbatim quote from a past interview.
Which companies can it guide?
This case is especially relevant for cosmetics and fragrance brands, companies managing multi-channel sales networks, manufacturers and commercial businesses facing data integrity problems as they grow, management teams planning institutionalisation in family businesses and leaders who do not want to see ERP projects merely as technology implementations.
Final word: The strongest sign of institutionalisation is a company being able to answer the same questions earlier and more accurately, not later, as it grows.
Related reading and contact
Related case: Zeki Triko's Transition to Nebim ERP
Frequently Asked Questions
What business need does Lelas's move to SAP represent?
The need to handle data consistency, financial visibility, order–stock–shipment coordination and corporate responsibility design within the same management framework during multi-channel, multi-market growth.
Is moving to SAP only an accounting project?
No. A corporate ERP approach addresses the relationship between procurement, product, stock, sales, shipment and finance. However, exactly which SAP modules were used at Lelas has not been verified.
What are the most critical ERP areas for cosmetics and fragrance companies?
Depending on the business model, product/packaging master data, procurement, stock status, distribution, channel-based pricing, collections, cost, quality and traceability may be priorities.
What is the most critical management decision in a multi-country ERP setup?
Creating comparable product, cost, sales and finance definitions at the centre while preserving local regulatory and channel differences.
What exact savings or growth rate did the SAP transition deliver at Lelas?
No verified savings or ROI value based on project-specific before–after measurements has been shared. The store and country scale of the career period is not presented as a result of SAP alone.
Who should own an ERP project?
Top management, process owners, finance and technology teams should own it together. Technical installation and the transformation of business decisions and employee behaviour are different but interconnected responsibilities.
More Works
(Gökhan Akdağ)
©2026
FAQ
01
What does GA Consulting do?
02
What is your approach?
03
How do projects progress?
04
What is your focus?
05
Which areas do you work in?
06
What value does it create for companies?
07
Which companies is it right for?
08
How long until a project delivers results?
2026
Lelas's Move to SAP Systems
Institutionalisation starts with data
A transformation case that handles procurement, sales, stock, finance and corporate decisions in cosmetics and fragrance within a shared framework of data and responsibility. Told from Gökhan Akdağ's management experience at Lelas; it makes no unverified module or ROI claims.
SAP Transformation
Cosmetics & Fragrance
Context
A company's growth rate cannot permanently exceed the capacity of finance, procurement, commercial teams and the board to read reality from the same data.
Where commercial growth meets corporate control
A company can grow in different cities, different sales channels and different countries. But beyond a certain point, the question growth faces changes: next to "How do we sell more?" comes "How do we manage this growth with the same discipline?"
In business models such as fragrance and cosmetics, where product variety, the supply chain, packaging, the commercial channel structure and stock movements all coexist, this distinction matters even more. What makes growth sustainable is not only creating demand; it is making the operation behind that demand traceable, its cost measurable and its management repeatable.
From this perspective, the transition to SAP systems at Lelas represents more than a technology acquisition: it represents commercial growth and corporate control meeting in the same management design.
The business context: in fragrance, scale multiplies operations
Gökhan Akdağ's roughly three and a half years of experience at Lelas brought together brand, sales, retail structuring and digital commerce perspectives. The career narrative highlights a retail scale of 17 countries and around 220 stores, one of the first retail fragrance concept efforts and an e-commerce operation built from scratch.
Having these topics together matters. When a brand grows in a multi-store or multi-market structure, it needs much higher coordination in product definitions, sales channels, prices, stock positioning, reconciliations and reporting timing.
To understand the SAP transition, one must first see the need to bind the operational realities of the company's different units to shared rules. The problem is not always "insufficient software"; most often it is the gap between the speed at which the company grows and the speed at which its processes mature.
An SAP project should be treated as a management model, not an IT investment
The classic trap of ERP projects is this: installing the new system is seen as producing a one-to-one digital copy of old processes. Yet moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system. Keeping an unclear product definition in a bigger database does not increase information quality.
That is why the management meaning of handling workflows under the SAP umbrella consists of three layers:
Data: Consistency of product, supplier, customer, location, price and financial definitions.
Process: Demand turning into an order, the order into a shipment, the shipment into an invoice and the invoice into a management result.
Authority: Clearly defining who transacts, who controls, who approves and who decides on exceptions.
An ERP system's screen can display these three layers; but designing them well is the organisation's responsibility.
Data and Process
Moving a scattered approval mechanism into an electronic environment does not turn it into a good control system.
End-to-end flow from procurement to collection
In the fragrance and cosmetics business model, the flow to be monitored from a management perspective is not only the moment of sale. An example process backbone:
Demand planning → product / packaging requirements → purchasing and sourcing → goods receipt → warehouse / stock → channel-based order → shipment → invoicing → collection / reconciliation → cost and profitability analysis.
This framework does not by itself mean "this SAP module was installed at Lelas". More important is connecting the handover points between the company's functions to a model of decisions and controls.
A delayed record in the process does not affect only one department. A late purchase confirmation affects the stock view, a wrong goods receipt affects the cost report, a wrong customer grouping affects commercial channel profitability and incomplete financial reconciliation can affect an investment decision.
Master data: the large corporate cost of small inconsistencies
In integrated ERP approaches such as SAP, one of the first conditions of success is a shared data dictionary. If the same product exists under different codes in different systems, if the same customer is classified differently by unit or if warehouse-location definitions are not standard, consolidated reports produce a false clarity.
Therefore, in the process architecture, owners must be defined for fields such as product card, commercial unit, category, channel, customer, supplier, currency, unit of measure, tax and financial account mapping.
For cosmetics and fragrance companies, packaging and product variant discipline also matters. A wrong match of different volumes and packaging attributes can break a wide cost chain from order to return. Batch / lot and quality traceability is also a design topic to be evaluated according to product and regulatory needs; it has not been verified that a specific batch or expiry-date module was installed at Lelas.
Purchasing discipline and supply visibility
A company's purchasing function is not just price negotiation. Being able to source the right quantity at the right time means balancing cash, stock, customer promise and operational capacity.
In an ERP transformation, connecting steps such as purchase requests, order approval, delivery, goods receipt, invoice verification and supplier performance are critical design areas. Through this relationship, management can approach not only "how much did we buy?" but also "which decision did we take with which assumption?".
As supply discipline matures, purchasing moves from a back-office job to a partner of commercial planning.
Warehouse and stock: unsellable product must be as visible as sold product
In multi-channel operations, a stock report is not just a table of physical quantities. The status of products reserved for orders, in transfer, in returns, in quality control or not yet ready for sale directly affects management decisions.
The basic principle here is to evaluate stock quantity together with status. A product may physically sit in the warehouse; that does not mean it is ready for sale in every channel.
In institutionalisation projects such as an SAP transition, stock accuracy is not only the warehouse manager's KPI. It is a shared responsibility in terms of sales promise, customer satisfaction, working capital, lost sales and financial reporting.
Channel, Country and Finance
The most important question is not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Multi-channel: retail, wholesale, distribution and digital commerce
Lelas's retail and international channel experience describes a management need that goes beyond a uniform sales operation. Store sales and the wholesale channel, international orders and digital orders can differ in commercial terms, price discipline, logistics requirements and collection cycles.
The aim of an integrated business model is not to eliminate these differences. It is to make them visible, auditable and comparable. When store profitability and distribution profitability are lost inside the same single indicator, the data may be collected but the manager is weakened.
Therefore channel hierarchy, pricing policy, order management, sales returns, discounts, payment terms and reporting bases should be defined within a shared framework yet in line with each channel's reality.
International growth: one system does not make every country the same
A brand's presence in more than one country requires currency, regulation, tax, distribution, stock visibility, report consolidation and channel performance to be handled separately in commercial management.
But "one system" does not mean "the same process in every market". The core competence is striking the balance between compliance with local requirements and central comparability.
For example, while countries face different currency and pricing realities, deciding with which shared definitions net sales and profitability will be reported is a question top management must answer before software installation. In the Lelas case, the commercial scale of 17 countries is the context for why such data and decision discipline matters; it does not mean SAP was rolled out simultaneously in all 17 countries.
Financial control: from revenue to contribution margin
A common misconception in growing businesses is automatically equating sales growth with economic value growth. Yet a company's real earnings cannot be understood without evaluating revenue, returns, trade discounts, channel costs, logistics load, stock financing and payment-term differences together.
Corporate ERP thinking aims to reduce the delay and disconnect between financial records and commercial activity. A sound analysis makes indicators such as net sales, gross profit, contribution margin, receivables ageing, stock carrying cost and the cash conversion cycle part of the same management discussion.
The most important question is often not "which report do we have?" but "which bad habit were we able to stop because of this report?".
Bringing sales and marketing teams onto the same ground as finance
When marketing focuses on creating more demand, sales on higher volume and finance on cash and margin, teams can work with different definitions of success. This divergence is one of the main sources of corporate friction in fast-growing companies.
The real importance of a corporate ERP transformation for sales and marketing leaders is that campaign decisions are evaluated together with product availability, channel price, stock capacity and real margin.
A product for which demand is created but which is not available is wasted budget in performance marketing. High sales volume with weak collection discipline does not protect profitability. In a multi-channel organisation, growth teams should manage the shared company result, not their own metrics.
Management and Lessons
The strongest sign of institutionalisation is answering the same questions earlier and more accurately as the company grows.
The production, contract manufacturing and quality layer: scope is set by design
In the cosmetics and fragrance ecosystem, depending on a brand's business model, there may be different processes such as production, contract manufacturing, packaging supply, product formulas, quality control, batch tracking or costing. These are areas evaluated in sector ERP design when needed.
This case is particularly careful on one point: since it has not been confirmed which form of production and which SAP production/quality module was used at Lelas, these are not written as implemented applications. Designing ERP well requires defining scope according to the business model the company actually has, not copying another company's module list.
Authority and approval mechanism: the invisible side of institutionalisation
As important as the technical system is the design of accountability. Who takes a purchasing decision? Who can create a price exception? Who can exceed a credit limit? For what reason and with whose approval is a stock correction made? Who closes the financial period? How often does management see these exceptions?
When these are not answered, the company's control mechanism remains in people's memories. A good ERP transformation, on the other hand, makes processes transparent without erasing people's expertise and makes the reasons behind critical decisions recordable.
In a family business and in a growing professional organisation alike, this is the shared principle of institutionalisation: decisions should be understandable, repeatable and auditable independently of their owner.
Change management: the system is installed, habits are transformed
A significant part of the difficulties in transitions to broad systems such as SAP relates more to daily ways of working than to technical screens. People know the old processes; they usually expect the new one to be slower. This resistance cannot be explained by "staff don't understand".
User training should focus not only on transaction steps but on the reasoning. Why is it critical to enter a purchase record on time? How does correctly classifying a return affect finance? Which management report breaks when a channel is assigned wrongly? When employees understand the effect of the new order on the company and on their own work, the transformation can last.
The management task here is to make sure the technology team and process owners build a shared language.
Managing the transition: seeing risks in advance
Control headings proposed for an SAP-like corporate transformation should be handled with this logic:
Defining the critical process inventory and process owners.
Master data cleansing, de-duplication and clarifying data ownership.
Mapping integration touchpoints and data flows between systems.
Testing end-to-end business scenarios from purchasing to collection.
Separating user roles and authorisations.
Reconciling financial opening balances, stock and order records.
Setting up business continuity and rollback plans before go-live.
Classifying first-period error / support requests by root cause.
Connecting the process to a performance dashboard and regular management.
These nine items are given as a methodology checklist; they are not a historical claim that each of these stages was applied in the same order and form in the Lelas project.
KPI framework: how do we measure system success?
In an ERP transition, the software "working" is necessary but not sufficient for success. Indicators that management can measure include:
Order-to-shipment cycle time.
On-time, in-full delivery rate (OTIF).
Stock accuracy rate and stock turnover.
Goods receipt – invoice consistency.
Order and invoice exception rate.
Customer and supplier master data error rate.
Financial close and reconciliation time.
Days sales outstanding (DSO) and receivables ageing.
Visibility of channel-based contribution margin.
User training completion and process adoption rate.
Frequency of off-system manual work / Excel corrections.
The metrics here are a design and measurement framework. Since there are no verified before–after figures or savings/ROI rates for the Lelas SAP transition, no percentage of success has been invented.
Separating the scale of the career period from the effect of the ERP
The roughly 220 stores, 17 countries and e-commerce built from scratch mentioned in Gökhan Akdağ's Lelas experience carry great strategic importance. They provide a broad management context in terms of retail expansion, commercial reach and digitalisation.
However, none of these figures should be interpreted as a direct output of the SAP project or as the number of business units in which SAP was completed. The independent success of an ERP transformation can only be shown with measured business data in the relevant project reports.
Separating career achievement from the effect of a single technology project increases the credibility of the case narrative.
The real lesson from this experience: the balance between scale, standards and flexibility
The core idea that makes the SAP transition at Lelas meaningful is this: a company that wants to grow should not mistake standardisation for the enemy of creativity. The right process standard reduces the daily operation's dependence on individuals and opens room for commercial teams to make better decisions.
A central system does not force every market, store or channel to resemble each other. On the contrary, it should make it possible to read the cost, risk and performance of differences within a shared framework.
ERP does not answer all of an organisation's questions. But if designed correctly, it makes it possible to ask this question more honestly: is the place where the company grows really the same as the place where it creates value?
Gökhan Akdağ's perspective
"Institutionalisation is not about writing more procedures. It is about being able to build a shared reality about the company's money, products and commercial decisions. The real power of ERP emerges when decision discipline is built on top of this shared reality."
This statement is an editorial assessment written for this case; it is not a verbatim quote from a past interview.
Which companies can it guide?
This case is especially relevant for cosmetics and fragrance brands, companies managing multi-channel sales networks, manufacturers and commercial businesses facing data integrity problems as they grow, management teams planning institutionalisation in family businesses and leaders who do not want to see ERP projects merely as technology implementations.
Final word: The strongest sign of institutionalisation is a company being able to answer the same questions earlier and more accurately, not later, as it grows.
Related reading and contact
Related case: Zeki Triko's Transition to Nebim ERP
Frequently Asked Questions
What business need does Lelas's move to SAP represent?
The need to handle data consistency, financial visibility, order–stock–shipment coordination and corporate responsibility design within the same management framework during multi-channel, multi-market growth.
Is moving to SAP only an accounting project?
No. A corporate ERP approach addresses the relationship between procurement, product, stock, sales, shipment and finance. However, exactly which SAP modules were used at Lelas has not been verified.
What are the most critical ERP areas for cosmetics and fragrance companies?
Depending on the business model, product/packaging master data, procurement, stock status, distribution, channel-based pricing, collections, cost, quality and traceability may be priorities.
What is the most critical management decision in a multi-country ERP setup?
Creating comparable product, cost, sales and finance definitions at the centre while preserving local regulatory and channel differences.
What exact savings or growth rate did the SAP transition deliver at Lelas?
No verified savings or ROI value based on project-specific before–after measurements has been shared. The store and country scale of the career period is not presented as a result of SAP alone.
Who should own an ERP project?
Top management, process owners, finance and technology teams should own it together. Technical installation and the transformation of business decisions and employee behaviour are different but interconnected responsibilities.
More Works
©2026
FAQ
What does GA Consulting do?
What is your approach?
How do projects progress?
What is your focus?
Which areas do you work in?
What value does it create for companies?
Which companies is it right for?
How long until a project delivers results?