Challenge
One of the world’s largest foodservice companies was challenged with managing a poultry manufacturing and distribution network with annual costs in excess of hundreds of millions of dollars. Overseeing this mammoth network was particularly demanding due to on-going volatility in raw material costs and market conditions. The company needed a powerful, collaborative, enterprise-wide process for planning, forecasting, tracking and response.
SCA Technologies was charged to deliver maximum efficiency and cost reduction across the entire supply chain — from commodities to customer. The company’s traditional methods did not offer many of the fundamental processes and planning tools needed to continually analyze, measure, and compare results from different time periods, plants, and suppliers. The client’s annual budgeting and monthly performance review process included other gaps:
- Budgeting process was conducted manually
- Multiple data sources
- Time consuming rounds of data collection, analysis, review and discussions between managers, suppliers, and other groups
- Difficulty tracking and monitoring budgeted costs and identifying variance drivers
Solution
SCA Technologies was engaged to design, develop and implement a new Supplier Budgeting and Quarterly Supplier Performance Review Process.
SCA implemented our hosted enterprise software for cost management and cost optimization that integrates sales forecasts, manufacturing, capacity plan, raw material sourcing, and input prices and new initiatives into a continuous forward looking planning process.
This forward-looking picture provides managers with visibility into upcoming activities, and the ability to track plans against actuals, and respond with updates to their plans to impact the outcome.
The implementation process:
- Business Process Re-Engineering: SCA consultants worked closely with field managers, suppliers and other stakeholders to conduct a full Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) review to understand the company’s business needs, current budgeting processes and identify gaps. The team worked collaboratively to build the appropriate process mapping and prototypes.
- System Implementation: Once system specifications from the BPR were validated and agreed upon, SCA configured the software to meet the client’s needs. SCA then provided comprehensive training on software, reporting, and business processes.
Result
- Reduced product costs by 4% – 6% through better cost monitoring, benchmarking and identifying opportunities
- Standardized process for budgeting & supplier reviews
- Actual & variance reporting across business units and suppliers
- A single, shared data source for budget, forecast and actual financial and operations information
- Standardized supplier benchmarking metrics
- Historical trends and variance analysis across business units and time periods
- Assured Supply: More flexible supply chain to handle demand, product mix and other market changes
- Common platform to upload and review financial and operational information
- Enterprise-wide collaboration broke down silos and provided one version of the truth