Accurate FMCG Demand Planning

A Case Study in Supply Chain Analytics
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Our client is a leading food company operating across Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. It has a portfolio of well-known consumer brands in some of the region’s largest grocery categories. Their lead product offering is supported by a large scale distribution network that enables delivery of the company’s products with a limited shelf-life to over 30,000 outlets every day including supermarkets, route outlets and food service customers.

The Challenge

Reducing costs – more specifically, ensuring the sales and distribution is more transparent and waste of goods is eliminated as much as possible, have become key focus areas for our client. 

Our objective was to resolve the key business challenges the organisation was facing:

  • High costs incurred by returned goods.
  • Poor visibility of main KPI values.
  • Lack of correlation between different measures.

The technology challenges included:

  • Multiple SAP Bex queries and data dumps, a lot of effort to get to the single point of truth.
  • Data redundancies and inconsistencies, wrong calculated KPI values.
  • Lack of an automatic report broadcasting process, resulting in tedious and repetitive weekly manual extraction of data from SAP BW and report generation.

The Solution

To help reduce wastage and costs incurred by returned goods, improve short term forecasts and order accuracy and provide better control of supply chain management processes, we worked closely alongside the organisation’s supply chain management team to develop a reporting solution based on SAP BusinessObjects and SAP BW.

We used agile methodology to capture the evolving requirements, develop prototypes and manage incremental releases, focusing on delivery and ensuring the maximum involvement of business users.

The BusinessObjects reporting solution, based on data from existing SAP BW multiproviders, incorporated:

  • KPI Dashboard for senior management.
  • Formatted reports for analysis and data exploration.
  • Granular data for contractors placing orders and delivering goods.

Results

This solution contributed to a significant reduction of waste (and costs) via improved short term forecast and order accuracy. The project has also seen the analysts’ focus shift from generating reports to analysing data and uncovering hidden trends.

On top of better control of supply chain management processes, the development of the reporting package has improved data quality, facilitated more consistent definitions of KPIs and reduced manual processing of data and reports.

Overall, the project demonstrated that a sound reporting system and reporting strategy is as crucial as having data management in place.

    Let’s Talk.

    Analytics8 is an Australian-based analytics, business intelligence and data warehousing consultancy founded in 2002. Our vendor-agnostic team of 60+ consultants has deep expertise and implementation experience. We specialise in design, development and deployment of effective data solutions. 
    Talk to us about how we can improve demand planning accuracy within your business.

    [email protected]

    Sydney: +61 2 9299 4430

    Melbourne: +61 3 8605 4880

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    Sydney:

    Level 4

    350 Kent Street,

    Sydney, NSW, 2000

    +61 2 9299 4430

    Melbourne:

    Level 8,

    350 Collins Street,

    Melbourne, VIC, 3000

    +61 3 8605 4880

    Not based in Australia? Our team in the UK or the US would be happy to help.

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