A UK manufacturing, wholesale and retail organisation wished to maintain competitive, increase its revenues and expand its retail footprint, but was being held back by inefficiencies in the supply chains, a lack of digitisation and difficulty meeting precise customer demand.
Challenges
The client organisation is privately owned, longstanding and commercially successful, but wished to ensure it was set up for future trading, and was able to take better advantage of technology support. Some key processes were still paper based, and whilst the business operations worked well under existing processes, it wished to improve the currency of management information on demand, increase agility to meet this demand and improve the connectivity of business units within its supply chain, making better use of automation and operational data.
Approach
Coeus was engaged to provide independent end-to-end expertise in ERP sourcing and in delivering large-scale change. This involved a full refresh of business requirements, including those related to the future direction of its businesses; to assess the software market for relevant solutions and systems integrators; to lead the Request for Proposal sourcing activities over the course of 8 months’ engagement (which is still ongoing) and to help drive the identified benefits through programme and supplier and vendor management, handing over to the client's staff.
Supply Chains
Business units were given autonomy, and were being run efficiently in silos, but the company was not taking full advantage of synergies across the procurement – manufacturing – wholesale - retail product lifecycle. Coeus led the creation of a business case predicated on achieving better synergies between parts of its businesses, and the organization created a supply chain lead role to oversee the achievement of benefits.
Digitisation
All software packaged functionality was mapped directly to the underlying business requirements to demonstrate the best match to the client’s requirements, with vendors also asked about future direction, development, innovation and enhancements.
Improved Information flows
Previously manual processes would be automated, which had the deepest impact in the retail stores, freeing up staff time to focus on customer-facing activities. The semi-automated processing and reporting was also improved.
Outcomes
Coeus provided clear advice around technical (cloud versus on-premise) ownership of the solution versus subscription, and the potential risks and benefits accruing which would need to be managed.
Coeus also provided advice and guidance around commercial and negotiation approaches and retaining a competitive environment as the procurement progresses.
Lastly, the deliverables from Coeus were designed to allow the customer organisation to take ownership of its vendor management and drive best value from the third parties engaged.
Anticipated benefits
The benefits for the client include improved revenues, decreased operational costs, improved understanding of near real time demand and supply metrics and statistics, and therefore improved planning.
The technology sourcing element will be complemented by changed business processes in order to take full advantage of packaged functionality, and integration of different business units across the procurement – manufacturing – wholesale – retail journey.
Coeus continues to work with the organisation as it moves through its transformation journey through 2022.
To find out more about Coeus' Consumer Products & Retail capabilities, read more here.
Please contact us if you would like further information on this project.
