The customer's challenge
The customer's challenge
Over the course of the project, a number of challenges were identified that prevented them from achieving the change desired by the category managers in the Swedish operation. Their culture, team spirit and the high turnover of employees was a major factor in not being able to harmonise responsibilities and roles within the department. Another challenge related to the lack of a proper system support to manage master data for items where the global central team could neither help streamline their existing processes nor give approval to look at a new system support.
Systems before and after
Systems before and after
We identified a variety of manual operations characterised by many excel files used in different ways by the category managers. This caused confusion and a high degree of manual intervention by all to ensure the flow of information between them.
Since a new system support was not relevant for the Swedish category business, we had to support and help create as good structures as possible with what they already had. For example, we managed to standardise the work and structure of a number of different Excel files, we set up new timelines that the category managers could follow together with their suppliers and we also ensured a number of new responsibilities and role descriptions for the team.
Solution
Solution
In their new working day, it was about sticking to the framework set up, delivering information in the right format and time to all stakeholders and maintaining certain ingredient and item information on an ongoing basis to always have relevant data to work with.
Result
Result
Based on 145 GAPs identified during our mapping of their operations, we managed to solve and close up to 70 of them. Of these 145 GAPs, we closed all those that had been prioritised as critical by the project team.
Conclusions
Conclusions
To summarise, we got very good reflections from our client after we were done. A major value that we managed to convey is that it is actually possible to change despite everyone trying to keep their heads above water due to high workloads. The customer has a long way to go, but the fact that we initiated and gave a good start to a journey of change was very important.
We carry out at least 20 different assignments in parallel, which means that our experience bank is developing at a rapid pace. To give you inspiration for projects that can be similar to your current challenges, we share here what we have learnt from others that will benefit you in a future assignment.
What we have done
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Customer case3 min reading timeThe charity that benefited from its investment in NetSuite ERP and was able to streamline and improve its budget process
The client, a large non-profit charitable organisation, had an inefficient and rigid budgeting process that was preventing them from achieving their efficiency goals. By implementing NetSuite ERP and NetSuite Planning and Budgeting (NSPB),... -
Customer case2 min reading timeA market leader in a global petrol and retail group that needed to streamline its supply chain.
During the course of the project, a number of challenges were identified that prevented them from achieving the change desired by the category managers in the Swedish organisation. Their culture, team spirit... -
Customer case1 min reading timeThe electric boat company that wanted to switch to serial production
The company was still a venture capital-funded development company where each new product delivered to the customer had its own technical specification, which discouraged planning, standardisation of components and planning of purchases. It... -
Customer case2 min reading timeThe global engineering consultant who wanted to increase project profitability
The company has had an acquisition-driven strategy for many years and is adept at integrating staff functions and business systems, but along the way had failed to harmonise the delivery process to the customer.... -
Customer case2 min reading timeOperationalising project management in a Nordic construction company to support all project managers through a process-oriented approach.
Their existing business/management system, which is currently on SharePoint, is characterised by thousands of documents containing long routines, policies, large amounts of text and outdated information for those who will be running the projects. This leads... -
Customer case2 min reading timeGuiding two different companies within the same group towards a joint decision on a new business system.
When we started the system procurement with our customer, they had two different business systems, one of which would cease to be supported at the end of next year and the other would need to be upgraded and lifted.... -
Customer case2 min reading timeThe retailer who wanted to implement a deviation management system underpinned by a harmonised approach across all countries in the business.
The customer's business in the workwear, tools and personal protection industry was characterised by decentralised processes, with different countries having different levels of progress in terms of whether a system support was in place to manage and monitor... -
Customer case1 min reading timeCustomer needed to streamline e-commerce with new warehouse management systems
For retailers, as for many other industries, e-commerce has been a clearly growing business in recent years and is becoming increasingly important for the major players in the market. But e-commerce... -
Customer case1 min reading timeThe industrial company that needed to create standardised HR processes
A major customer of Rededge in the manufacturing industry wanted to harmonise their HR processes across borders. With factories on several continents, there were major challenges in finding a "unifying" system support that...