Unilever is one of the world’s leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, operating in over 100 countries. Their portfolio of home care, personal care and food products includes a number of “billion dollar brand” household names such as Persil, Knorr, Flora, Hellmann’s and Dove.
Where were they?
Unilever’s global IT systems for management and financial reporting were old, nearing the end of their support life, and were inflexible in supporting major business changes. Unilever also wanted to streamline their financial reporting by consolidating the group financial results directly from the source ledgers in each of their 600+ companies (‘Legal Entities’) around the world – a significant business change.
A programme was mobilised towards the end of 2006 to address these challenges by delivering: (a) a new suite of industry-standard SAP systems for all global management and financial reporting; (b) the global business change to adopt financial consolidation by Legal Entity.
But by February 2007, it had become clear that the programme was much more difficult than had first been envisaged.
How did Berkeley help?
In February 2007, Berkeley was asked to review the programme. In just three weeks, a consultant interviewed all key team and steering group members, identified the key issues with the programme, and recommended a series of remedial activities to get the programme on track.
Berkeley was then asked to lead the implementation of the programme “turn around” activities identified in the review. This included leading a key piece of re-planning options work.
In June 2007, Berkeley was asked to take on the overall programme and project management, including all business and IT aspects, and direct management of all suppliers involved (both on-shore and off-shore).
Berkeley managed the programme through to its successful completion, including both the Management Reporting project (which went live in July 2008) and the Financial Reporting project (which went live in April 2009, including the global adoption of financial consolidation by legal entity).
Where are they now?
The project has left Unilever with a number of tangible benefits, including:
- Replacement of out-of-date and inflexible systems with industry-standard, more modern and flexible SAP systems for all Unilever’s global management and financial reporting
- Significant cost reduction in support and operations of these systems by internally offshoring the work to India
- Eradication of 50+ local consolidation processes with one central consolidation for all 600+ Unilever companies (‘Legal Entities’).
- Systemisation of the financial consolidation process also provides increased control and less risk of errors
- Improved data quality and integrity through Increased control over off-ledger adjustments and enhanced system ‘checks and balances’
- Definition and implementation of a new global Standard Chart of Accounts for Unilever, which better supports the information requirements of the business and alignment with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
- Improved functional cost reporting through collection of more consistent and granular cost information, and improved analytic capability.
This project won the SAP Quality Silver Award for UK & Ireland in the Large Enterprise category. The annual Awards, judged by SAP itself celebrate excellence in in the implementation of SAP Projects evaluating projects on the basis of innovative services, proper resourcing and focused execution.
The project was also shortlisted for the 2009 MCA Management Awards in the category of Technology.
Berkeley did an outstanding job. The key factors that made them successful were the rigour of their project management skills; their willingness to ‘roll up their sleeves’ to really understand the issues and deal with them; and the way they collaborated seamlessly and successfully with our people. We simply could not have done it without them.
Lysanne Gray, Vice President of Finance Performance & Analytics, Unilever