Consumer goods

Unilever - managing project turnaround

One of the world’s leading fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, selling its products in over 190 countries. The Unilever of today has been created over many years of mergers and acquisitions. While these have enabled the group to grow, they have brought with them complications, not least for the group’s IT function.

The function's response has been to try to simplify its IT infrastructure. One important objective has been to transition to a single global SAP financial and management reporting platform, named Victory. We helped them achieve this goal, by reviewing the project underway to deliver Victory, before supporting a project turnaround and ultimately project managing it through to a successful delivery. 

Unilever - HR IT Strategy

We were asked to help Unilever with their HR IT strategy and roadmap. Unilever didn’t have the in-house capacity and skills to handle all the work themselves so they were looking for outside expertise. They wanted independent experts who could put together a purely Unilever-focused view of the world, allowing them to stay in control of defining their strategy, rather than give the responsibility to someone else.

High stakes supplier selection

Our client engaged us to provide programme delivery expertise and to help them run a rigorous supplier selection and mobilisation process, appointing the organisations who would ultimately support them in creating a new fit for purpose infrastructure.

Unilever - financial reporting

Unilever wanted to redefine its approach to management reporting, extending existing SAP tools to deliver a simpler and faster European financial close and management reporting timetable. We helped them evaluate their options, define plans and create the business case to secure funding for the project and then took over mobilisation and management of the 50-strong global vendor/client team which would deliver it.

One of the world’s largest beverage manufacturers

One of the world’s largest beverage manufacturers had created a new Global Data and Analytics function with a mission to accelerate business performance by providing business insight via new and evolving analytics tools, technology, capabilities and industry-leading data management.   

However, it was clear the operating model needed better definition to make this new team work.  

Over a short but intense engagement – through a mix of our strong Data and Analytics and Consumer Goods experience, and our collaborative and integrated approach - we developed a content-rich target operating model that leveraged best practice but was also specific to the organisation’s circumstances. 

Global consumer goods organisation

We helped a global consumer goods organisation deliver a significant Finance transformation across over 100 countries. 

This involved both implementing a new suite of SAP systems for financial consolidation and all group management and financial reporting, and also streamlining their financial reporting by consolidating the group financial results directly from the source ledgers in each of their 600+ Legal Entities around the world.  

Global FMCG

We delivered an in house, one-stop-shop for social listening and consumer analytics insights enabling FMCG brands to better understand and engage with consumers, develop strategies, conduct market research and plan marketing to drive growth and performance globally. An early proof of concept was stood up in a matter of weeks and enabled consumer behaviour to be analysed differently to yield results in changed marketing campaigns. 

Packaging organisation

We helped develop the strategy for a packaging organisation to enable them to benefit from Digital trends and approaches. This included how analytics can help them deliver value-add services to their customers to optimise their logistics, using virtual reality to envisage how packages will look in shelf formats to optimise customers’ shelf-fill, and how IoT sensors can help improve package transportation and handling for better cost and quality outcomes.

Global FMCG - media investment

We created visibility around global media investment at a global FMCG company, building stakeholder engagement and understanding up to board level and clarifying a prize running into hundreds of millions of euros. 

We rapidly got to grips with the complex problem and developed a clear and simple communication to explain this to a range of stakeholders, including those at Board level. This created a more productive environment to engage a range of stakeholders across marketing, categories, key agencies and IT to look at solution options. 

Leading consumer goods company

We helped a leading, global consumer goods company define, mobilise and run their global information and analytics programme. 

A core part of our contribution was to work with them to shape the strategy and business case, then select suppliers and mobilise the programme to roll out 17 key analytics capabilities, globally. These included, for example, combining their own data with retailer loyalty and point of sale data to drive sales growth. 

an integrated mobility and CRM solution

One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies was seeking to create a single, integrated mobility and customer relationship management (CRM) solution for use during quality inspection store visits by the retail sales force across Europe.

Global FMCG - supply chain transformation

We created an in-house change capability to support radical supply chain transformation at a global FMCG present in 180 countries with annual turnover of €50bn. 

Faced with increasingly intense competition in developing markets, the client needed to transform supply chain efficiency by enabling its third party distributors to use mobile devices to provide real time access to back office and stock control systems. 

Strong change management was needed to help distributor and client staff adopt the solution and change ways of working.

The solution

Berkeley worked with the client team to design and develop a bespoke change management toolkit for the programme, including a set of easy to use tools and templates. 

The change management toolkit was rolled out across 13 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, supported by the client’s own in-house team who by this point had the skills and experience needed to lead the ongoing work themselves. 

The new solution subsequently went live successfully in several further territories, delivering both efficiency savings and competitive advantage as distributors become able to respond quickly to changing market needs. 

FTSE top 30 Consumer Goods and Retail group

This critical and complex programme had a history of cost overruns and missed delivery dates. When further technical and delivery challenges materialised, the programme sponsors invited Berkeley to conduct a health check of the programme and recommend a way forward. Berkeley successfully turned around the programme, and it went live on time and on budget against the revised plan. The post-turnaround phase of the programme was seen as a best-practice exemplar for others in the group to follow.