One of the world’s leading drinks manufacturers faced a returns nightmare. Goods return is always fractious. But for a drinks company, excise duty complications make everything worse.
Their legacy system recorded laboratory testing and product decanting results. It connected to CRM at the front end and SAP at the back. But the interfaces weren’t real-time. They relied on flat files that failed.
Checking and decanting returned barrels was necessarily slow. Laboratory testing took time. Product analysis couldn’t be rushed. But spreadsheets and interface failures added unnecessary delays on top.
The company made a customer-first decision. Issue credit notes immediately. Take the pain of delays internally. Keep customers happy while sorting out the mess behind the scenes.
Upfront credit notes removed customer urgency. Why rush to return faulty barrels when you’d already been paid? Customers had no incentive to cooperate with collection.
The system compounded the problem. After a few unsuccessful collection attempts, it simply wrote off the barrels. Faulty product disappeared from tracking. Money was lost. Excise duty complications remained unresolved.
Worse still, unscrupulous customers spotted the opportunity. The same faulty product could generate multiple credit claims. The broken system couldn’t detect repeat fraud. Customer-first generosity was being exploited.
The client approached their incumbent SAP consulting group for help. The response was over-engineered. Invest in a big new system. Many months of design work. Massive cost and complexity.
For a drinks company dealing with barrel returns, this felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There had to be a simpler way.
The intention was admirable. The consequences were disastrous.
Pivot’s consultant recommended a radically different approach. Rewrite the legacy functionality within SAP. Add a web-based front end. Integrate everything.
No big new system. No months of design. Just smart integration of existing capabilities.
In just 40 days, Pivot delivered a complete transformation.
The new SAP system handled all financial adjustments, credit note issuing, and excise duty payments. Laboratory teams got better process management tools, including barcode reading for sample testing.
Real-time CRM integration identified products for laboratory testing and alerted logistics for barrel collection. No more flat files. No more interface failures.
A new interface with the Proof of Delivery system tracked customer cooperation. Exception reports flagged when customers didn’t put barrels out for collection. The system detected when the same person reported the same barrel faulty many times.
For the first time, our client could track every individual barrel through its complete lifecycle. When filled, when emptied, when refilled. Nothing disappeared from the system. Nothing could be exploited fraudulently.
The process became accurate and timely for both client and customers. The customer-first approach could continue, but with proper controls preventing abuse.
The new system eliminated the perverse incentives created by upfront credits. Customers still received excellent service, but fraudulent claims became impossible. Repeat offenders were caught automatically.
Processing delays disappeared. Real-time integration replaced failed flat files. Laboratory efficiency improved with better tools. Logistics got clear collection signals.
Our client was bowled over by Pivot’s “speed, flexibility and IT knowledge.”
Fixing the customer-first trap restored both service excellence and operational integrity. All delivered in a fraction of the time the incumbent suggested, for a fraction of the cost.
