One of the world’s leading brewers embarked on a full implementation of SAP as part of a business transformation project. APO was a critical component of this to help them manage and improve the performance of its supply chain. This involved several thousand individual product lines from a variety of sources, internal and external and a complex network of customers, both off- and on-trade and various routes to market.
It soon became apparent however, that users were choosing to work on Excel spreadsheets rather than the new planning system.
The client approached Pivot to advise them on how to proceed.
“When we came to work with Pivot we began to understand that the reason people were doing that was because the set-up we had was complex and not well understood by the team,” reported the client.
The challenge was to rework the APO solution significantly to align it with the client’s business processes and to ensure the planning teams were properly trained and supported to use it effectively.
The blueprinting stage looked at the business processes, the business requirements and aligned them against the functionality offered by APO. Implementation was completed in 3 stages to ensure that Pivot could support the team and help them get the best out of the system. Technically GATP (Global Available to Promise) was one of the biggest challenges because of its complexity, but Pivot’s expertise made all the difference.
“One of the key things that I admired about Pivot is their post implementation support. These guys were down sitting with the users and that played a big part in making sure people could use the system after go-live,” said the client.
The end result was a much improved system, not only delivering improved customer service but also better, more efficient stock management, all consistent with best practice and fit for purpose to meet the client’s short, medium and long term planning needs.
“Pivot’s consultants are supply chain professionals so they understand best in class business processes, not just the system. It’s been great for us. We’ve got a Global solution that fits our business and that people are actually using,”
Supply Chain Business Transformation Manager.