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Executive Summary
CIO 100 Winner: Vikram Saxena deployed OutReach, and integrated it with an existing SAP ECC 5.0 ecosytem. The focus was on reducing the cycle time to produce secondary sales reports by automating the process of collecting and summarizing secondary sales data from 4,000 distributors. This significantly increases accuracy and decision-making capacity once it's integrated with the ERP.
In an industry that's growing at 17 percent on an average, the Rs 900-crore Emami, which manufactures and markets personal and healthcare consumer products, has maintained a 25 percent CAGR. It's a track record Emami wants to maintain, but it was threatened by inefficiencies in its sales data. "Production was not forecast on the basis of consumer demand. The FMCG business is purely market driven so it is extremely important to measure secondary sales; which are a better reflection of demand," says Vikram Saxena, senior GM-IT, Emami.
Case Study Highlights
Saxena is referring the manually-made, secondary sales reports that the company's sales teams worked with. The result? Inaccurate data caused inventory to pile up at distributor and C&F warehouses and delayed product launches. It also forced the company to manage its working capital in a less-than-optimal manner.
"We focused on reducing the cycle time to produce secondary sales reports by automating the process of collecting and summarizing secondary sales data from 4,000 distributors. This significantly increases its accuracy and our decision-making capacity once it's integrated with our ERP," says Saxena.
In March 2009, Saxena deployed OutReach, and integrated it with an existing SAP ECC 5.0 ecosytem. It was tough work, especially integrating the "masters with the new software including pricing, customer, purchases, etcetera. We did ABAP/4 development to extract data in the required format," he says.
By June, the implementation started to show results. But before this success, Saxena had to market the project internally. It took time, he says, to convince the management and board of the system's benefits. He also had to battle resistance from distributors and train a 1,300-strong field staff. "We conducted classroom training for all the stake holders, says Saxena. "It was a tremendous undertaking."
The time it took to get everyone's buy-in was worth it. Today, the Rs 1.2-crore project ensures that Emami can accurately track any product's movement at about 30 lakh retail outlets, analyze sales trends for all products across territories, ensure that stock is maintained at optimal levels and is better able to measure the success of promotional schemes. And it has helped reduce company stock levels by 10 days. "We expect to improve our field effectiveness by improving efficiencies and productivity by 25 percent," says Saxena.
The Person Behind It
“We reduced the time to produce secondary sales reports, which will improve our field effectiveness by 25 percent."
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