"Reese Partners helped Huhtamaki realize significant cost savings of over $2 million a year. The expertise provided by Reese Partners was superior to what we could have done internally, with respect to both quality and time. They brought an objective view that couldn't be replicated internally, worked within a tight timeline and presented what made the most sense given both current and future business trends."
"Reese Partners assessed our current state of effectiveness and efficiency at our Grant Park Engineering Center, benchmarked us to similar operations and recommended opportunities for improvement. They brought great industry knowledge that supported the benchmark, plus brought a fresh set of unbiased eyes to the assessment."
Business and Technology Assessment Completed For Global Retailer
Business Case
A $170 million retailer and distributor of consumer goods had successfully grown its business as it innovated from a 100 percent wholesale distribution business to a hybrid operating model selling through retail stores, catalog, internet, and international channels. Supply chains were extended, while the multi-channel strategy added new operating complexities.
Reese Partners Role
Although the business had grown successfully in terms of volume, its technology had not kept pace. Existing systems did not provide the information required to manage the business, and were not integrated across the organization. The company was on a path to grow the business significantly, and recognized that business strategies, processes, and technology must be synchronized to support this growth. Reese Partners (with its technology partner) was engaged to conduct a business process and technology assessment, and develop an operations and technology strategy to support the Company's growth. After the company adopted this strategy, including an enterprise-wide replacement of the technology, Reese Partners was engaged to analyze all key business processes, develop the business requirements needed from the new ERP, POS, and WMS systems, and lead the selection of the new software.
Client Success
To help our client achieve their business objectives, Reese Partners: » Analyzed the key functional areas and processes including product development, demand planning, supply chain management, retail store operations, marketing, customer relationship management, fulfillment, and financial reporting » Assessed the technology architecture and evaluated solutions to provide for comprehensive business functionality and present a more robust, scalable and stable platform » Documented and mapped the existing processes for each functional area » Facilitated group discussions across functional areas to create a vision of the future business processes utilizing new technology » Developed business requirements to support the new operating vision across the organization » Developed the RFP and managed the vendor selection process for the replacement systems
Results
The initial assessment highlighted that poor technology resulted in organization-wide process inefficiencies as employees used off-line methods to compensate for system limitations. The subsequent phase helped the company comprehensively understand its current operations, develop a vision for how the operations should function, and document the business requirements to support its growth plans.
The organization is currently evaluating vendors to provide technology that is fully integrated across all business units and regions. Employees have a more comprehensive understanding of organization-wide business requirements necessary to make a better system selection decision and to improve operating performance.
