The challenge
With a spaghetti of legacy applications and systems, some of which were outmoded and in need of replacement, and with significant reconciliation required for these systems to communicate with one another, Delhaize, a Belgian food retailer and part of Ahold Delhaize, which serves customers in 11 countries on three continents, decided to move to a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for its retail business.
The move would also allow the retail giant to move to a more digital environment, be e-commerce ready and proactively respond to trends in its sector. SAP was selected as the ERP system because SAP Finance/Indirect Procurement (IP)/Reporting had already been introduced to support the firm’s finance department.
"PwC fit with our company culture – which is extremely important for this sort of project – and was able to provide the best expertise from around its network to meet the challenges we faced. As those challenges evolved over the course of three years, PwC continued to deliver the precise profiles we required. They constantly listened, understood and adjusted where required."
The Solution
The right resources
Delhaize looked for an advisor with a supportive mind-set and experience in finance as well as business – specifically retail. The advisor also had to possess the required technical expertise. PwC brought all that and more; specifically, proven templates and methodologies to validate data that would help assure the project’s success.
Bringing business and IT together
For Delhaize to fully realise the potential of SAP for retail, it had first introduced a finance system that would be compatible with SAP Retail. The challenge then became one of how to align business and IT.
Having the project go live meant bringing the two angles together to gain a better understanding of the different perspectives involved. This was a challenge at which PwC excelled. Taking an independent stance, PwC listened to all stakeholders on integration topics.
The keys of success
Business continuity is key
One of the most important elements was the assurance of 100 percent business continuity; Delhaize had to be able to pay its large number of vendors on time from day one using the new system. The retail industry is characterised by daily deliveries from vendors and they must be paid on time in order for a retailer to secure its supply chain. Calling on our vast experience in the retail sector and with this sort of project, we facilitated a number of dress rehearsals. Having consulted with the business and IT, we made recommendations with regards the scope in terms of priorities and the data to be tested based on the critical processes that couldn’t fail.
Constant communication
One of the key success points of the project – and that brought real value to the process - was regular communication. Every-day reporting on testing evolved into hour-by-hour planning and progress reports as the go-live date neared, to make sure that all activities were completed on time. There was also full transparency with the CFO group overseeing the project. PwC worked with all business teams and was able to escalate issues so that effects on project progress could be mitigated as quickly and as much as possible.
"Convincing senior management of such a transformation can be a challenge. PwC proved that it had the experience and expertise to offer the CFO committee the required confidence that we could succeed within the required timeframe."
The result
The success of the project has helped increase confidence of Delhaize’s ability to complete such a massive undertaking on time with 100 percent business continuity, laying the groundwork for possible future missions. It also massively increased the experience of its people with this type of assignment.
As a result, Delhaize enjoys improved data management. Importantly, the project moves the client closer to reaching its aim of creating a paperless environment; this is now almost entirely true for the procurement side of the business, with an end-to-end paperless process now in place for the 80 percent of vendors working with electronic invoices. This in turn has helped significantly reduce handling errors and made it much easier to identify cases where contractual agreements aren’t being respected.
The automation of many processes and increased process optimisation has freed up time for people to work on more value-adding activities, such as improving focus on controls. This has resulted in an impressive saving of around one million euros per year. Delhaize has also increased efficiency within key operational departments by 20 percent.
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