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Radical transformation lets Unilever Europe focus on growth and winning in the marketplace
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Inventory Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
The Challenge
Unilever Europe, a well-known consumer products giant, had expanded in a siloed fashion, by country and division. This resulted in a loose federation of business groups and geographies operating across 24 countries, all using multiple ERP systems. With so many different finance and accounting processes under three separate leadership teams, the result was a complex, inefficient organization that impeded growth. In 2005, Unilever Europe's leadership team made a strategic decision to integrate the company’s multiple business units into a single, unified Pan-European organization, but needed to implement the systems and framework to enable this goal. The diversity of cultures, policies and language across Europe further complicated the challenge, as did the varying levels of technology across the company’s business units, which ranged from advanced to outmoded paper-based systems.
About The Customer
Unilever Europe is one of the world’s most recognized and respected brands, with annual revenues of more than EUR44 billion. The company has operations in about 100 countries on five continents. It manages more than 500 individual brands in 14 different categories and employs more than 167,000 people. Unilever Europe represents 32 percent of the Unilever global business and employs 32,000 staff. The company’s mission has always been to help people look good, feel good and add vitality to their lives. However, facing soft top-line revenues and an elevated cost structure, Unilever Europe needed to make dramatic operational changes.
The Solution
Unilever Europe and IBM formed a partnership in 2005 to create a centralized “One Unilever” finance organization. Built on a foundation of process innovation and advanced analytics, this highly transformational solution delivered enhanced quality, control and access to information for Unilever Europe and created a more flexible, adaptable operating model. IBM provided managed business process services on a three-tier delivery model from its facilities in Krakow, Poland; Braga, Portugal; Bangalore, India; and Manila, Philippines. IBM deployed tools to standardize and automate existing processes that were connected through a common workflow technology and delivered seamlessly and consistently across an established worldwide delivery infrastructure. Finance processes at Unilever Europe are now harmonized, enabling work to be easily shifted across global centers.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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