Foodservice Distributor Saves Time and Streamlines Metric Tracking Using Enterprise Data Warehouse

Enter Centric: Streamlining the Data

To begin this endeavor, we assembled a team of highly skilled resources to facilitate the development and deployment of the MAP. Our priority was to ensure key stakeholders could harness the full power of the MAP and glean the most value from their investment. The next step was to begin work on the architecture of the MAP.

We approached this by working closely with the client’s executive steering committee to create a MAP user story backlog that would establish prioritization for additional deployments over time. Based on this prioritization, we could build additional components of the MAP, establishing the repeatability, convenience and ease of use their existing data management system lacked.

A top area of concern for our client’s steering committee was inventory shrinkage. They wanted the MAP to help them track why they couldn’t deliver produced inventory to their customers, along with the costs associated with that lost inventory – metrics including everything from the reasons for the lost inventory to distributors, customers, routes and even drivers and their contribution to the amount of lost inventory.

Using these metrics, we built dashboards in Tableau that could give users a quick glimpse into why and where inventory was shrinking and help identify issues quickly and near real-time.

The Results: Delivering Support and Improvement to Three Major Areas

In only a few months, our client could better support its customers. The insights derived from the reporting platform allowed them to spot opportunities to improve margins and control costs, which has had a measurable impact on their bottom line.

Our client saw improvements in three major areas:

• Focusing on growing the client’s business (vs. creating reports): Previously, report creation was a very manual process. But with our help and more efficient processes, our client is saving over 2,000 hours annually generating reports – the equivalent of one full-time job. This freed-up time allows teams to devote resources to higher-priority work, improve the business and increase productivity.
• Visualizing data: Using legacy reports as a template for building others, we provided reports quickly and conveniently in a familiar format while greatly enhancing their ability to visualize, compare and gain insights from their data.
• Delivering business value: With the delivery of each user story, our client’s catalog of reporting metrics grew. This helped them track historical trends across all metrics, allowing them to quickly identify problems and fix issues as soon as they arise going forward. Also, it allows for greater insights into their business.

For example, one major benefit centered around customer profitability. With this exercise, the client identified areas that helped them make strategic business decisions. As a result, they can now better understand and manage expenses so they can keep their fees competitive.

The VP of technology and supply chain services said, “Centric has become one of our most critical strategic partners. We’re able to leverage their expertise on strategy, executive coaching, continuous improvement, best business practices, data visualization, and general web and mobile application development to deliver significant value across our organization.”