Streamlining Global Reporting at Unilever
Streamlining Global Reporting at Unilever
Unilever has responded by simplifying its IT infrastructure. Transition to a single global SAP financial and management reporting platform, named Victory, was an important part of this strategy. Berkeley had a central role in its successful delivery, having been asked to lead the programme when it became clear that it was much more difficult than had first been envisaged. Berkeley's experience meant they were well placed to help Unilever deliver the next phase of improvements to their reporting infrastructure.
Unilever's European management reporting system, Abacus, was reaching the end of its support life. In tandem, the company's Finance function had a strategic agenda to reduce complexity in reporting, speed up Unilever's financial close process, and improve the quality of management information across the region. Unilever recognised this was an ideal opportunity toredefine its approach to management reporting,and simultaneously improve the timeliness and quality of its management information. The Eurolayer project was therefore launched to look at the best way of replacing Abacus and to provide a further vehicle to delivering the Finance strategy across the 28 countries involved.
Berkeley helped Unilever evaluate their options, define plans and create the business case to secure funding for the project and then took over mobilisation and management of the 50-strong global vendor/client team which would deliver it.
The 80:20 Pareto principle
In the lead from the outset, Berkeley had the opportunity to shape the delivery approach to maximise the chances of success. The oft-quoted 80:20 principle applied to the effort and rigour put into upfront planning. In order to increase the likelihood of the project's success, the team deliberately invested a large proportion of time in developing a well thought through and robust plan early in the lifecycle.
The first step was to evaluate the implementation options, likely timeframes and costs. It quickly emerged that the option to implement a new system would require a significant investment in time and resources so the decision was made to extend the existing global tools to fulfill the regional reporting requirements.
With the systems strategy agreed, the focus shifted to finalising the business case to secure funding, shaping the project and then mobilising the team in the UK, the Netherlands and India. Governance arrangements were put in place, centred on a strong steering committee with a cross section of stakeholders from Finance, IT and a Berkeley partner who brought continuity from the Victory programme. A vendor selection exercise was undertaken and with a strong team on board, consultant Matt Kind led a collaborative planning process with the participation of the right people from Finance, IT and the respective delivery vendors. The plan was designed in two major phases with the delivery of intrusive changes to the global reporting solution fast-tracked and stabilised, well in advance of the critical Year End, and a second phase to automate the transfer of source data from local country systems. To further strengthen the plan, time was put aside to really think through delivery risks and dependencies and with a good understanding of these, a process was put in place to continuously manage them.
"The aim was to produce a stretch target' plan, with the flexibility to roll back to pre-defined contingency options should we miss key milestones" Matt notes. "This allowed us to keep a healthy degree of delivery pressure whilst knowing we had a secure safety net behind us."
The devil's in the data
One of the most critical challenges was the migration of European data into a Corporate system that was in constant use. Matt explains: "We looked at all options for getting the data into Victory and none of them were attractive. When the time came, we had to extract two years of history, merge it with additional European detail and reload it so that the existing balances wouldn't be corrupted. "
With only a 10 day migration window, there was little room for error. Getting it right required months of careful planning, extensive rehearsals and testing with live data. Harnessing project resources in India not only helped keep the project costs down, but allowed work on the migration to continue round the clock. After considerable "paddling under the water", the migration was completed on time. With no disruption to the closing deadlines, the Finance community described Eurolayer's migration as "seamless". Matt recalls: "There was great satisfaction, for me personally and for the whole team, in having successfully managed the data migration risk. If anything had gone wrong if we'd somehow broken the Corporate reporting system - it would have been very visible, in the City as well as across Unilever! "
Information made easy
12 months after its initiation, Eurolayer had been implemented in full and for less than the anticipated costs. All critical success factors, such as achieving closing deadlines and maintaining system performance, were achieved. By introducing a step change in global capabilities with quicker transfer of country data from the European ERP system and deeper granularity in reports, the project was credited with directly contributing to a faster European management reporting timetable and delivering higher quality information to the 170 users and decision makers. As a result, Eurolayer won the annual, internal IT Award for Corporate / Global and the project is now being replicated for the Americas region.
Commenting on the project, Richard Sciver, VP Information Management at Unilever, says: "We were really pleased with the contribution of Berkeley throughout the project. We relied on the consultants' thoroughness in planning, good preparation, integrity in advice for decision-making, and overall project management. This was particularly important because we were working with a team of Unilever people from different management groups, as well as several different providers across numerous international locations. The team delivered the project on time, within budget and it was one of the smoothest go-lives' of any project in recent times. A job well done by Berkeley and indeed everyone involved."
Berkeley's Matt Kind reflects
"This was a tremendous project to work on, made all the more rewarding because we had the opportunity to get involved in the early planning stages," says Matt "When we are called in to turn around projects that have gone off track, it's a very different challenge and a lot of time is spent undoing what has gone before. Here, I was able to control, shape and influence the project plan right from the start to best serve Unilever's requirements."
Matt's top tips:
The pressure to get going often leads to corners being cut in a project's set up. Investing in the quality of shaping and planning, and setting up the optimal governance arrangements, gives you the best chance of getting it right first time
It is crucial to have an effective steering committee that knows when to intervene, and when not to! The Unilever steering committee got behind the project and shared decision making responsibility, trusting and empowering the project manager and team to choose the right course of action
Getting the team dynamics right finding the right balance in the onshore / offshore model, retaining experience vs. developing new resources and ensuring sufficient participation from the business across multiple geographies
Cutovers and Data Migration- rehearse, rehearse and then rehearse again. There is no substitute for fully simulating the go live activities as often as there is time for, to uncover and fix the "gotchas" before they can do real damage in the live system.
How to be Successful with your Dropshipping Company Wood costs for the global pulp industry have increased 17 percent the past two years; only the US South has bucked the trend, reports the WRQ TaylorMade R9 SuperMax Irons Free Shipping Global Warming Survival - Long Term Planning What's Involved In Shipping Boxes? Considerations When Purchasing Violet Laser Pointers Us economy- on the track though consumer spending still softens See how easy it is to book global express delivery services Global Overview On SEO and SEO services from India Information Security Risk Analysis: Meeting HIPAA Requirements and the Meaningful Use Objective - Webinar By GlobalCompliancePanel Information Security and Payment Card Rules: Protecting Patient Payment Data and Complying with PCI - Webinar By GlobalCompliancePanel Ecommerce web design for global business opportunities Findire property investment opportunities are available in all global cities