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We are a global management consultancy that delivers exceptional outcomes and sustainable change

Case Study

Oper­a­tional Excellence

From Chaos to Con­trol: A Case Study on Stream­lin­ing Agri­cul­tur­al Sup­ply Chains

2023/05/19

INTRODUCTION

Poor­ly run sup­ply chains result in more than high oper­at­ing costs alone. Poor cus­tomer ser­vice, poor sales per­for­mance and cash flow prob­lems are typ­i­cal­ly some of the symp­toms. In the end mar­gins will suf­fer and, over time, so will mar­ket share. This case study tells the sto­ry of our client who decid­ed to active­ly address these issues.

THE CHALLENGE

Our Client is a mar­ket leader in mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts with 28 Area Sales Offices, 25 Depots, 8 Region­al Offices, and a Head Office.

The busi­ness had gone through a peri­od of dra­mat­ic but uncon­trolled growth, result­ing in seri­ous dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel issues and sub­stan­tial loss­es. It was at this point that the Client engaged Renoir to help over­come these challenges.

ANALYSIS & PROJECT APPROACH

Renoir car­ried out a detailed study of Ral­lis’ inter­nal man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ty and exter­nal mar­ket­place iden­ti­fy­ing 6 key issues:

  1. Lack of mar­ket information
  2. Lit­tle con­trol over its sales force
  3. Lit­tle con­trol over the dis­tri­b­u­tion channel
  4. High lev­els of debt
  5. High lev­els of inven­to­ry and chan­nel stocks
  6. Poor avail­abil­i­ty at retail level

Fol­low­ing the analy­sis, the Renoir team recruit­ed employ­ees to form a Task Force. Over a 6‑week peri­od, the team con­duct­ed the Focus Process™, which includes data col­lec­tion, obser­va­tion stud­ies and oppor­tu­ni­ty quan­tifi­ca­tion before design and solu­tion development.

IMPLEMENTATION

Renoir helped the com­pa­ny regain con­trol of the dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel by devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing a sec­ondary sales chan­nel man­age­ment system.

This helped the com­pa­ny man­age its sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels more effec­tive­ly, because it pro­vid­ed bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty, con­trol, and coor­di­na­tion across the entire sup­ply chain. The sys­tem tracked inven­to­ry lev­els, mon­i­tored prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty at the retail lev­el, man­aged the per­for­mance of its sales force and inter­me­di­aries, and analysed mar­ket data to make more informed deci­sions about inven­to­ry man­age­ment, pro­duc­tion, and distribution.

Ben­e­fit­ing from the insights from the sys­tem, appro­pri­ate mar­ket­ing strate­gies and process­es were devel­oped to liq­ui­date stocks, intro­duc­ing new prod­ucts into the mar­ket, and bring major cost dri­vers back under control.

The changes were first imple­ment­ed on a tri­al bases, per­fect­ed where required and then rolled out across the country.

KEY RESULTS

£2.6 million 

annu­al bot­tom line improvement 

375% 

return on its investment 

Vast­ly improved cus­tomer service 

Bet­ter per­for­mance management 

Beyond these numer­i­cal out­comes, the organ­i­sa­tion realised even more sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al changes that will be of cru­cial impor­tance into the future.

As expressed direct­ly by the employees:

“It was amaz­ing to see the changes in the depot before and after; the box­es were neat­ly stacked, leaky, dam­aged stock had been seg­re­gat­ed, all the bin cards were up to date, and all orders had their accom­pa­ny­ing order forms”

DGM Finance

“The per­for­mance indi­ca­tors in the Score­cards helped build an aware­ness of the var­i­ous fac­tors which affect­ed our performance.”

GM Logis­tics

“The biggest advan­tage is that devi­a­tions can now be reviewed and cor­rec­tive action tak­en to remove the devi­a­tions speedily.”

GM Sales

“… being exposed to a whole new way of think­ing and func­tion­ing, new method­olo­gies and tech­niques have broad­ened our pro­fes­sion­al outlook.”

HR Sales & Marketing

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