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

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