How Anaplan helped the Unilever Supply Chain Finance team move from a data management-centric approach to a customer-centric analytical approach

The USA is Unilever’s biggest market. They have a broad portfolio of brands across dozens of product categories and businesses, including personal care, beauty, food and much more. Managing such a complex and diverse portfolio is a challenge because of the multidimensional reporting needed for such a wide range of products.

The Supply Chain Finance team needed a technology solution to accelerate and improve the Gross Margin Variance Analysis (GMVA) process. The existing process was data management-centric and built on numerous Excel files, which greatly slowed down the team’s work and overcomplicated the analysis. Moreover, it took a lot of time to create and maintain a file for a new report every month, and to locate a specific data element to answer a particular business question.

The GMVA process on the Anaplan cloud platform is multifaceted: adjustments to the existing forecast can be made, different forecast scenarios can be created, and the actual data and forecast data can be calculated and compared using a set of different drivers. Now, Unilever is able to understand why the gross margin has changed.

As a result of the joint efforts of a blended team of experts from Planingo and Unilever, the following functional features were created:

• Anaplan replaced a complex system of interdependent Excel files so that the team could quickly update the data across all reports;
• Users can now compare any versions of the forecast with the actual data, and compare different forecast versions with each other at a product level;
• Teams can make unique calculations for each user of the model, which makes it possible to monitor specific product groups and customize individual reports;
• Users can easily upload the latest versions of the forecast, create new versions and even update the product hierarchy;
• Users can check any cell calculation and see any changes made to the whole process at any time.

• The whole approach has changed from data management-centric to a more customer-centric and analytic process, as the team switched from collecting data to analyzing business prospects;
• Users can get reporting completed more quickly, which allows for smoother process management;
• The organization went from being geography-based (all of North America) to being business unit-driven (PC, IC, etc.). This also allows the team to look at their data on a more granular level;
• The speed of the GMVA process has been increased, helping give reports almost a day earlier;
• The number of errors and inconsistencies in the calculations decreased significantly and is now negligible;
• Calculations are now more transparent and scenarios can be planned in real time;
• The overall visibility of data, flexibility and speed of business analysis has increased, which contributes to making successful data-driven management decisions.