Our longstanding consumer goods client had made a series of quick acquisitions around the globe. The increased size and global reach allowed the client to better manage costs in procurements, traditionally where a large part of costs are incurred.

The client was enjoying the cost benefits of the acquisitions but was struggling with how best to capture the significant savings opportunities from coordinating specific functions. At this point, our team was called in to look at ways to align the central purchasing unit, coordinate negotiations with main suppliers, and adjust the purchasing organization.

To reflect the global nature of the engagement, we assembled a multinational team. Our two major challenges were in collecting the necessary data and bringing together various employees who had never worked together and who did not initially see the advantages of taking a global approach towards procurement. Some client business units were as much as 10,000 km and 11 time zones apart, making the logistics alone challenging. However, after spending countless hours on phone conferences and developing a deep knowledge of the major supplier industry, we prevailed.

Together with the client we identified major improvement opportunities which significantly exceeded our original expectations. In addition, we also developed a step-by-step strategy on how the client should proceed with implementation and designed a new global procurement organization that would be necessary to carry out our recommendations.