Nestlé's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Odyssey
With SAP in place, common databases and business processes lead to more trustworthy demand forecasts for the various Nestlé products. Furthermore, because all of Nestlé USA is using the same data, Ramage says, Nestlé can forecast down to the distribution center level. That allows the company to reduce inventory and the redistribution expenses that occur when too much of a product is sent to one place and not enough to another. Ramage says that supply chain improvements accounted for a major chunk of the $325 million Nestlé says it has saved from SAP.
If Dunn were to do it over again, she’d focus first on changing business processes and achieving universal buy-in, and then and only then on installing the software. "If you try to do it with a system first, you will have an installation, not an implementation," she says. "And there is a big difference between installing software and implementing a solution."
