Mondelēz International (MDLZ), the global snack food enterprise, had finance processes distributed across 75 countries on 6 continents. By rethinking finance and introducing digital technologies, MDLZ unlocked profitable growth and is keeping its competitive edge.
Mondelēz International wanted to transform its business model to meet rising customer expectations and competition. Yet the company faced pressure on many sides. New acquisitions and a vast regional network were increasing overheads, causing operating redundancies, and creating inconsistent processes.
That was then. Today, digital technologies powered by Genpact Cora, an AI-based platform, support the organization's global finance operations in 75 countries on 6 continents and over 150 back-office processes. The result: Improved governance, agility, resilience, faster time-to-market, and money to re-invest in innovation and growth.
Challenge
Boost growth and maintain a lead position while bringing operations up to speed
The enterprise realigned its product portfolio to become more agile as it met evolving customer demands. It also sought to improve margins and cost structures to invest in growth. Its ambitious targets demanded holistic transformation across its factories and functions.
The leadership team struggled to act on strategic priorities with speed and agility due to limited centralization, a fragmented controls framework, and inconsistent processes for finance, procurement, supply chain, and others. The firm's regionally-based structure also prevented it from taking full advantage of scale across the globe.
To cultivate more business, meet customer expectations, and make the right targeted investments, it needed to transform its back-office functions, including finance, and roll out global processes. MDLZ set about building a global shared service that simplified and standardized 150 back-office processes. And it was determined to accomplish that in three years.
Solution
Reimagine operations in the fast lane
MDLZ identified that its existing regional model had to give way to one driven by product category—this required it to completely reimagine its operations. The company knew that it had to fast-track this transformation while keeping disorder to a minimum.
To support this goal within the three-year time frame, Genpact began with a detailed analysis that helped the firm identify what to centralize and decentralize. Process taxonomies determined which processes to standardize, and Genpact assigned service-level agreements (SLAs) and metrics to them.
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Download Pdf opens in a new tabManaging the overhaul while setting clear priorities
The MDLZ finance blueprint covers 22 key markets, and required 300 dedicated resources to assess the health of finance policies, processes, operating models, technologies, controls and metrics. Working with Genpact, MDLZ defined, prioritized, and sequenced the necessary steps to transform from country-facing teams to process-centric centers of excellence and assembly-line models.
Of course, change management was a concern, so our industry experts worked with the organization to design a migration toolkit for speedy, right-first-time transitions and repeatable across markets. Within 12 months, MDLZ consolidated over 40 migration operations from more than 75 countries into 6 centers with a goal to transition nearly 70 processes.
We used ProcIndex—a diagnostic tool that measures process health—and the Smart Enterprise Processes framework for a fast, granular and data-driven re design and better operating metrics. The framework focused on high-throughput processes, such as those integral to financial close, to streamline transactional tasks, raise intervention thresholds, and improve governance.
Avoiding the digital junkyard with a Lean Digital approach
The company hadn't consistently aligned digital transformation with its strategic objectives. For example, it wasn't integrating new digital tools with legacy systems, processes, and organizational silos—a situation that could have led to lengthy, complex, low-yield projects. To integrate the consumer-facing front end of its operations with the back office, MDLZ combined design-thinking with Lean principles. In this way, it focused on the most material sources of value while also minimizing waste.
For effective transformation, the organization adopted a range of digital products, powered by Genpact Cora, our AI-based platform. Systems of engagement and nimble technologies, such as robotic process automation and mobility, worked with existing technology to simplify transformation and speed up its benefits. MDLZ worked closely with Genpact and used co-innovation to build a number of solutions. The team delivered:
- Real-time visibility into finance operations: By adopting our standardized and unified view of operations and financial performance, the company integrated data from all ERP and related systems for finance and accounting process metrics on a single portal. That gives MDLZ instant access to information, in-depth analytics, and agile decision-making.
- Automating manual tasks: A touchless journal processing solution with proactive rule-based validation is helping to enhance analytics and exceptions management to deliver data accuracy, more timely reporting, and improved close.
- Accelerating data-to-insight with machine intelligence: Analysts, who had to navigate spreadsheets, multiple systems, and disparate data sources to prepare reports for regional finance controllers, had no time to create expert commentary or analysis. An AI-based reporting solution, part of Genpact Cora, is helping to address this problem by extracting relevant finance information from structured and unstructured data, then validating and correcting it through continuous learning. The solution aims to offer scenario and trend analyses to provide multi-dimensional reporting views with timely and accurate information enriched by analysts' qualitative judgment.
- Creating a culture of compliance: By setting up a global controls hub – an internal controls center of excellence – we helped standardize and automate internal controls across all operational and support processes. And a redesigned Sarbanes-Oxley program gave MDLZ advanced control monitoring solutions with self-assessments and continuous monitoring. The controllership teams can now focus on helping the business be more compliant rather than police each function.
Robust governance and next steps
For enterprise-wide transformation projects that span multiple geographies and complex processes, good governance is critical. A governance model of strategic, steering, and operational layers helps align partners, business functions, and shared services organizations with strategic goals.
To take advantage of the next technology breakthroughs, the company formed an innovation council to drive leadership support, earmark funds and build partnerships, with several interventions planned for roll-out (figure 2).
Impact
A simplified, streamlined, and hyper-efficient organization
Throughout this accelerated transformation across global operations, Genpact helped deliver consistent, digital-enabled processes that can improve the customer experience, grow its business, and reduce costs across the world. The firm can now manage future change at speed.
In its present simplified and efficient state, it can achieve global standards at scale and the business is more resilient to external threats. Continuous monitoring and reporting mean the company can act on data-driven decisions faster. What's more, the firm can invest savings in innovations and special projects to drive revenue.
The company now has a roadmap for automating financial planning and analysis, record to report, and an integrated supply chain. And down the road, it can experiment with the internet of things and remote monitoring to minimize the loss of point-of-sale vending devices.
The impact so far:
- Quality of service: Positive movements in timeliness and accuracy of SLAs over 18 months
- Compliance: Centralization of controls into a global center of excellence, automation of controls, and continuous monitoring have greatly improved process compliance
- Cost: Significant cost reduction of 41% in finance operations through a combination of increased process standardization, better ERP use, and a more integrated supply chain. Digital interventions are set to deliver a further value