A CPG Company Automates Its Way to Substantial Savings

A global manufacturer of household products partnered with us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its support functions, an effort that included a significant focus on automation. The company had previously tried to automate discrete projects, an approach that failed to achieve the greater benefits of an integrated, end-to-end automation strategy. We helped the company reset its automation priorities and build the internal capabilities to capture up to $100 million in potential savings.

To start, we identified several “no regrets” automation projects that could produce quick wins, including two RPA (robotic process automation) deployments that were up and running within 60 days. These initial projects eliminated more than 500 hours of annual labor in tax-compliance and IT processes and, because they quickly produced an impact, inspired buy-in across the organization. Additional RPA projects included optimizing the company’s order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes.

In conjunction with these efforts we also helped the company build an Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) that would spearhead future projects using Agile methodologies. We developed a three-year roadmap outlining dozens of sometimes interrelated processes this new CoE could automate, including several with the potential to harness machine learning and artificial intelligence. These opportunities are poised to save the company up to $300 million as it executes its end-to-end automation strategy.