A refreshingly new take on analytics for a beverage manufacturer

In today's hyper-competitive world, successful enterprises know that data holds the key to unlocking insights that can solve their biggest challenges. With a sound data strategy, business leaders can tap into a treasure trove of data to drive insights at scale. This intelligence powers innovation, inspiring teams to build new products and offer better services.

But when data is inaccessible because it lives in disparate data sources, no one can track, interpret, or act on the insights buried in all that information.

That was the case for a leading beverage manufacturer. Within its finance function, frustrated teams spent countless hours on manual tasks prone to errors and inconsistencies.

Because multiple F&A teams worked independently, there was no single source of truth for performance metrics and other critical KPIs. Disconnected bits and bytes flowed from too many data sources and formats, which were useless for business planning. As a result, inefficiencies mounted, and productivity suffered.

After evaluating the company's existing data ecosystem, we assembled a team of data engineers, data scientists, and other business experts who developed an analytics hub – all within 10 weeks.

During that time, the team gathered and harmonized data from every source and format. We set up new processes, policies, infrastructure, and governance parameters that aligned closely with the company's business objectives.

We built solutions such as:

• An intelligent collections tool for the order-to-cash unit. This solution uses machine learning technology to help collectors recognize false discount claims, prioritize their activities, and reduce past due bills, allowing teams to react in real time
• Smart OpEx, a suite that can process and analyze more than 500 reports within minutes. This self-service tool improved strategic decision-making by eliminating manual tasks, saving time, and increasing accuracy
• An invoice exceptions analyzer for the accounts payable team that provides complete visibility into the lifecycle of every invoice. It spots purchase orders and delivery patterns, then identifies potential mismatches for quicker exception resolution. The result is better process management

Next, we focused on delivering the best possible user experience. To achieve this, we created an integrated platform with an easy-to-use app that looks and functions much the same way popular streaming services do.

By displaying a catalog of personalized resources – covering collections, cash flow, and invoice exceptions, to name a few – employees can find all the information they need when they need it. The system also captures the user journey, giving business leaders a window into the most valuable data for employees across the organization.

Today, the company has access to data-driven insights that underpin its long-term resilience and growth. Here are some of the results:

• A 50% reduction in the cost of data collection, along with a productivity boost
• Prevention of – and faster recovery from – false discount claims in order-to-cash, plugging an estimated revenue leakage of $25 million
• A drop in cost to serve from 14 days to 1 day, resulting in faster query resolution and increased productivity
• A significant reduction in planning and forecasting cycles – forecasting is also 25% more accurate
• Substantially better resource allocation through insights derived from the Smart OpEx reporting tool

The F&A team now relies on digital technologies for planning, reporting, forecasting, and allocating resources. The new analytics hub is sleek, straightforward, and practical. As a result, the time-consuming frustrations that previously hampered their work are gone.

Over the next five years, the company expects to realize $30 million in operational savings from this project. The F&A model has also shown the firm what's possible, prompting enterprise leaders to set out on a journey to transform other departments across the organization entirely.