A high-growth CPG company
Despite steady sales growth, a leading food and beverage manufacturer was facing margin contraction.
Bill-of-material (BOM) information, operating metrics, and financial data were captured and stored in three separate databases. Management struggled to implement real-time intelligence into its sales and operations planning process (S&OP) to recover lost profitability in this tumultuous environment.
Despite using an industry-specific ERP and advanced business intelligence tools, the Client struggled with delayed insights, leading to reactive rather than proactive decision-making. The company needed a solution that provided immediate, actionable insights to optimize operations and understand COGS to reduce costs.
Charger’s solution provided real-time data analytics, integrating seamlessly with the company’s existing systems to offer a comprehensive view of its supply chain and production processes.
In four weeks, Charger integrated and unified the company’s data from its disparate systems, and the company went live with meaningful, tailored financial and operation analytics across the organization. Immediately, the Client leveraged the reporting to realize significant input cost reductions through data-driven vendor price negotiations.
Additionally, the company refined its waste factors in its suite of BOMs to capture recent historical operating performance better and improve its overall procurement processes.
In their first year of using Charger’s real-time data insight platform, the company achieved a 5% reduction in input cost spend and a greater than 1% increase in gross margin percentage.
Here’s how they did it:
- Data syncing - Charger’s ability to seamlessly blend related data from disparate systems in near-real time provided a holistic view of inventory usage and pricing
- COGS Insight: With a complete understanding of their input costs on a per-SKU basis, the company was able to identify which costs impacted profitability the most and, where possible, were able to pivot quickly to alternate input materials,
- Improve Supplier Negotiations: Access to detailed cost data allowed for more effective negotiations with suppliers, securing better terms and prices
- Optimize Inventory Management: The company reduced waste and storage costs by identifying excess inventory and streamlining stock levels following the refresh of waste factors in their BOMs
Turn-key Custom Dashboards: Charger created a suite of customized reporting that the company used to gain insight into its business sector within minutes.
With profitability increasing and costs under control, the company’s management team focuses on revenue growth instead of the manual tasks associated with financial and operational reporting, analysis, and problem-solving.
"Charger has allowed us to drive SKU-level profitability.” - CFO, Mid-market F&B Manufacturer.
Charger is a data integration platform that provides automated KPI reporting combined with a comprehensive FP&A and operational drill-down tool—all in one location. Our clients spend less time on manual reporting tasks and more time on value-added activities.
If you’d like to see a demo, please contact Andrew Hudson: Andrew.Hudson@Charger.dev
