Challenge
• A leading retail food company, having multi city presence, 100 employees, turnover INR 50 million. In the retail food industry, one of the keys to survival and growth is having timely information on food costs and other line items. Our client’s accounts department was not able to put together this critical information in the desired format even after circulating a standard format among outlets. Further, there were many clerical errors and a lack of understanding about the real purpose of the information sent by the company’s outlets. To make matter worse, the information received from outlets was irregular, making it difficult to deliver the MIS on a target date to the company’s management.
Need
• To professionally manage the collection, flow and direction of critical financial information so that management is able to take informed decisions. Timely and accurate information also empowers the Company to be pro-active rather than reactive to trends or situations.
Solution
• First, we conducted a professional due diligence process which took 5 working days to diagnose the real problems. Then, we prepared a short term view on issues to be addressed over the following 3 months. Also, we prepared a long term plan in which larger issues would be addressed over a period of 12 months. In the first stage, the real problem of co-ordination between the outlet personnel and accounts personnel was addressed by simplifying the format. EPM undertook to educate them in why the information was required, and how it would improve the overall business. Within 2.5 months, the entire MIS was in place and the system was on the track.
Benefits
• The biggest value addition by EPM in the MIS area was its ability to help management to control Food Cost by 5 %.
Another direct benefit of the whole process was the establishment of trust and respect between the outlets and the F&A department. We are now in the next phase of designing a system to track some specific cost items on daily basis.