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Bridgestone revolutionizes its budgeting process
Bridgestone Australia Ltd. needed to replace its manual budgeting process with a technology-enabled solution that could be seamlessly introduced into its business.
The company had been relying heavily on system that used spreadsheets to create a budget by SKU, by channel, and by customer. It was a challenge for them to manipulate their data and view it by different categories, something every modern supply chain department needs to be able to do.
Their supply chain team would spend many late nights working on a cumbersome budget process. During one budgetary period, an exhausted supply chain team only finished its work at 3am on a Sunday morning. Something had to change.
Bridgestone found the answers it was looking for with the help of SKU Science. After rolling out the solution, the company was able to improve its data accuracy and handling, reduce its budgeting timeline, and give its staff members a well-deserved break.
About Bridgestone
Bridgestone is a multinational tyre and truck part company founded in 1936. The company prides itself on producing the best quality products, with an emphasis on high performance technology, durability, and all-round comfort. The company also has an impeccable safety record that it guards closely.
Recently voted the “Most Trusted Tyre Brand” in Australia for the eighth year running, Bridgestone is recognised as a market-leading tyre company with a proud record of superior service.
Bridgestone’s excellence in other areas meant its supply chain processes had some catching to do. The supply chain team simply had to find a way to budget smarter and faster so they could extract usable insights to give them market wins.
The Challenges
But the company had a problem with its time-consuming budgeting process. After a futile year-long search for a demand planning solution, the pressure was mounting. For as long as the company continued to use its spreadsheet-heavy solution, its planning processes would leave room for improvement.
The supply chain team was trying to build budgets at SKU customer channel level for the next few years for long range planning, but this process was nightmarish because of a lack of tools. They were looking for an agile system with which to ‘slice and dice’ different categories of data, and to integrate these figures with their machine learning insights.
They desperately needed to fire up their budgeting process with a market-tested system that was easy to deploy and integrate. In doing so, they would reduce manual labour, extract key insights, and become future-fit.
The Solution
Eventually, Mark Yull, Senior Business Analyst at Bridgestone Australia Ltd. came across the solution. Using SKU Science’s fast and simple demand forecasting and performance tracking tools, he was able to solve most of his challenges at once.
Built for senior decision-makers just like him, demand forecasts from a custom-made machine learning algorithm were uploaded to the SKU Science platform to serve as the baseline for the next 3-year budget. Produced at the SKU customer channel level, these forecasts can easily be manipulated and updated at any category level associated with each item, based on pre-set attributes.
Featuring a rapid take-on process that involved a friendly conversation with SKU Science, Mark was able to start budgeting with his new technology-driven tools in a short time. Commenting on how long it took the average team member to learn the system, he says:
“Very quickly, within the hour if not quicker.”
The Results
Mark and his team started enjoying benefits like the ability to visualize forecasts at any level and being able to make quick updates for a large group of forecasts by changing one single piece of data at an aggregate level. They were able to reduce manual labour, improve budgeting accuracy, and make incremental gains in productivity.
Commenting on the advantages of the SKU Science solution, he says:
“It’s more the efficiency side which SKU Science would save hours and days compared to excel.”
The overall SKU Science system has many advantages, as confirmed by Mark:
“Definitely a very effective and efficient tool to complete budgets.”
Mark speaks glowingly of the standard of customer service:
“The support from the team is first class despite being the other side of the world.
On Friday we sent all the data files to SKU Science and by the time Monday arrived in Australia it was all ready to go!”
The Opportunity
Bridgestone used SKU Science to solve a deep and longstanding problem related to its slow and inefficient budgeting process.
Book a demo to see how we can help you do the same.