Hershey Collaborates to Automate Advanced Ordering
The Walmart/Sam’s Club Sales Category Strategy and Insights (CSI) Team at The Hershey Company (www.thehersheycompany.com) was spending an inordinate amount of time manually generating product orders. These complex product orders, primarily for promotions and events, constitute millions of dollars in sales volume, so any process they use must be timely and accurate to maximize ROI. “Manually generating orders at the level of complexity and accuracy we required took too much time. We knew there had to be a more sustainable, efficient and automated method of generating orders. We partnered with Shiloh Technologies (www.shilohtech.com), whom we already leveraged for our reporting and analytics technology platform, to develop the tool that truly met all of our needs,” says Raegon Barnes, senior manager, Category Insights, The Hershey Company.
For Hershey, continuous process improvement is paramount, so developing one consolidated method for order generation was simply logical. Much efficiency would be realized with a consistent process across all of its businesses, including enabling ease of communication to all buyers and internal team members, a smoother transition when team member turnover occurs and improved backup support across the team.
Since Hershey had already experienced successes with the Shiloh DSR platform in generating all its ad-hoc and recurring reporting, it saw the opportunity to leverage Shiloh and integrate a streamlined order-writing process. The two companies teamed up and expanded on the work that Shiloh had begun in developing a more robust, automated, completely supplier-configurable, order-writing module.
Hershey defined its business requirements needed to replace the manual process and collaborated with Shiloh to translate from concept to an actual tool. Thorough beta testing was conducted to ensure the output met and exceeded expectations set. Hershey leveraged its own internal onsite information systems resources to ensure the process went smoothly throughout the development, beta testing and implementation phases.
This collaboration between the two companies resulted in a highly customizable, systematic, advanced ordering tool. Out of the box, it is a blank slate, which is the beauty of the tool as it gives each retail supplier its own proprietary order-writing process that leverages its unique order-writing logic. It’s an iterative process that is otherwise virtually impossible to do by hand. Eliminating massive Excel spreadsheets and significantly reducing the potential for errors has allowed Hershey to implement even more complex business logic into its order writing process/methodology, increase flexibility and accuracy, which translates to improved sell through at store level.
All former Excel spreadsheets and manual processes are now completed entirely in the Shiloh Advanced Order Module. Orders are written based on the POS data that is automatically loaded into the DSR and pushed to templates that ensure orders are written from a consistent methodology across all categories, significantly reducing/eliminating potential for errors in its output to Walmart.
“Previously, order writing consumed more than 750 man hours annually for our Category Strategy and Insights team. Since these orders generate millions of dollars in sales each year, we weren’t willing to cut corners on the process,” says Barnes. “Our implementation has resulted in up to a 95 percent projected annual reduction in man-hours dedicated to order writing. And the tool gives us even more processing capabilities to manage additional complexity in our order writing and quickly meet changing customer demands.”
FAST FACTS
Words of Wisdom
“The end result of our exploration was a remarkable, best-in-class, independently configurable tool that anyone can utilize to write anything from simple to complex orders in a matter of minutes.”
— Raegon Barnes, The Hershey Company
Sweet Beginnings
Milton Hershey began his first successful candy business, the Lancaster Caramel Company, in 1886. Later in 1894, he began experimenting by adding chocolate coating to his caramels and that is when the real legend began, The Hershey Chocolate Company.
The Value of Analytics
Automated order writing with Shiloh Advanced Ordering significantly improved Hershey’s ability to incorporate new and more complex analysis to drive promotion sell through at store level.
Simplicity Counts
The development of the automated Advanced Order Module in the Shiloh DSR saves Hershey approximately 17 weeks of man hours annually.
Better When Done Together
The Hershey Company is focused on solving business issues and process improvements through collaboration with retailers and solutions providers alike.