Case Study
Leading multinational business services firm tapped UST to revamp inventory supply chain ecosystem
OUR CLIENT
With close to 75,000 employees and over $25 billion in revenue, this US-based multinational IT consulting firm helps enterprises design, implement, and maintain technology solutions.
THE CHALLENGE
Needed to optimize inventory across the global supply chain to deliver client IT projects on time
As a global organization with more than 100 locations in nearly 50 countries, the company struggled to manage approximately $500 million worth of hardware inventory, such as servers, databases, and networking devices. While working with clients on technology implementations, the hardware products weren’t available when and where they needed to be to keep project timelines on track. This led to bottlenecks, delayed deployments, and irritated customers. In addition, the company found at times that it had excess IT hardware on hand, which led to high inventory carrying costs.
THE TRANSFORMATION
UST implemented SAP IBP for Inventory and delivered complex data integrations
After a thorough analysis of the company’s challenges, needs, and goals, UST recommended and implemented the SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) for Inventory solution. This SaaS application gives global enterprises end-to-end inventory visibility across a multi-echelon supply chain ecosystem to optimize planning and product availability across regions, reduce working capital and overall supply chain costs, and improve service levels. UST also delivered the associated data integration services that included a significant data cleansing effort of master and transactional records, data ownership and governance policies, and robust analytics capabilities. UST helped the company standardize supply chain business processes and regulate product delivery lead times based on a variability analysis as part of the work effort. It also helped identify internal supply chain experts for oversight and training purposes and document the new processes to facilitate change management and user adoption. UST delivered the inventory optimization project against a backdrop of technical and business constraints, including an aggressive deployment schedule and a parallel implementation of SAP S/4HANA.
THE IMPACT
New solution is expected to reduce inventory on-hand by 49% and cut inventory costs by 14%
UST helped this global business services firm develop a standardized, multi-staged approach to optimize inventory and reduce excess hardware stock across regions worldwide. The new SAP IBP for Inventory solution and standardized supply chain processes have helped the company ensure the right hardware inventory is in the right location at the right time to keep client projects on track. Because of the flexible application parameters, the company can more easily adapt to changing market dynamics, economic uncertainty, and global volatility. Based on initial calculations, the company anticipates a 49% reduction in inventory on hand and a 14% overall savings on inventory costs.
EXPERTISE & RESOURCES
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Digital Transformation Services | Digital Technology Solutions - UST