PepsiCo BeLux (Belgium and Luxembourg) Selects Arkieva to Strengthen Their Beverages Demand Planning Process

02 Apr 2014 --- PepsiCo BeLux has chosen Solventure, a supplier and implementer of advanced planning solutions, to implement the Arkieva Supply Chain Demand Planning Software suite for generating more accurate business critical forecasts in much less time. Solventure is Arkieva’s channel partner in Europe.

PepsiCo BeLux is a part of the PepsiCo Group, one of the world’s leading food and beverages companies with more than $65 billion net revenue. PepsiCo BeLux holds 13 A-Brands and is the market leader in crisps, snacks, and chilled fruit juices. The company is headquartered in Zaventem, Belgium with plants in Zeebrugge and Veurne. Nearly 900 people are employed by PepsiCo BeLux.

PepsiCo BeLux found itself confronted with several challenges in the demand planning process as a result of a large amount of data and the absence of a system to manage these data efficiently and effectively.

The main challenges could be summarized as follows:
- Reduce time and effort that is spent on data crunching. Create time for exception based demand planning and promotional planning.
- Create a more accurate demand plan.
- Meet deadlines on a weekly basis to provide the demand plan to all functions involved including sales, customer service, and replenishment.
- Organize the demand plan into many forms (as per different hierarchies).

In parallel with the company’s upcoming SAP implementation, it was the intention of PepsiCo to turn their demand planning process into a streamlined competitive advantage. Solventure was chosen not only due to the flexibility that the Arkieva platform could offer, but also due to the prominent capacity to quickly tackle the aforementioned challenges in iterative steps. Such a rapid iterative delivery methodology enabled PepsiCo to quickly realize benefits with the successful interaction of people, processes, and tools.

Once data became available in Arkieva and the basics were set for removing promotional effects, Arkieva provided a baseline statistical forecast which enabled flexible reporting on time. “In Excel, it takes about one whole day just for data crunching and creating a statistical forecast for a single category. Using Arkieva, it takes about 20 minutes to get the data & forecast for all categories at the same time,” said Kim Allaert, manager of demand planning & customer services at PepsiCo BeLux.

PepsiCo has managed to accelerate and make more accurate the process of demand planning, better manage the information available, and provide a single plan to all parties involved in and affected by the planning process. In general, looking at different hierarchies, forecast accuracy was improved by two percent, and up to twenty percent.

“PepsiCo is a leader in their market and a perfect example of how Arkieva can enhance a company’s demand planning process,” said Sujit Singh, chief operating officer of Arkieva. “We are pleased to add them to our growing list of food and beverage customers.”