Connecting the berries: Genpact unchains a leading berry brand’s supply chain

Enterprises of all shapes and sizes are driving digital transformation initiatives; however, for consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms, unchaining supply chains must be the number one priority, as 70% of CPG firms have still not completely recovered from the supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic.

The best way to navigate most transformation projects is through an unhurried, piecemeal approach, where data and processes can be restructured and aligned to exploit emerging technologies to create new value. Genpact’s client precisely followed this approach. A leading brand in the fresh berry market turned to Genpact to play an anchor role in its transformation effort, which has helped the firm grow 250% in the last five years.

The brand recognized it must embrace digital transformation to maintain its top spot in the market

Circa 2018, the brand realized that it required a slew of digital initiatives to extend its leadership position in North America and further expand in Europe and China. The brand’s CIO engaged Genpact as a digital anchor to unchain its supply chain, reimagining ways of working and engaging with primary partners across its supply chain of berry growers, retailers, and consumers.

The brand initially wanted to double its revenue in the next five years while maintaining its core promise, providing high-quality, fresh berries to consumers with a target of eight days from harvest to consumer table. These non-GMO berries were cooled and not frozen, compounding the supply chain challenges. The ongoing digital transformation program that began in 2018 involves multiple infrastructure elements, apps, and experience-driven initiatives. Genpact has been the go-to partner for most of these initiatives, but three stand out based on their business impact.

Initiative 1: A growers’ portal created a connected experience and drove new efficiencies

The brand used to manually interact with growers for supply forecasting and harvest orders. With its expanding presence and constrained market dynamics, it became a victim of poor pipelines and more rejected fruit owing to a lack of visibility and poor planning, eventually leading to diminished relationships with growers and missed opportunities. Genpact developed a persona-based, multi-lingual mobile application to capture short-term supply forecasts and modify harvest orders. Genpact implemented process analytics over it to gauge forecast accuracy and harvest order change metrics. The app has transformed into a full-fledged platform (portal) that can figure out critical information, such as which category and batch of berries have the lowest (or highest) rejection rates; it can even perform transaction settlements. The portal has led to a 20% increase in operational efficiency and a 30% reduction in peripheral costs. Moreover, the portal acts as an enabler to interact and engage with 3,000 growers across three continents.

Initiative 2: Digitizing retailers’ claims processing led to better management and end-to-end transparency

The Salesforce service cloud replaced tedious, time-consuming manual claims, automating the workflow from complaint registration to claim closure. A customer self-serve portal was provisioned to review claimant requests, track claims, and raise support requests. This led to a $10 million savings on penalty avoidance. As the process got automated, it led to waste avoidance of up to $500 million. Now, if a portion of the consignment or, in rare cases, the entire consignment, doesn’t meet the standards of a particular retailer, it can be rerouted within 45 minutes to other destinations where it can be utilized, such as the food processing industry or local vendors.

Initiative 3: Barcode-based traceability improved performance, transparency, and regulatory compliance

Genpact developed a barcode-based tracking system carrying granular details such as grower name, chemical composition, and warehouse location. The system enables three critical functions. First, it helps the brand improve value chain performance by reinforcing and enhancing R&D capabilities with connected data. Second, it meets heightened customer expectations of transparency, and third, it meets new compliance standards. The brand is trying to leverage the bar-code mechanism further, and it is working with its key retail partners to gain insights on metrics like shelf positioning and resell turnaround time.

The Bottom Line: While undertaking any major transformation initiative, CPG companies should start by unchaining their supply chains, studying each entity-node relationship separately, and focusing on enhanced engagement and experience.

Based on these initiatives’ success, the brand has grown 2.5 times in five years, generating $6 billion in annual revenue. It is aiming for $10 billion in annual revenue within five years. It’s undergoing a massive ERP overhaul exercise, migrating to Oracle Fusion; it plans to complete the migration by 2026.

The brand’s success lies in its unhurried, piecemeal, value-driven approach toward transformation. Ubiquitous and varied cloud-based solutions now allow an enterprise to decide a chronology for change without the compulsion of first modernizing the core (ERP systems).