Clarkston Consulting Builds Real-Time Visibility Into Unilever Home and Personal Care's North American Supply Chain.Business Editors DURHAM, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 2003 Clarkston-Unilever HPC-NA Team Streamlined Business Processes from Order-to-Cash Clarkston Consulting, a nationally recognized management and technology consulting firm Noun 1. consulting firm - a firm of experts providing professional advice to an organization for a fee consulting company business firm, firm, house - the members of a business organization that owns or operates one or more establishments; "he worked for a , announced today the completion of a unified, real-time view of the entire order-to-cash process for Unilever Home and Personal Care North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. (HPC-NA). The new process will streamline the company's common business processes across the organization through the implementation of appropriate technology solutions. In response to changing business pressures, Unilever HPC-NA set out to install a system that would provide a platform to meet future business needs, handle planned growth, and provide superior customer service capabilities. Clarkston helped Unilever HPC-NA replace 15 legacy applications with a fully integrated system and simplified business processes. "Feedback on this project has been tremendous," said Fred Berkheimer, vice president of logistics at Unilever HPC-NA." Customers are benefiting from improved processes and a seamless transition while employees are seeing the value of real-time customer data. Success can be attributed to our 'working partnership' with Clarkston Consulting. Clarkston had the expertise and knowledge to successfully guide this project from start to finish." Unilever HPC-NA needed to better manage and fill customer orders from the moment of receipt, through the distribution process, to delivery at the customer's warehouse. Clarkston helped Unilever HPC-NA migrate their retail order management process from a costly mainframe onto an integrated client-server platform. This migration required the integration of multiple warehouse management systems, supply chain planning systems See spreadsheet and financial planning system. , pricing and promotion applications, and reporting database systems. The Unilever HPC-NA - Clarkston team streamlined a variety of business processes including order management, order fulfillment Order fulfillment (in BE also: order fulfilment) is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Sometimes Order fulfillment , accounts receivable accounts receivable n. the amounts of money due or owed to a business or professional by customers or clients. Generally, accounts receivable refers to the total amount due and is considered in calculating the value of a business or the business' problems in paying , and deduction deduction, in logic, form of inference such that the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. For example, if we know that all men have two legs and that John is a man, it is then logical to deduce that John has two legs. management. Throughout the project, Unilever HPC-NA and Clarkston worked to ensure that the implementation would be transparent to customers. Careful implementation planning Operational planning associated with the conduct of a continuing operation, campaign, or war to attain defined objectives. At the national level, it includes the development of strategy and the assignment of strategic tasks to the combatant commanders. and thorough testing paid off in the end. The majority of Unilever's customers experienced no disruption disruption /dis·rup·tion/ (dis-rup´shun) a morphologic defect resulting from the extrinsic breakdown of, or interference with, a developmental process. of service and commented on the remarkably smooth transition. "By creating a tightly integrated team among Unilever and Clarkston employees, we were able to make a significant difference," said Patrick Kearney For the American football player, see . Patrick Kearney (born 1940) is an American serial killer who preyed on young men in California during the 1970s. He is sometimes referred to as The Freeway Killer , managing partner of Clarkston Consulting. "From streamlining internal processes to positively impacting customer service, we believe the project was a success. Most important, the entire transition to the new order-to-cash system was virtually invisible to the trade." About Unilever Unilever is one of the world's largest consumer products companies with annual sales of approximately $47 billion in 2002. It produces and markets a wide-range of foods and home and personal care products, including such leading brands as Dove, Suave suave adj. suav·er, suav·est Smoothly agreeable and courteous. [French, agreeable, from Old French, from Latin su , Wisk, Lipton, Hellman's, Ben & Jerry's and Slim-Fast. Unilever operates in 88 countries around the globe and employs approximately 258,000 people. Visit Unilever at www.unilever.com. About Clarkston Consulting Clarkston Consulting is a nationally recognized management and technology consulting firm that creates successful business strategies and implements technology solutions. Clarkston's business value acceleration approach bridges the gap between strategy and technology to build a sustainable business A business is sustainable if it has adapted its practices for the use of renewable resources and holds itself accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of its activities. advantage for Fortune 1000 manufacturers within the life sciences and consumer products industries. The firm's excellence has been recognized through numerous industry, vendor and client awards. Clarkston's exceptional client satisfaction rating as measured by The Conference Board is heralded as among the highest in the consulting industry. To learn more about Clarkston, visit www.clarkstonconsulting.com. |
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