Finance Cost Optimization and Benchmark Case Study

CLIENT: A $1B+ regional grocery retailer and food distributor

The challenge

After experiencing several financial reorganizations, the retailer asked PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services to conduct a retail finance benchmark to assess its current cost infrastructure. Seeing opportunity from the results, the retailer retained PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services to conduct a detailed review of the Finance transaction processes to reduce cost and to develop a new organization structure to reflect their business environment.

Our approach

PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services conducted a series of current state workshops to identify improvement opportunities for accounts payable, accounts receivable, sales audit, store & warehouse inventory, vendor revenue and payroll. These were then segregated between quick win and longer term opportunities (3 – 12 months to achieve). PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services drove the implementation of quick wins to achieve immediately cost reductions and established a program and implemented the longer term opportunities. A review of the configuration of the ERP system as well as supporting legacy systems was conducted to identify areas to enhance the configuration of these systems to better leverage their inherent functionality. Retail Consulting Services also designed and implemented simple, web-based tools to improve productivity.

As part of the engagement, PwC Canada’s Retail Consulting Services worked closely with the client’s Internal Audit department to ensure that all redesigned processes and enhanced systems were thoroughly documented and Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.

The result

• Reduced headcount in the impacted process areas by 20% or $1.2 million
  • Improved spans of controls with fewer layers of management
  • Increased utilization of their current ERP and legacy systems
  • Redesigned and streamline processes for 8 Finance processes
• Sarbanes-Oxley compliant process controls and control documentation