Mondelez International transforms procurement digitally to integrate 160+ data fields, 28K suppliers, and drive millions in cost savings

Mondelēz International, Inc. is the largest producer of biscuits, chocolate, and candy products in the world, with a net revenue of over $20 billion and products in more than 160 countries, including Oreo, ChipsAhoy, BelVita, Toblerone, Lacta, Milka, Trident, etc.

Mondelēz’s Global Procurement Data Analytics team delivers superior business value by driving operational efficiencies, cash generation, and cost savings upwards of several million dollars. As Senior Manager of Global Procurement Analytics and Strategy, Igor Vasquez and his team help the Global Procurement Organization manage over $60 billion dollars of spend and nearly 28,000 including direct and indirect materials suppliers over a three-year period.

This success was made possible by leveraging Tableau to transform traditional procurement into a digital process. In the past, procurement, risk, and finance systems were disconnected across more than 160 data fields and 42 million transactions—including purchase orders, invoices, and payments. The team began driving this digital procurement strategy with two goals in mind: 1) establish one data repository for all purchase order and invoice transactions and 2) create an infrastructure to support and visualize analysis of these transactions with Tableau. By integrating all data to a central repository, they established a standard, global solution of sustainable analytics for a complex supply chain, leading to simplified spend KPIs worldwide, improved analytics and customer satisfaction, and more responsible business practices.

The team and key partners in the Information Systems department embarked on a journey to find a digital, global solution to enable one repository of data and one analytics platform, improve business process efficiencies for cost savings, and develop an agile analytics model. Financial and procurement data were siloed in legacy systems, requiring the team to implement interfaces between systems to extract data. Analysis was time-consuming and stuck in spreadsheets, preventing the Global Procurement Data Analytics team from effectively serving stakeholders or structuring data with end user adoption and satisfaction in mind.

To transition to a digital approach, the team focused on asking questions about how procurement and spend data were consumed by stakeholders and how procurement data integrated across global systems. They wanted flexibility in order to provide greater value to the business: the ability to filter data by region, spend categories, measure complexity of payment terms, better manage suppliers, and identify risks that impact net revenue.

Ultimately, the Global Procurement Data Analytics team adopted SAP HANA to host the central data repository and decided on Tableau as their analytics platform to support spend analysis. The procurement organization now have complete spend visibility, integrating data end-to-end for a sustainable analytics model and reducing dependencies and reporting times.

In order to understand with high level of accuracy and effectiveness the use of cash in supplier payments, a global process needed to be put in place to ensure standards were followed. The Weighted Average Payment Terms report was developed allowing a process that used to take eight weeks, now takes only two weeks with Tableau. Across this report, among others, the Global Procurement Data Analytics team has analyzed millions of transactions and seen significant time savings by integrating data and using Tableau. Igor and team have enabled the procurement function to focus on strategy and proactively mitigate risk. With plans in progress to use Tableau dashboards to have full visibility into their supply chain, they will be able to take future action avoid revenue impacts when a supplier is at risk of not having an item like cocoa or wheat, for example, to prevent negative impacts to revenue.

Furthermore, managing payment terms is an area where end-to-end data integration proves its value. Having accurate visibility into spend across 28,000 suppliers allows the team to see which suppliers they're spending more with and adjust payment terms accordingly—to 90 days or 120 days, for example. This visibility also informs how to increase value from existing suppliers or plan for supplier base reduction.

Having more than 100 traditional reports, 20% of which were used, pushed the team to review which reports were most valuable and actionable. By consolidating spend and supplier information, they created 10 simple, yet powerful Tableau dashboards to serve all 475 stakeholders, across all categories and regions globally.

By enabling this digital transformation, Igor and a multifunctional team of 20 members—and growing—can scale and support over 475 Tableau users, with more planned, while maintaining continual collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders. After having launched their digital solution with Tableau, the feedback from stakeholders has been unanimously positive. People love the insightful analysis, saying, "Just show me Tableau," rejecting traditional spreadsheet-based reporting. They ask, "How can we get more?"

Igor makes a point of collaborating with senior procurement leadership in North America, the finance team in Europe, and category leads in Asia and Latin America, to understand the business questions they're trying to answer. Involving stakeholders in the process to establish these questions means alignment on which metrics matter, resulting in better service and increased adoption. The team examine spend KPIs by region and existing Strategic and Operational processes with the single data source and Tableau platform in order to drive cost savings and generate cash.

By using Tableau to enable alignment across the entire company, departments can understand what data their stakeholders need to focus on, and have one channel to communicate these insights. Confidence in the data is increased because KPIs have been defined and standardized. Reports that previously took one to two hours of explanation are now visualizations that can be consumed and understood by stakeholders in minutes, simplifying communication across departments.

To support regional leaders, the team addresses challenges or gaps regions have in meeting their KPIs with tailored strategies and operational dashboards. Procurement analytics enables leaders to understand levels of spend and volume of materials purchased, which informs supplier negotiations and increases cost savings.

An especially fruitful collaboration for the procurement team has been with the finance department. Together, finance and procurement look at the following spend KPIs to eliminate unnecessary costs and improve operational efficiency, taking a specific approach for each:
1. Cash conversion cycle from the supply chain perspective – focus on managing appropriate payment term levels well to balance cash flow
2. Days paid outstanding (DPO) – pay special attention to payment terms of suppliers with higher spend to hold onto funds, generating cash.
3. Simplification of supply chain – looking at complexity of supply chain and reducing operational cost of maintaining too many suppliers, ingredients, etc.

By collaborating, both the Mondelēz finance and procurement departments have been able to establish a crucial, yet previously lacking aspect in legacy reporting: consistency. As a joint effort, these two groups committed to consistent reporting through common databases and Tableau dashboards, requiring that any differences in reporting be explained. Discussions around inconsistencies are focused on the common goal of supporting cost savings and investment efforts across both departments.

The success of such interdepartmental collaborations has enabled Mondelēz colleagues of all analytical skill levels to go beyond creating dashboards in order to focus on driving business value with data insights.

With a central data repository and the Tableau analytics platform, the Global Procurement Data Analytics team supports Mondelēz International’s mission to empower people to snack right in a sustainable and responsible way. Igor said, "We use analytics not only for our business, but also for caring about our world." It’s not just data that is integrated with an end-to-end approach—Mondelēz also approaches sourcing and production the same way: by focusing on sustainable agriculture and reducing their environmental footprint through end-to-end sustainability goals. Achieving sustainability goals is possible with all supply chain data managed in a powerful analytics platform and central data repository.

This digital procurement strategy has allowed Igor and Global Procurement Data Analytics team to drive operational efficiencies, increase cost savings, and deliver superior business value across at Mondelēz International.