Several suppliers in New Zealand have apparently experienced cashflow, stock and marketing issues as a result of delays with Foodstuffs’ new SAP system and lack of codes for suppliers in recent months. FMCG Business talked to Foodstuffs’ management to find out when this situation will be resolved.
Baden Ngan Kee, General Manager Merchandise, Foodstuffs North Island Ltd comments: “Foodstuffs North Island embarked on Programme Lightning three years ago to standardise processes and systems across the organisation and create a consistent way of working. The Roma Road Support Centre is nearing its stabilisation phase as the teams familiarise themselves with the new system and processes. As anticipated, there have been a number of data integrity issues which have now been addressed, but this did cause some out of stocks which the Supply Chain team are working to remedy. The successful roll out of SAP remains our top priority and this includes ensuring all our supplier partners have product codes, a comprehensive promotional programme accurately loaded, and supplier price changes implemented. As you can appreciate, there is an exceedingly large volume of new products and promotions to load into our SAP system post moratorium which ended on the 17 August, 2014. To date approximately 2,400 new products have been loaded, 4,000 changes have been made, and 90 Vendor price modifications have been entered into the system.”
He says: “By adding extra resources to the project we have managed to get the bulk of the new product backlog loaded and the teams are looking at ways to streamline the process both internally and for our suppliers. Part of the new product process is the creation of codes for our Lower North Island stores, notification of these codes will be sent out approximately two weeks after the SAP codes are available for the Upper North Island stores. At store level the SAP roll out has begun with three retail pilot stores – PAK’nSAVE Albany, New World Morrinsville and Four Square Papamoa, which are working towards stabilisation and achieving the business-as-usual phase. The full SAP regional deployment is planned to commence in the first quarter of 2015 and it is anticipated that the roll out will take approximately three to four years to complete.
He concludes: “We do appreciate the frustration some of our suppliers are feeling and we want to acknowledge that without their support during the moratorium we would not have had a stable environment. We wish to sincerely thank suppliers for their support and look forward to their continued cooperation as we rollout SAP to our retail stores across FSNI.”
