Global CPG company
Consumer & Retail – Food & Drink
Integrate financial operations after a major acquisition
and global alignment between cross-functional teams
into consolidated spend driving meaningful insights and more proactive decisions
the monthly close cycle
revenue and sales forecasting
Click on each part of the journey to learn more about our client’s transformation.
Looking for the “one way” forward after acquisition-fueled growth.
Albertsons is committed to “one way.” Meaning that, as large as the company becomes, it aims to remain unified in its vision and in the systems and tools that support it.
Acquisition-fueled growth naturally opens the door to “many ways.” By 2019, different divisions and subsidiaries had their own back-office solutions. People, processes, and data were becoming more siloed.
A different kind of company might have assumed that decentralized processes are an acceptable consequence of multiple acquisitions. Or that you can’t be one of the biggest industry players and move with startling speed and agility when it comes to acquisitions. But accepting trade-offs like those is not the Albertsons way.
Company-wide opportunities
Finance Opportunities
HR Opportunities
290,000+ Albertsons employees come together every day in the cloud.
Today, cashiers at 2,200 stores all log their hours via the same mobile app. That data flows seamlessly to payroll, and across the enterprise-- where it’s available for everyone from store managers making data-driven staffing projections to CFOs reviewing budgets.
Back-office staff spend less time on manual processes and more on analyzing data in ways that help lower costs and improve performance every day, and inform due diligence during acquisitions.
HR executives and business managers find it easy to access candidate information, share observations and schedule interviews, quickly and easily moving the right candidates through the hiring process.
And candidates who become new hires, continue through the same efficient, cloud-based environment as they complete onboarding and get to work—already a part of Albertsons’ “one way.”
Company-wide success
Finance Successes
HR Successes
Making sure the “one way” continues to be the best way.
Long before the go-live date, Albertsons was collaborating with Oracle and KPMG about future initiatives. They wanted to know what to expect from upcoming product releases and how they should be planning to leverage new functionality.
The company’s agile mindset combined with its investment in Oracle Cloud and KPMG Powered Enterprise will keep it in a position to continue evolving, always finding the best way forward as one, strong enterprise.
Finance Vision
HR Vision
Click on a phase to scroll down to its description.
Developing a high-level strategy for integration and performance
KPMG deployed a highly experienced team of senior finance professionals from the U.S. and Europe. The team’s industry experience ran deep in food as well as other sectors, helping ensure a multidimensional perspective on key financial operations issues. We assessed our client’s requirements and integration concerns and developed a nuanced understanding of the two separate financial operations functions.
Two key opportunities emerged early on:
Combining our finance and industry experience with a deep dive into the client’s situation helped us envision a high-level integration strategy that would leave financial operations not only unified—but also stronger and more agile.
Collaborating with our client to envision a future state
After gaining a clear picture of our client’s current state, we set to work defining a future one. This involved collaboration in several forms:
We used the insights we gained to provide a holistic perspective on enterprise-wide operations as well as to define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that would help guide how we designed data models, streamlined processes and reporting procedures, and defined roles and responsibilities. Along the way, we also uncovered a number of opportunities to optimize the legacy close process.
Putting the structures in place to support a single, efficient financial operations function
Using a practical, results-driven approach, KPMG created and implemented needed structures, policies, and processes to help ensure a smooth, successful financial operations integration.
Driving socialization and adoption across the globe
Integration would not have been successful without the support of teams in the U.S. and throughout Europe. To help increase understanding and adoption of new roles and responsibilities as well as processes and tools, KPMG developed a robust change-management training initiative and documentation. We also created a detailed communication strategy that kept all employees informed of what the changes where, when they were coming, and what needed to be accomplished.
Continued support of ongoing transformation
KPMG teams in the U.S. and Europe worked together to monitor the success of the new integrated finance function, addressing cross-border issues, helping ensure that regional silos had been fully decommissioned, and continuously supporting more standardized, unified, and efficient ways of working.
As a result of the successful integration, KPMG was invited to present at the client’s global conference and to lead a “Future of Finance” workshop with the global CFO and global finance team. This led to the launch of a broader, strategic, integrated business services program with the goal of digitally transforming global operations.
Everyone knows that the food sector has become more saturated and volatile and that a sound M&A strategy can fuel performance and growth. Having worked with so many leading CPG companies, we have insights into what drives value and what threatens it.
When data silos, manual processes, and fragmented reporting capabilities are left in place, you sacrifice speed and agility. And when you rely only on internal data, instead of leveraging third-party sources, you reduce your insight into shifting consumer demands and market opportunities. Rapidly integrating financial operations, establishing healthy data ecosystems, and optimizing reporting environments are all key to the kind of insight-driven decision-making that helps capture optimal value from every deal.
At KPMG, we know financial operations and data and analytics. We know the CPG industry. And we’ll get to know you. Then we can work together on transforming your business.
Let’s talk about where you’d like to see your business headed and how financial operations transformation could help you get there.
