Procurement arm of leading food service provider centralizes key data for better decision-making, collaboration, and profitability
Anaplan helps us bring this all together and have one central point, one central repository where people can go, see, understand, and take action quickly and efficiently.Andrew Brightmore, Executive Director, Foodbuy at Compass Group Australia
manual effort required to integrate Foodbuy data into budgets of parent company Compass Group
removed from planning processes and responses to corporate requests for purchasing, KPI, and financial data
consolidated source for supply chain financial data from across the business
Compass Group in Australia procures, prepares, and serves more than 61 million fresh, nutritious meals each year. It operates at hundreds of locations, from mining sites to senior homes to elegant hotels and corporate events. “We have experienced great growth for many years,” says Andrew Brightmore, Executive Director of Foodbuy Australia, the company’s procurement organization.
“In procurement, we're always looking to find the best products at the best price,” says Sandra Korres, General Manager of Finance and Analytics at Foodbuy. “We’re not immune to inflation, so we try to manage our suppliers and be cognizant that they need to make a profit as well. We need to see into the future and constantly course-correct to stay on our own profit path.”
Gathering supply chain financial data forecasting could be a lengthy, clunky process, particularly as data volumes grew. To complicate matters, Foodbuy’s inputs didn’t align with Compass Group’s budget process. “It really didn't promote trust in our planning process,” Korres says.
The Foodbuy team selected Anaplan to address the company’s finance and supply chain planning challenges. “Implementing Anaplan gave us a unique opportunity to plan for each different part of the business while maintaining a consolidated model where we could see results as soon as they’re posted,” Korres says. “That was a game-changer, particularly for the finance director at Compass Group.”
A consolidated model with a variety of inputs gives the Foodbuy team and clients deeper insight into their suppliers. “Now we can better understand our trading profiles with suppliers and build future forecast models,” Korres explains. “That helps us to manage our arrangements with them and use this data to better support both their and our KPIs to the business.”
The new solution elevated interactions between Foodbuy and Compass Group finance teams immediately. “Moving to Anaplan enabled us to integrate our Foodbuy budgeting elements into our parent Compass Group Australia budget without manual inputs or interventions being required,” Korres said. “We were then better able to efficiently model and share our procurement performance to Compass Group requirements.”
Automations created in the Anaplan solution have accelerated financial planning dramatically. “It used to take us a day to run individual elements of the planning cycle, but it’s pretty much instantaneous now, and very hands-off, enabling more time on insights and action than data aggregation,” Korres says. “I can now respond to Compass Group queries around purchasing performance, KPIs, and financials within hours. Before, it could take days. This makes my role more insight-driven than just reporting.”
The Foodbuy team also uses Anaplan to undertake complex analysis of their supplier commercial arrangements. “As the market leader we have hundreds of commercial arrangements, ranging from very simple to very complex, in Anaplan,” Korres says. “We use both historical data and predictive modeling to show our culinary and operations teams how changes in specific behaviors, menu designs, and practices can improve their purchasing performance and positively impact COGS. It gives them almost instant visibility into their purchasing opportunities and the resultant impact on their financials — which make us more successful, together.”
“The Anaplan platform sits within the heart of our analytics and data-driven decision-making capability,” Brightmore concludes. “It collates data from across our business — from our supply chain through operations — and provides visualized dashboards that deliver insight and answers quickly. Anaplan helps us bring all this data together so we can understand, work with suppliers, guide our clients, and take positive action quickly."
Sandra Korres: Foodbuy is a procurement organization that supports Compass Group Australia. Compass Group is Australia's largest food service organization.
Andrew Brightmore: Our role is to make sure we provide the very best food at the highest standards of safety and nutrition to all people across the country.
Sandra: I feel that Anaplan has transformed our Foodbuy business. Previously work was all managed through databases and spreadsheets. It never reconciled to Compass Group and our ability to be able to interrogate it and understand what that information meant once it was sent was almost impossible. Now we can turn that around within days instead of months, and our accounting for those KPIs is monthly instead of six-monthly.
Andrew: My favorite thing about Anaplan is how easily it integrates into all of these sources of data across our business. It’s part of a technology ecosystem, it’s a connector.
Sandra: My favorite thing about Anaplan is that it’s fast. By being able to push information and data into the Compass Group models so that we can all plan effectively, all at once.
Andrew: Anaplan helps us bring this all together and have one central point, one central repository where people can go, see, understand, and take action quickly and efficiently.
Sandra: My name is Sandra Korres and I’m the GM Finance and Analytics for Foodbuy at Compass Group.
Andrew: I’m Andrew Brightmore. I'm the Executive Director for Foodbuy in Australia, part of Compass Group Australia.
Both: And we plan with Anaplan.
