Data feeds finance and purchasing for Foodbuy at Compass Group Australia

Foodbuy, the procurement arm of food service provider Compass Group Australia, collaborates with hundreds of suppliers to deliver millions of meals each year. As supply chain and financial data about suppliers and products grew, gathering key performance data, and then sharing and visualizing that data, became more complex. But with Anaplan as a common data source, information-sharing has become more automated and routine processes have accelerated.

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.

Upleveling interactions

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.”

The heart of analytics and decision-making

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."