Tata Steel builds a strong planning structure

Tata Steel Europe, producer of some 10 million tons of steel annually, used to run its sales and supply chain operations through hundreds of spreadsheets. A change to the company’s business model—from manufacturing all materials internally to purchasing more materials externally—called for a new way to seamlessly link purchasing to the operational planning process.

Leaders at Tata Steel selected the Anaplan platform and modeled most of the supply chain to ensure that they got the process right. “This type of flexibility and scalability to re-engineer models, hierarchy, or basic datasets would be next to impossible with other solutions,” said Ardy Duwel, Head of Commercial Projects.

Sales and operations are now directly connected on one platform; as a result, planners now have more accurate pricing, procurement, and delivery forecasts. They also have more time. “The single source and transparency mean we can do things two to three times quicker and more efficiently than we ever did before,” said Duwel. “We will now have much more data around transactions by which we can strengthen our analytical improvement loop.” He adds that Anaplan’s ease of use is powering business transformation, as new ideas are being put into practice rather than just being discussed.

The company’s eventual goal is to connect downstream businesses so it can offer an integrated service portfolio to customers. This will enable the company to deliver from factories in large volumes while also delivering tailored solutions in smaller volumes from distribution centers.

Duwel appreciates the agility and transparency of the Anaplan platform, and sees potential to expand its use for planning and decision-making across the business and within the sales organization. “We want to bring in things like risks and opportunities,” he explains. “When there’s an opportunity, what’s the value, what’s the margin? Are we going to do it? Anaplan enables these types of foresights.”