Cargill?s Transition to Lean and Simplified A/R Through Process Evaluation and Benchmarking
An insightful summary of how these GPOs made their A/R future-ready while reducing costs, improving metrics and keeping their customers happy!
Cargill?s Transition to Lean and Simplified A/R Through Process Evaluation and Benchmarking
The Challenge: Complex IT Landscape
Like many global giants, Cargill initially used to work out of decentralized business units having 50+ ERPs and no centralized customer master data. However, when they tried to ?lift + shift? to a centralized shared service model, they realized that didn?t have any integrated model that could support their multifaceted IT landscape consisting of: 
The Solution: Find Process Maturity Gaps Through Process Evaluation and Benchmarking
In order to tackle the complex IT landscape challenge, Cargill went with ?lift + transform + shift? by understanding the maturity gaps in their process, implementing the simplest transformation first while leaving the global standardization task for post-migration. This is how they deciphered the maturity gaps in their process: 
After benchmarking against industry standards and setting external goals for key metrics that resonate with best-in-class standards, Cargill also evaluated the processes internally by diving them into different levels making it simpler to determine the maturity gaps in their A/R processes. Moreover, they set up internal goals based on internal best practices that could be implemented globally.
Best Practices for Transforming Complex A/R IT Landscapes
Best practices suggested by Gunther Smets, Order to Cash Global Process Owner at Cargill ? Set clearly defined goals for each of your A/R processes ? Choose a single integrated receivables management platform for easier implementation, management, and global standardization ? Implement in phases to continuously monitor results and avoid fallouts
