We have worked on a number of projects for Pepsico’s European HQ in Geneva. Here are details of the two larger projects we worked on for them.
The first was a hedge fund management tool used to control hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hedge fund deals and the second was a data gathering tool used as a part of purchasing control measures.
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Project 1 – Hedge Fund Management Tool
When Pepsico needed a hedge fund management tool to manage the performance of hundreds of millions of dollars of hedge funds purchased for their operations in Europe, they turned to the Excel Expert.
The tool we developed helps Pepsico save over 2,500 man hours a year!
The Client
A multi-billion dollar food and drinks company with thousands of production facilities around the world. It owns household brands that include Pepsi, Walkers, 7Up, Doritos, Gatorade, Lays, Cheetos, Smiths, Snack-a-Jacks, Quaker, Tropicana, Lipton and Mountain Dew.
The Problem
Pepsico have recently completed a $3 billion acquisition push, adding several more brands and dozens of manufacturing plants to their portfolio.
To maximise their revenue they plan their purchasing months and sometimes years in advance. As some of these purchases are cross border purchases, Pepsi Co was potentially exposed to the risk of fluctuations in exchange rates and needed to hedge their billions of dollars of purchasing spend.
Their process for purchasing hedge funds was to use a combination of faxes, emails and phone calls resulting in frequent errors and missed deadlines.
The Solution
We developed an Excel application that allowed each of their manufacturing plants to enter their projected purchasing requirements, cash flow requirements and forecasted exchange rates.
The application then processed this information generating several reports and the relevant documentation to process the purchasing of hedge funds via banks in New York.
The application then took in the financial data from New York and monitored the performance of the hedge fund against what was forecasted.
The Result
The application is currently in use in every Pepsi production plant throughout Europe and an additional phase to the project is in the pipeline.
The number of errors, missed deadlines and time spent processing the hedge funds has been greatly reduced
Pepsico have also seen a time saving of approximately 2,500 working days a year, spread across their manufacturing plants and their European HQ in Geneva.
Project 2 – Data gathering tool
With hundreds of manufacturing plants spread across Europe, purchasing supplies independently, Pepsico’s European HQ in Geneva needed a data gathering tool to check the efficiency of their purchasing.
The data gathering tool we developed helped Pepsico save over 4,000 man hours each year.
The Problem
As a result of a large and growing portfolio of household brands, the European division of Pepsi Co owns hundreds of manufacturing plants dotted around Europe. In turn each of these plants are supplied by hundreds of different companies, each supplying price lists and specification documents in different formats.
Pepsi Co’s European HQ needed this data in a common format to analyse buying patterns, how effective buying was and to include in monthly directors reports. Co-ordinating the thousands of suppliers was proving impossible.
The Solution
We developed an Excel application that allowed Pepsi Co to record the format and layout of each suppliers price lists and specification document. The application would then automatically open each of these documents, extract the required information and process it in to the required format for analysis.
The Result
Up until the application was developed two members of staff were dedicated to cutting and pasting the information in to a common document. The application reduced this full time process to simply dumping the files in to a folder and clicking a button, saving Pepsi over 4,000 man hours a year.