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CAPABILITY

Agribusiness: Operational excellence

Read how Accenture helped agribusiness companies achieve operational excellence by reducing capacity from an operational perspective.

Overview

The global increase in demand for both food and energy, combined with the impact of rising commodity costs, has placed pressure on agribusinesses to improve productivity in all areas of the enterprise.

Operational excellence enables the efficient use of equipment, personnel and inputs to improve outcomes and returns. Accenture leads companies toward operational excellence by reducing capacity and allowing them to focus on the strategic elements of business.

Sourcing and procurement
A centrally coordinated approach to sourcing and supply management is key to procurement mastery. Accenture helps agribusinesses by building the requisite governance models to quickly and confidently segment supplier bases; develop stronger, more strategic supplier relationships; and focus on the purchasing activities that add the most value to the supply chain.

Agriculture and industry automation
The shift to automation from manual processes improves productivity, enhances asset utilization, prevents loss and deviation, enables traceability and increases the quality of product for agribusinesses. Accenture provides the technological tools and change management services that drive innovative methods of information transfer from the farm to the refinery.

Asset Management

In an effort to increase equipment availability and reduce costs in consumption of parts and labor, agribusinesses are searching for ways to effectively manage their assets. Accenture offers OEM insights and in-depth problem solving to improve reliability and maintenance of assets. We identify high-impact, high-value opportunities early in the process to drive initial investment and encourage capability transfer. By internalizing knowledge and expertise, we enable agribusinesses to maximize asset availability through optimum operating models.

Process optimization and performance management
While many agribusinesses focus on continuous improvement, CEO’s continuously focus on implementation. Achieving operational excellence requires two components: The right structure and operating model, and the ability to execute. Accenture has the deep industry experience to help agribusinesses identify what is required from an operational perspective and then pinpoint strategic and structural issues to see where execution is obstructing strategy.

Accenture also analyzes the intersections of offerings and processes to highlight complexity hot spots and works to help simplify those areas. By implementing our proven improvement methodology, Process Cycle Efficiency, we are able to focus on process speed, agility and waste elimination to shorten lead times.

Supply Chain Planning

Expanding markets, global competition, fluctuations in production and world food consumption place strain on agribusiness supply chains. Through diagnostics and careful analysis, Accenture helps companies formulate the strategies that solve their challenges and take advantage of opportunities leading them toward to achieve a broad and consolidated supply chain that enables profitable growth.

Transportation and fulfillment services management
Demands on the agribusiness fulfillment function are growing as companies struggle to increase service levels and reduce costs without raising prices. Accenture works with agribusinesses to trim costs and improve service to the supply chain—from logistics through to fulfillment—by focusing on areas such as advancements to warehouse management and operations, distribution network design, transportation management and customer service.

Secure Traceability

Traceability in agribusiness helps control information such as region of origin and sustainability practices leveraged throughout the food chain to help ensure food safety. Recent pressure to provide traceability on food sources resulting from government regulations and the demand from consumers has forced agribusinesses to make it a priority.

Accenture takes the world’s leading agribusinesses to a new level of sophistication by enabling traceability from field to industry and then industry to retail. Accenture helps companies secure their food chain by focusing on three key areas: strategic changes, operational improvements and the implementation of enabling technology.

Accenture Advanced Enterprise Solutions for Agribusiness (AAES)
Many agribusinesses are looking toward hybrid global/regional operating models to ensure speedy fulfillment and secure supply chains that will further enrich profitable performance. Accenture Advanced Enterprise Solution for Agribusiness is an innovative, comprehensive and proven solution and methodology based on the latest ERP technologies that provides predictable outcomes, thereby reducing delivery times by a sizeable percentage.

Shared Services

Shared services provide organizations with a standardized and consolidated alignment of administrative/support and commercial functions into a single body that provides services to the enterprise using a global operating model. These shared services deliver better value to service and improved focus to technology investments. Accenture transforms agribusinesses by enabling properly planned and deployed shared services operations that are designed to build efficiencies across the global enterprise and enable focus on competitive differentiators.

Global operating model
As agribusiness continue to look toward expansion, global reach continues to be a primary means to achieving growth. Many are finding that the road is fraught with challenges integrating operations. Accenture helps agribusinesses successfully develop a winning operating model that has both global reach and scale while maintaining a locally integrated approach.

Accenture clients have been able to improve cost and service levels by 2–5 percent year-on-year and widen the scope for continuous service improvements by up to 10 percent year-on-year.

Learn more about the Accenture Agribusiness Industry