Challenges

• Develop effective management strategies to meet consumer demands for healthy, tasty, and high quality food and beverages
• Support expansion into the functional-food market, which must be undertaken in a logical, systematic way to ensure the company can compete effectively
• Implement a business planning system that can analyze the functional-food market and predict financial performance, based on a range of real-life scenarios
• Integrate sales, production, purchasing, and budget planning processes to help senior managers develop accurate management plans
• Introduce processes that allow changes to management and business strategies to be quickly incorporated into management plans, such as for launching new healthcare products
• Remove the need for staff to compile, store, and simulate sales and cost planning data necessary for management planning, so that profit and loss statements for each food and beverage division are complete and accurate
• Establish an integrated system that will improve staff efficiency by eliminating duplicate work in creating yearly, quarterly, and monthly management plans
• Gain the ability to establish multidimensional, simulation-based management and financial plans, such as for balance sheets and cash flows
• Standardize data formats for analysis, so actual food and beverage sales performance data can be accurately compared and analyzed against budget plans
• Link staff performance to business strategy by establishing profit targets for each business division and measuring staff  performance against these targets

Solutions

• Gained the ability to create comprehensive management plans, based on precise reference data and simulations, helping to strengthen a market-leading position in the Korean food and beverage market
• Enhanced corporate agility by implementing a business planning and simulation system, based on Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition , which supports budgeting, performance evaluation, and strategic decision-making
• Automated generation, distribution, and compilation of sales, production, purchasing, and cost data, previously completed manually by staff
• Cut time to develop management plans by 30% by eliminating manual data delivery and compilation
• Improved data accuracy and management plans by integrating data generated from the business planning and simulation system with the enterprise resource planning (ERP)  system, so that executives respond more quickly to changes in the business environment for more timely strategic decisions
• Developed yearly business plans, based on the performance of the previous year, and quarterly business plans, based on the corresponding quarter in the previous year, by implementing an analysis system that links management plans with ERP performance data
• Analyzed differences between end-of-month performance data and planned estimates to accurately assess the business’ actual status and enable decisions based on changing customer behavior, such as increased demand for natural vitamin products arising from an aging population and higher living standards
• Subdivided profit and loss analysis into multidimensional categories, such as organizational level, distribution channel, and food and beverage groups, so staff can only extract the data required to do their jobs, such as granting fermented-drinks online sales staff access only to data on fermented drinks sales and online customers’ behavior
• Linked profit and loss analysis data with the executive information system and the balanced scorecard system, allowing flexible responses for future business or organizational changes, such as launches of new health foods or drinks
• Presented analysis data on a single screen, such as sales figures for different beverage brands, rather than on multiple screens, eliminating time spent on data gathering
• Achieved rapid simulation of business expenses that affect corporate profitability, such as advertising, sales, marketing, and distribution costs, and allowed accurate and consistent management plans, based on standardized profit and loss data
• Simplified troubleshooting by checking data logs of tasks that utilized compiled data
• Increased efficiency of information access by using Oracle Data Integration to integrate Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with the SAP ERP system in real time

Why Oracle

Korea Yakult reviewed products from IBM, Oracle, and SAP and chose Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition because the solutions were simple to customize and met performance requirements. In addition, the solutions could be easily integrated with Korea Yakult’s SAP ERP system.

“We also had faith in Oracle Korea, that it would actively support the implementation project, so were comfortable introducing Oracle’s enterprise performance management and business intelligence solutions to the business,” said Kang Woong-seong, CIO, Korea Yakult Co., Ltd.

Implementation Process

Korea Yakult engaged Oracle Partner Blue Business Communication to build the business planning and simulation system, based on Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. The project began in November 2010, and the system went live at the end of April 2011.

The system has been operating without any issues since it went live. Korea Yakult is continuing with enhancements and plans to expand it into other areas, including performance management.

Oracle Korea provided active support throughout the project, with Oracle’s quality assurance executives and team leaders taking part in weekly meetings to ensure the quality of the system and resolve issues that arose during the course of the implementation.


Advice from Korea Yakult Co., Ltd

• Define your intended management planning processes and standards before starting the implementation to make it easier to design and configure your business planning system
• Consider choosing a solution that can be easily modified so you can add new functions that accommodate your unique business needs

Partner

Oracle Partner Blue Business Communication provides consulting, implementation, and management services, specializing in executive information systems, decision support systems, online analytical processing, and Web reporting. Armed with rich experience, Blue Business Communication supported Korea Yakult during the Oracle implementation and customized modules for the company.