udy

Case Study
Case Study

How Unilever uses

Logistical Expense Data
to Drive Continuous Process Improvement
Unilever, a global marketing leader that employs 13,000 across North America, is known
for its iconic brands including Dove personal care products, Lipton, Popsicle, Skippy,
Slim-Fast and Vaseline. Unilever partners with Cass to provide freight bill processing and
payment services, as well as related business intelligence.

www.cassinfo.com Improved Process. Real Results.

Unilever Profile
Look inside the average household’s cabinets, and you’ll surely find Unilever brands. Each
day, around the world, more than two billion consumers use Unilever products. Unilever
works to create a better future every day by helping people feel good, look good and get
more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others.
In the United States, Canada and the Greater Caribbean (Trinidad & Tobago, Dominican
Republic, Puerto Rico) the portfolio includes brand icons such as: Axe, Becel, Ben & Jerry’s,
Bertolli, Blue Band, Breyers, Caress, Country Crock, Degree, Dove personal care products,
Hellmann’s, Klondike, Knorr, Lipton, Omo, Popsicle, Promise, Q-Tips, Skippy, Slim-Fast,
For more than
Suave, Sunsilk and Vaseline. All of the preceding brand names are registered Unilever twenty years,
trademarks. Unilever employs nearly 13,000 people across North America – generating Unilever has
nearly $10 billion in sales in 2009.
partnered with
Since its founding more than a century ago, Unilever continues to evolve. While many of
its iconic brands have endured for decades, Unilever thrives through strategic acquisitions, Cass to minimize
divestitures and continuous improvement initiatives. In 2000, Unilever acquired Bestfoods. expenses and
Other acquisitions include Slim-Fast, Ben & Jerry’s and the Amora-Maille culinary business
in France. Through divestiture and brand consolidation, Unilever cut its brands from 1,600
improve overall
to 400 by 2001. DiverseyLever, Elizabeth Arden and Unipath were sold. In 2009, Unilever efficiencies.
announced its offer to acquire the personal care business of the Sara Lee Corporation in
Europe.
Today, Unilever is not just a global marketing leader, but a global leader in corporate
citizenship as well. Unilever has committed to sourcing raw materials such as palm oil and
tea from sustainable, ethical sources. In 2009, for the 11th year running, Unilever was
named foods sector leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes – the only company
ever to achieve such an accolade.

The Unilever-Cass Partnership

Unilever relies on Cass Information Systems as a provider of outsourced logistics expense
management services including audit and payment, accounting (with accruals) and
related business intelligence services. Additionally, Cass manages inquiries from Unilever’s
suppliers related to invoice and payment status. Cass is able to customize its systems and
processes to meet Unilever’s very specific business requirements in this area.
The Unilever-Cass partnership is characterized by:
(1) Delivery of best practices
(2) The value of the data
(3) The scalability of Cass’ operations

Best Practices
Crucial to the success of Unilever’s global growth strategy is its ability to effectively
integrate newly acquired businesses into its operations. For more than 20 years, Unilever
has partnered with Cass to minimize expenses and improve overall efficiencies as well
as help the organization execute its integration of new businesses. Over the years, Cass

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has worked with Unilever during several major integrations, such as re-engineering
business processes to combine its Household & Personal Care division – Unilever HPC
North America – with its Food Division. Cass also was instrumental in supporting the
integration of Unilever’s North American ice cream business.
“Each time we go through an integration, we evaluate each unit’s processes, systems and
tools and select best practices to unify operations. Our goal is to produce the best business
results through consistent standards of operation,” commented Wendy Herrick, director The systems
of logistics NA. The systems that Cass has delivered for logistics expense management that Cass has
have been tested through four such post-integration evaluations, consistently emerging
as the best-practice leader, producing the best business results for Unilever. delivered have
In logistics expense management, Unilever’s best practices include use of: been tested, with
• Electronic invoicing – Cass processes invoices from Unilever’s transport providers Cass consistently
and other logistic service providers. While Cass processes both paper and electronic emerging as the
invoices for Unilever, the majority of invoices are received via electronic data
interchange (EDI). Cass works proactively with Unilever’s service providers to
best-practice
continue the progress toward eliminating paper in favor of electronic formats. leader.
• MatchPay system – Cass has implemented its MatchPay system to process invoices
for Unilever’s outbound as well as inbound shipments. “MatchPay” refers to a
process in which the invoice gets matched against other authoritative source
records for verification.
For outbound shipments, Cass receives shipment records on a daily basis from
Unilever’s SAP system. A unique bill of lading number is assigned to each shipment
record by SAP. Cass processes these records utilizing Ratemaker®, the Cass rating
engine, to first generate a “pre-rating” so that Cass is in a position to provide
Unilever’s accounting group with accruals. Later, when invoices arrive, Cass
authenticates and audits the invoice against these records. A similar process exists
for Unilever’s inbound shipments: on a daily basis, Cass receives Unilever’s records

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 for inbound shipments from its Lean Logistics Transportation Management System
(TMS). A unique shipment record is assigned by the TMS system. When the Unilever
service provider presents an invoice, Cass can match the invoice data against these
authoritative records to systematically audit and process the invoices.
• Reliable business intelligence – Data integrity is the key to every project involving The most obvious
logistical cost analysis. While many businesses aren’t able to retrieve reliable “paid business result
data” from their own systems, Unilever is able to rely upon data from the Cass
is tighter cost
system for its logistical costs. Cass maintains a data warehouse of all Unilever’s
logistical expenses – for all modes. CassPort® is the Web portal that provides access controls that
to the data, along with reporting and analytical tools. In an average month, more lead to reduced
than 350 Unilever employees log into the site, making thousands of visits to access
their data and reports. Unilever uses many of the standard reports available as well
expenses.
as customized reports it develops using its own nomenclature. For example, its
inbound shipments are categorized as:
• Vendor to Co-Packer
• Vendor to Plant
• Vendor to Vendor
• Co-packer to Plant
• Plant to Plant

How Unilever Derives Value from its Expense Data Assets

For all Cass outsourced expense management relationships, the most obvious business
result is tighter cost controls that lead to reduced expenses. A less obvious factor in
the value proposition is the value of the data assets. In other words, Cass automates
most aspects of invoice management, and through the entire process, large amounts of
expense data are collected, managed and developed into business intelligence. Unilever
makes valuable use of the data for continuous process improvement. Specific uses of the
data include (1) general analysis, modeling and planning, (2) further expense reduction
projects and (3) logistical supplier performance evaluation.

Continuous Improvement Project that Achieved Savings!

CassPort® furnishes vast amounts of information that can be analyzed at a summary
level as well as at very granular levels of detail. Unilever’s transportation operations
team recently decided to analyze their transportation costs by “drilling down” into

Unilever logistics staff

log onto CassPort
regularly to retrieve
expense data, carrier
performance data,
and more.

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accessorial charges. “The data from Cass empowered them,” Randall Ledet, group
transportation manager, said. After reviewing the data, the team set a goal of saving a
targeted percentage of total accessorial spend. They questioned charges and challenged
themselves to identify further savings opportunities: “Where can we reduce unloading
charges?” “How can we save on detention?” Overall, they used the data to create further
process efficiencies and managed to hit their goal. Without visibility of these detailed
charges, such continuous process improvement would not have been possible.

Accurate Data Facilitates Better Business Decisions

In 2008, Unilever reconfigured the dry portion of its warehousing network, which
triggered the need to obtain new rates from its logistical service providers. Many
businesses don’t trust the paid data; they rely on estimated rates. Unilever has relied
on the accuracy of the actual paid amounts coming from Cass. This, in turn, allows the
Cass plays an
company to make the correct concrete business decisions when implementing and important role
monitoring key projects. in keeping
Cass Supplies Reliable Data to Track Supplier Performance Unilever out
Unilever works closely with its logistical service providers and shares substantial of the day-
information to drive better business performance. Unilever’s Transportation Business to-day role
Center (TBC) portal is accessed by Unilever transport service providers to view Key
of managing
Performance Indicators (KPIs) developed to track the metrics meaningful to Unilever.
“We recently created one monthly scorecard for all service providers within TBC so routine
the provider can see its metrics relative to everyone else’s. Cass plays a critical role by supplier invoice
providing accurate cost data, which is a key element of the supplier scorecards. Good,
accurate score carding is an important tool in driving continuous improvement.”
inquiries.
Unilever’s service providers access CassPort® to gain information about the status
of their invoices as well as to download reports. CassPort® offers several customized
reports so that a service provider can monitor invoice status and view payments it
receives from Cass. Payment data can be sorted so that the service providers can access
data just related to Unilever shipments as well as total payments made by Cass for all
shippers (Unilever as well as the provider’s other clients served by Cass).
In addition to CassPort®, Unilever’s service providers receive support via a Cass-operated
call center; however, the vast majority of inquiries are managed online. Cass plays
an important role in keeping Unilever out of the day-to-day role of managing routine
supplier communications, so Unilever staff can address more strategic relationship
issues.

Service, Cost and Scalability – A Key to Unilever’s

Selection of Cass
Unilever strives to move goods at the lowest possible cost, which keeps the logistics
professionals involved in continuous optimization efforts. Unilever is at the forefront of
the industry, creating best practices that many other sophisticated organizations have
yet to attain. To do so, Unilever partners with Cass and other best-in-class software and

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 service providers. In selecting these partners, the emphasis is on service, cost and
scalability. After all, Unilever is always planning ahead for growth, and its partners
must be able to support the business.
Cass has the ability to successfully manage the top three criteria required by Unilever.
Cass has been a long-time partner of Unilever and continues to bring together the
people, processes and automation that help the company eliminate redundant
processes to manage logistical expenses. Unilever is a model client for Cass – an
organization that understands the value of business intelligence, embraces best
practices in expense management and strives for continuous improvement overall.

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www.cassinfo.com
Cass Information Systems (Nasdaq: CASS) is North America’s largest and leading US: 314-506-5500
provider of freight audit, payment and business intelligence services. Clients Europe: 011 31 6310 10480
include Ford Motor Company, Emerson, The Hershey Company and Restoration
Hardware. In 2013, Cass paid more than $23 billion to logistical providers on ©2014 Cass Information Systems, Inc.
behalf of its clients. FCS03-020314