CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Kraft Foods

“All the careful data Data Migration with

planning led us to
be smarter about BackOffice Associates
overall resource
planning. BackOffice
brought solutions, KEY CHALLENGES
methodology and experts
to bridge a critical time
Increasing Complexities Needed a Solution

I
in our SAP project and
go-live to keep us moving n 2004, Kraft Foods realized that they faced competitive challenges
forward and respond that required eliminating complexity throughout their organization. In
addition to traditional plant closings and product rationalization, the
faster, better and more
company decided to consolidate on the SAP® ERP platform and is currently
efficiently.”
rolling out globally to go-live on ECC 6.0. The North American SAP project
David Underwood began in April 2005, and like all global projects, the growing impact of master
DDS Operations and Business data definition, rationalization and migration was becoming apparent to the
Services Manager enterprise MDM team.

There are many teams responsible for different aspects of the project defi-
nition and subsequent rollout. At the same time, Kraft Foods’ restructuring
initiative, “Organizing for Growth”, required substantial changes in corporate
alignment and was aggressively cutting costs to remain in a leadership posi-
tion in its key product and demographic markets.
KEY CHALLENGES WHY BACKOFFICE? ++ Virtual migration has helped
repeatability, lowered costs
++ Q uickly realized challenge of managing ++ Innovative approach to data migration,
global, enterprise SAP data management of production data OPERATIONAL BENEFITS
++ N
 eeded method for managing data with the BackOffice data governance
solution ++ H
 armonized 35,000 customer records
governance issues for migration cross-repository, cross-system
and MDM teams without addition of ++ BackOffice Associates® planned and reporting helped define new rules—
substantial resource pragmatic approach achieved success continuous business improvement
without increasing staff through data quality
OBJECTIVES
++ Reset and revisit the resource plan IMPLEMENTATION ++ T eam of three persons manages 195
HIGHLIGHTS million records downloaded daily
++ Data has to be clean on migration
++ K nowledge transfer to Kraft Foods ++ 4 0 Plants had Boring Go Live® data
++ Delays would have substantial migrations through 12/2009, remainder
resources facilitated speed of
opportunity costs locally and globally migrations migrated in 2010

Communication is Key saw that the process they were using for data migration
and governance was not sustainable or repeatable, and
At Kraft Foods, the enterprise master data group imple-
they chose BackOffice in October of that year. “We saw
menting SAP MDM and the SAP data group had not
the BackOffice presentation and were blown away”, says
been closely linked in their efforts until six months prior
Merri. “They showed us that we could succeed with fewer
to go-live. The teams came to realize that they had a
resources with a different plan.”
master data issue and process for implementation that
could not be sustained long-term. “Resource projections Kraft Foods made changes in the way they managed
were the main driver”, says Merri Beckfield, MDM the implementation. Key personnel from a former data
Delivery Services Manager. “We had a lot of overlapping integrity group were re-purposed to learn the BackOffice
activities between the plants getting ready to go live, and solution and methodology, and focus on data quality as
we knew that the SAP data had to be clean.” part of a newly energized Data Delivery Service (DDS).
As DDS became more proficient, additional persons
were sent to BackOffice for training.
“Before BackOffice, we would say ‘Now BackOffice remained key to the early success of the rela-
that we have all this useful information, tionship by putting senior resources at Kraft Foods to get
it would be nice to do something started quickly. The changes BackOffice recommended
with it.’ With the BackOffice data to the process allowed the ERP project to be much more
governance solution we know where structured for the deadlines and commitments around
and how to take action.” data definition and other data-related project components.

Brad Krause

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There were too few resources allocated to their target Kraft Foods is the world’s 2nd largest food company.
process and it was clear that the current trajectory would With revenues in excess of $48B, they manage 11 brands
continue to frustrate the team and begin to delay results. which generate over $1B annually, and 70 brands which
That was simply an unacceptable risk — a delay in a generate more than $100M annually from a global
global organization the size of Kraft Foods could cost distribution in 160 countries. More than 25% of revenue
comes from emerging markets, and leveraging their #1
millions of dollars monthly in lost productivity.
positions in biscuits and confectionery, over 50% of
global revenue is generated from snacks and confec-
New Methods from BackOffice tionery brands such as Lu, Nabisco, Oreo, Cadbury,
Milka and Trident.
Kraft Foods turned to SAP who introduced the com-
pany to BackOffice Associates at SAPPHIRE in April
2007. After discussions with BackOffice, the company
 Customer SNAPSHOT
INDUSTRY Foods Processing HEADQUARTERS Northfield, Illinois SAP SOLUTION ECC 6.0 ERP, MDM
REVENUE $48B+ (US) WEBSITE kraftfoodscompany.com IMPLEMENTATION PARTNER IBM®
EMPLOYEES 103,000 BACKOFFICE ASSOCIATES SOLUTIONS
Data Migration, Data Governance

Maturing the Delivery Organization cally — that’s where the BackOffice solution has played a
key role. “The goal of the solution is to help discover and
By Q3 2008, Kraft Foods began a knowledge transfer
define rules that weren’t known or that needed modifi-
process to take on more tasks, changes and management
cation — it’s a continuous process”, says Brad Krause,
of the data migration from the BackOffice senior re-
Master Data Manager for DDS. Since the company is
source team. As their skill set grew, the company sought
in migration through 2011, much of the early reporting
additional cost savings through ‘virtual migration’ lower
requirement was temporary (legacy systems vs. SAP) and
cost resources. Originally a labor arbitrage play, place-
consisted of cross-repository, cross-system reporting.
ment of those resources in Chicago, Mexico and China
has become a strategic part of the DDS organization. “We want to get to a ‘management by exception’ frame-
“Our Kraft Foods resources can continue to focus on work”, notes Krause. “To get that you have to trust in
high-value work while leveraging our strategic partner the rules and that the data is not masking some other
for design and development work”, says David Under- cause from something else”. Business confidence has
wood, DDS Operations and Business Services Manager. risen as the BackOffice solution has delivered rules that
“We are able to work almost 24/7/365 as we kick off start out as broad-based and get more granular. Since
refreshes and development in China and finish up in Kraft Foods has started the SAP rollout, they have also
Chicago later that day.” acquired Cadbury, which is migrating simultaneous to
the company data loads. “Because of the combined data
“The offshore model has allowed us to control the size of
volumes, the only way you can quickly perform excep-
our team”, says David. Strategically, the labor arbitrage
tion rule iterations is through the BackOffice solution,”
and flexibility realized through the organizational matu-
says Krause. “The rules are getting better and better as
rity has paid off and will continue to be a key component
we run these daily refreshes and the exceptions begin to
of DDS. The MDM team is in regular contact with
drop toward zero. Now we ask whether errors are actual-
DDS. Business processes are defined for all business data
ly parameters that should be excepted from the report.”
conversions, requirements and mapping, and then in col-
laboration with DDS those are verified and transferred Kraft Foods manages data quality in their production
to the data migration team structure. system with a team of three — Brad Krause and two
developers who assist in creation and resolution of the
BackOffice solution reports. When they first started the
DATA GOVERNANCE team in 2008, the focus was on product and material,
but has since expanded to customer, vendor and location
New Efficiencies with Data Objects master data. The company imports 195 million rows of
and Reports data daily. This is growing as more and more plants
come on-line, and it can grow exponentially with dif-
Once clean data is in an SAP production system, how do
ferent pricing contained in the material master. Nightly
you keep it ‘clean’? Kraft Foods answered this question
imports begin at 9pm and end in the early morning to
through early use of the BackOffice data governance
avoid performance issues. Large tables run separately on
solution. SAP brought a new awareness of complex
nearly 400GB of memory.
business rules and processes to the company. But not all
business processes can be handled or enforced systemati-

BackOffice Associates, LLC NA +1 508.430.7100 ©2016 BackOffice Associates, LLC. BackOffice Associates, Boring Go Live and all
associated logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of BackOffice Associates,
info@boaweb.com EU +44 (0) 845 003 8304 LLC in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other products, company names,
www.boaweb.com APJ & ME +65 63610360 brand names, trademarks and logos are the property of their respective companies.